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Egyptian mythic fantasy set in a world where gods wage war through chosen mortals, ancient relics carry divine power, and the judgement of the dead may one day turn upon the gods themselves.

Along the river, the living bargain for another day while the dead travel along older roads beneath their feet. Beyond the crowded quays and burial courts, the desert keeps the remains of kingdoms swallowed by sand and flood, their names worn from stone while the gods retain every debt. When those buried places begin to open and the passage of the dead is disturbed, the consequences reach far beyond a stolen relic or an abandoned tomb.

Neris knows the price of entering places meant for the dead. She has lived by taking from them, carrying her earnings home through the river slums to buy medicine, food and another few days beneath a leaking roof. One journey into the resting place of the Drowned Kings brings her before Anubis and sets her upon a road that will lead from the judgement of a single human heart towards a reckoning with the divine order of Egypt itself.

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A Grave Thief Claimed by Anubis

Neris enters the story as a tomb robber who understands stone better than she understands the people who judge her. She knows where a passage may collapse, how a false ledge carries weight, and how to read the disturbed dust left by someone who entered ahead of her. Hunger and her mother’s failing health have taught her to take risks, while the death of her brother has left a burden she carries through every job and every return to the river. The wealth hidden in an ancient tomb offers the possibility of relief, even when its carved warnings speak of a price beyond silver.

The encounter with Anubis changes the course of her life. Beneath the gaze of the jackal god, Neris must face the memories she has tried to survive by keeping buried, and the scales force her to consider the difference between necessity and responsibility. She emerges marked, able to sense unsettled souls and the damaged routes that hold them. She believes her task is to guide the dead towards their rightful passage, unaware of the greater purpose behind the claim that now binds her.

Across the wider series, that first judgement becomes the beginning of a far more difficult struggle. Neris must learn how to survive among people claimed by other gods, how to carry a relic that answers to sacred danger, and how to recognise the difference between an obligation she has accepted and a command imposed upon her. The journey demands more than courage. It asks how a woman whose life has been shaped by poverty, grief and guilt can hold to her own judgement when divine powers begin treating her as a piece in their conflict.

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The Drowned Kingdom and the Roads of the Dead

The Drowned Kingdom survives in warnings, damaged carvings, uncovered stone and the memory of kings whose resting places have fallen beyond ordinary reach. Storms expose entrances the desert has guarded for generations, and the first signs of disturbance may be little more than abandoned tools, a smear of blood beside a doorway, or a silence where workers should have returned. Behind those thresholds lie old chambers, carved jackals, scales, funerary objects and passages where the distinction between the living world and the realm of the dead becomes dangerously thin.

Tombs in this world carry obligations. Linen, natron, sealed doors, burial records and offerings belong to a long human effort to give the dead their proper passage, and damage to that work can reach beyond the stone where it begins. A blocked route may leave souls gathered in the dark, straining against a crossing that should have opened. A disturbed chamber may send its consequences into a ferry house, a shrine court or the streets above, where ordinary people have little understanding of the danger gathering beneath them.

The river remains as important as the desert. Funeral boats cross black water beneath crowded terraces, mortuary workers prepare bodies in lamplit rooms, and record keepers trace the movements of offerings and the dead through clay, ink and memory. Far above these quiet duties stand temples and divine powers whose decisions can alter the order of passage itself. As the hidden conflict spreads, the sacred places that once offered certainty become places where every sign demands a second look and every judgement may conceal another intention.

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The God at the Threshold

Anubis stands at the heart of Neris’s beginning, carrying the authority of tombs, funerary practice, the judged dead and rightful passage. His presence comes through the weight of a heart upon the scales, the shape of a jackal in the darkness and the terrible clarity of being seen by a power that remembers what human beings bury within themselves. The mark he leaves upon Neris binds her to duties that appear sacred and necessary, even as the fuller purpose of that bond remains hidden from her.

The question of Anubis’s judgement grows more difficult as Neris encounters the wider world of the chosen. A god may speak of order while leaving a mortal to carry its cost, and the language of service can sit uneasily beside the reality of divine claim. Neris’s understanding of loyalty begins with gratitude, fear and obligation, then deepens as she discovers how thoroughly the gods can shape the lives of those who fight in their names. The scales that once measured her heart gradually become a measure she may have to turn towards those who claim the right to judge.

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A Hidden War Among the Gods

Egypt’s gods hold power over a world built within their domains, and open warfare between them threatens everything beneath the sun. An ancient Compact restrains their direct conflict, leaving chosen humans to carry divine relic weapons into disputes their masters keep beyond ordinary sight. The war therefore begins through damaged burial routes, thefts made for sacred purpose, attacks disguised as another god’s work and confrontations between bearers who understand only part of the struggle surrounding them.

The powers behind that conflict hold different ideas of order and duty. Ra stands for the authority of the sun and the stability of the divine hierarchy, while Horus carries kingship, public legitimacy and martial responsibility. Set brings desert violence, disruption and pressure against structures others believe secure, while Thoth seeks meaning through records, knowledge and reckoning. Neith’s ancient discipline stands among the forces striving to keep human hands steady inside a war shaped by immortal decisions. As the conflict widens, the claims of Isis, Osiris and other divine powers bring further weight to questions of restoration, rightful rule, death and the price of preserving order.

Each side believes it has reasons for acting, and the mortals sent to bear those reasons face consequences their gods may never have to endure. A sacred mark can draw hunters towards a family home, while a relic can make its bearer responsible for a burial route damaged by someone else’s design. Temples, record houses, funerary workers and the living communities around them become entangled in rival claims of legitimacy. The deeper Neris travels into this struggle, the more difficult it becomes to separate sacred duty from the ambitions of the powers giving the orders.

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The Hidden War Among the Gods

The war behind the series begins as something half-seen. Ordinary people are spared the sight of gods tearing the sky apart, yet they still live with the consequences. The dead fail to pass cleanly. Tombs open wrongly. Sacred places become unsafe. Relic weapons stir in human hands. Chosen attackers move through the edges of the world before Neris has any language for what they are. The divine war first appears as wrongness before it becomes revelation.

The Egyptian gods in this series remain tied to their true identities. Anubis belongs to tombs, thresholds, burial practice, judged souls, and rightful passage. Ra carries supreme solar order and cosmic authority. Set brings chaos, desert force, violence, disruption, and destabilisation. Thoth carries record, reckoning, hidden knowledge, writing, and measured intelligence. Horus brings kingship, visible legitimacy, martial divine order, and public authority. Neith carries ancient discipline, craft, strategy, and war wisdom. These powers resist simple sides in a bright heroic battle. They scheme, preserve, wound, claim, and act according to their own sacred logic.

Open divine war would shatter the mortal world. So the gods move through chosen humans, relic weapons, old compacts, hidden rules, and violence placed into mortal hands. That solution carries its own corruption. A chosen person can be trained, used, lied to, elevated, sacrificed, or abandoned. A god can call it necessity. A human body still pays the price.

Neris enters this conflict before she understands its shape. At first she sees only disturbed passage, pursuit, fear, and the evidence that something has recognised her mark. Over time, the hidden war widens. Relics answer old names. Other chosen appear. Veteran champions reveal the scale between instinct and discipline. Temple authority, divine law, and broken sacred order begin to press from every side. The reader discovers the war with Neris, through dread, collision, bruises, instruction, and loss, through lived pressure instead of a cold explanation of the board.

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Chosen by Gods, Bound to Relics

Those claimed by the gods carry more than a symbol. Each bond is centred upon a divine relic weapon whose form and purpose reflect the power behind it, from the funerary blade of Anubis to the disciplined arms of Neith and the measured instruments of Thoth. The weapon bears the greater divine force, while the human hand must learn how to carry its weight through fear, injury, training and judgement. Every encounter leaves its mark on the body, and surviving a fight offers little promise of surviving the next.

Neris begins with the instincts of a thief accustomed to narrow shafts, broken stone and desperate escapes. Her first answer to danger is quick, low and untidy, using darkness and difficult ground to survive against enemies who possess years of experience. The skills that kept her alive in tombs can bring her close enough to strike, yet they also expose every weakness in her balance, timing and restraint. Training gradually gives those instincts structure, while the Anubis relic deepens from a close funerary weapon towards an authority tied to the boundaries of death itself.

The path towards becoming a formidable chosen bearer brings wounds, mistakes and spiritual cost. Strength creates obligations towards the vulnerable, and a moment of defiance may save one life while placing others in danger. The gods may determine the claims carried by their champions, yet each human still has to decide where to stand, when to draw a weapon and whose suffering deserves an answer. For Neris, learning to fight becomes inseparable from learning to take responsibility for the power placed in her hands.

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The People Drawn Into the War

Neris’s first steps among the chosen bring her into the company of people who challenge the habits that have kept her alive. Meretneith, a veteran bearer of Neith’s authority, teaches through hard correction, exact movement and an unsentimental understanding of what happens when fear takes control of the body. Her discipline offers Neris a chance of survival among experienced fighters, though accepting instruction forces the younger woman to confront her own pride and the limits of instinct. Trust grows slowly through repeated mistakes, shared danger and the knowledge that training carries a responsibility greater than victory.

Khamet, chosen of Thoth, approaches danger through records, patterns and careful reckoning, bringing an entirely different understanding of the same hidden war. His exchanges with Neris begin in irritation and suspicion, and their practical cooperation grows as each discovers the gaps in the other’s knowledge. Where she reads a passage through stone, smell and the habits of thieves, he follows the movement of records, supplies and altered accounts. The connection between them develops under pressure, with companionship and affection finding their place amid duties they had never expected to carry.

Around them stand rival chosen, temple authorities and hunters whose loyalties reach towards competing divine purposes. Some believe that restraint and recognised authority protect the innocent, while others see the old rules as obstacles to be broken or twisted. Neris must work beside people she mistrusts, measure the judgement of those who command her, and face enemies who understand the sacred systems she is still learning. The war becomes deeply personal because every decision reaches the people who wait beyond the temples and burial courts.

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Reading Order and Published Books

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