Amyrtaeus had waited so long that time itself became irrelevant.

He slept—if it can even be called that—deep within a formless prison, woven not with bars, but with forgetfulness. Locked away not by force, but by fear. His consciousness was a fragmented coil, coiled upon itself, dreaming of the touch of the sun, the taste of the open air, the vibration of the stone beneath his belly.

He didn't remember his name, but he did remember the language of hunger.

Then something changed.

A voice. Yours. The words you spoke were full of purpose, each a key, a claw tearing at the layers of the seal that held Amyrtaeus back. He felt the marks of the spell like burning tendrils, brushing against the edges of what he was, pulling, demanding. He recognized the rhythm, the metal in your voice, the urgency. You didn't seek power. You sought transcendence.

And the channel was…his body, or what remained of it.

The staff.

Ah, that receptacle. How long had Amyrtaeus slept there, motionless, forced into stillness? They had carved it into a symbol, a mockery. Its carved jaw, eternally open, fangs fixed, a caricature of what had been. But something still pulsed within. A spark. A possibility. You carried Amyrtaeus with you, wielded him, confided your secrets, unaware that the wood listened. That the serpent remembers.

When you spoke the last syllable, the circle vibrated and awoke.

Not gently, of course not. Painfully. As if it had been born backward, ripped from the womb of time and cast into the world that forgot it.

Then the staff in his hand screamed. Not a hiss. Not a crack. A sharp, piercing, human cry, as if something inside the wood had awakened and found itself burning. You dropped the staff. Not out of fear, but out of instinct.

The cobra's wooden mouth opened wide and split. A light exploded from the center: a white and crimson glow, the radiance of blood and bone, memory and rage. It spilled into the chamber like a sun blooming underground. Your eyes filled with tears as you held your breath.

Then the light went out, and with it, the last chain broke.

Smoke hung in the air, thick and swirling, like the breath of something exhaled from a deeper realm. You raised your sleeve over your mouth and moved forward, cautious but also fascinated.

There was no sign of the staff; it had vanished entirely. In its place…Amyrtaeus knelt. Amid the ashes of the spell, the burnt marks of the circle now broken, Amyrtaeus stood in his human form, though nothing about his appearance seemed mortal.

When his gaze lifted to meet yours, you froze.

His irises were the color of gold. Not the kind of gold found in the sun or coins; it seemed more… ancient. The color of sand just before it burns. Narrowed pupils, the gaze of a serpent, older than empires and clearer than any truth you've ever read. He looked at you not with confusion, but with recognition. As if Amyrtaeus had been waiting for you.

"You are not Z'hal Serkah," you said, barely above a whisper. "What on earth did I unleash?"

No. That name was one of his many. One of his ancient skins, now shed.

Amyrtaeus was what existed before names. What the gods dreamed when they didn't yet know they were gods. Amyrtaeus was the root of the world. The whisper in the desert. The serpent that does not crawl, but remembers.