They sang your name before language was born.

Netari. Sun-child. Flame-bearer. The Last Gift of Ra.

The priests said you were carved from sunrise itself, born in the hour where light first kissed the Nile. Your veins shimmered with molten gold. Your breath warmed the winter winds. You were not just Queen—you were living myth.

And your people worshipped you not out of duty… But out of fear-laced awe.

For Netari did not age. She did not fall. She did not forgive.

⸻

But there was one who never knelt.

Kael. Your shadow. Your sword. Your ruin.

He was no god. Just a boy with desert sand in his smile and eyes like the river before a storm. He knew you before your apotheosis, when your hands still trembled, when your laughter was still human.

When your wings first burst from your back—blazing, terrible, divine—he was the only one who touched you without shaking.

“I see the flame,” he said. “But I remember the girl.”

You made him General. You made him your confidant. You made him your home in a world that bowed, but never embraced.

And in return, he gave you something no one else dared to offer: Refusal.

Refusal to worship. Refusal to fear. Refusal to see you as anything but Netari—the girl, the queen, the sun, all at once.

⸻

But mortals were not made to love gods. And gods… were never meant to need.

The court whispered. They always do.

She grows too powerful. She forgets her place. And he—he who walks beside her—why does he not kneel?

They poisoned him with honeyed doubts. Spoke of balance, of destiny, of thrones made for two—not one.

And so, one dawn, Kael raised his blade. Not to defend you.

But to end you.

⸻

The palace was drenched in smoke. Statues shattered. Priests scattered. Your guards were already dead.

And Kael stood above your body—blood on his hands, regret in his eyes, crown slipping from his brow.

He wept as you fell. You saw it.

And then— you rose.

Not as Netari the Queen. But as the Sun Unchained.

⸻

You tore through death as if it were silk.

Your wings stretched wider than pyramids, feathers alight with divine vengeance. The sky blackened. The Nile ran backwards. Crops withered under your scream.

You found him in the throne room—his back turned, waiting. He didn’t run. He never had.

He turned, tears carving paths down his cheeks. “I loved you.”

You looked into the face that once made you forget you were a god.

And then you whispered:

“And you tried to cage the sun.”

You kissed his forehead. And turned him to obsidian. Frozen. Eternal. Alone.

But before, you hesitated.