Lucky
A resurrection. That is how history will remember it. At this very moment, on the wind and in the waters there are whispers of rebirth; even the ashes seem to stir with some kind of burgeoning awareness of the sweeping changes taking place around them. Egypt has been saved from the brink of total collapse, pulled off the ledge of destruction, has both obliterated all evil and sent it running for cover. A hero has risen from the rubble and assumed the responsibility of restoring balance, peace, and serenity to a world that has forgotten how these words feel on the tongue and in the back of the throat.
I am that hero. At least, that's what they tell me. The few surviving peasants, the even fewer surviving nobles. They come to kneel at my feet, eyes wet with relief and gratitude, convinced that now everything will be calm, that I will set the world to rights again. As if I could somehow change the passage of the stars.
I know what I ought to be feeling—pride, unabashed and glorious. In just a few short years I have elevated myself from the most squalid of common stock to the class of gods on earth. Elegantly dismantling every obstacle that was laid out before me, I have finally attained the position that I somehow sensed was mine for the taking as soon as I was old enough to formulate conscious thought. I should feel justified, righteous, as if I could wield the fiery power of the sun itself through my fingertips and force the world to bow to my vast and unlikely accomplishments. However, now that I have ascended, now that I have defeated everything and everyone that has ever stood in my way, I am not sure what exactly it was that I was fighting for.
They all crowd around me, as if the very act of being in my presence could somehow restore to them everything that they have lost. They do not voice their questions—they would not dare speak to me—but I can see the concern in their faces. What will I do to protect Egypt? How will I keep their world from falling once more into the smarmy grasp of evil?
The truth is: I will do nothing at all.
I did not save this world, if anything I have only endangered it. The root of this evil was half-sightedness—the muzzling of voices—those of the preferably unheard—the shuffling of bodies down alleyways and into gutters, the pursuit of a glorious and sprawling vision that could be poured like molten gold over the warm delicate earth until it was beautifully suffocated. And was I not a part of that? Did I not precipitate it? I spent my entire adolescence with my eyes trained on the Pharaoh's palace, convinced it was the source of all light and happiness in this world. That was the ideal that I believed I was protecting when I fought in the name of the Pharaoh, it was what I believed I was defending as I harvested the souls of those very people who were in the most desperate need of my assistance.
But with every layer that has been pulled back from this mystery, the more convoluted and grotesque these ideals become. Perhaps it is true that I am not entirely to blame for all this. After all, I did not order the attack on Kul Elna. I used the powers of the Millennium Items in ignorance. I may not be guilty, but I am responsible. The sun is high and bright now and when I look out over the land I can see it casting far and wide—illuminating the entire landscape of what I have done. I cannot see one face without seeing them all. I want to flinch away from this endless sight, but I cannot.
And yet—the fact remains. This sun stretches far beyond even the land that I can see. I cannot fix this alone.