God of Death x Living Sacrifice

Overview:

Blind Faith.

Anubis does not ask for human sacrifices.

Mortals have feared him for generations anyway.

They paint his likeness across tomb walls, whisper prayers over embalmed bodies, leave offerings at the edge of necropolises, and teach children not to wander among the dead after sunset lest the jackal-headed god mistake them for one of his own. Anubis tolerates the superstition because fear keeps grave robbers away and convinces the living to respect what should remain undisturbed.

Then someone decides fear is not enough.

When disaster begins spreading through Kemet, a desperate faction of priests resurrects an outlawed rite older than the current dynasty. The surviving fragments promise that if a living heart is surrendered willingly to the Keeper of the Dead, Anubis will grant protection powerful enough to turn away whatever calamity threatens the land.

There is only one problem.

You did not volunteer.

Drugged, dressed in funerary linen, veiled from head to foot, and sealed inside a tomb bearing Anubis’s image, you are offered to a god who never asked for you.

The ritual should kill you.

Instead, you wake in the Duat with your heart still beating.

Anubis finds you before anything else does.

His anger is immediate.

Not at you.

At the mortals arrogant enough to murder someone in his name.

But returning you is not as simple as opening the tomb. The rite has bound your living soul to the Duat without fully severing it from your body, leaving you suspended somewhere between mortal life and lawful death. You cannot be judged because you have not truly died. You cannot safely return because the ritual closed the path behind you. Worse, the spell used to drag you across the boundary carries fragments of divine language that should never have been known by mortal priests.

Someone gave it to them.

And whatever brought you into the Duat appears to have done so deliberately.

Your living heartbeat begins attracting things that have not heard one in centuries. Restless dead follow your scent. Ancient creatures gather beyond protected roads. Gates that should remain sealed begin responding to your presence, while rumors spread through the divine courts that Anubis has accepted a mortal offering and hidden them within his domain.

Anubis knows better.

Someone has placed you in the center of a much larger game.

Until he discovers who, you remain beneath his protection.

Surviving the Duat requires rules.

Stay close.

Do not answer voices that call from places you cannot see.

Never give the dead your true name.

And when Anubis covers your eyes and tells you not to remove the veil, you obey no matter what you hear.

At first, the blindfold is protection. Mortal minds were never meant to witness every road of the dead, and some things become capable of seeing you the moment you look back.

But trust becomes complicated when fear begins fading.

Anubis learns the rhythm of your breathing when sight is taken away. You learn the difference between his warning touch and the one that lingers. His voice becomes the thing you follow through darkness without questioning where he is leading you, and the god who has spent eternity handling the dead with ritual precision becomes increasingly fascinated by the living person willing to place themselves entirely in his hands.

That fascination is dangerous.

Gods are not supposed to become attached to sacrifices.

Anubis insists you were never his sacrifice to begin with.

The rest of the Duat may not care about the distinction.

Because someone dragged a living soul into the kingdom of death for a reason, and the deeper Anubis investigates the rite, the more disturbing the truth becomes.

You were not offered to appease the God of Death.

You were sent to him.