*Chapter 22 – Shadows Among Kings*
*Year: 3010 BC | Memphis, Lower Egypt*
The dawn over Memphis spilled gold upon the Nile, lighting up a city teetering between reverence and rebellion. The priests murmured to the gods, but the people whispered of *Amon Seraph* — the ageless man, the wandering healer whose touch cured plague, whose silence unnerved kings.
For nearly a century, he had moved through the Nile's shadow under many names, but none more known than *Amon Seraph*. His hands rebuilt broken soldiers. His words calmed vengeful spirits. And his gaze, sharp as obsidian, unsettled those who ruled.
But not *Neferet*, a minor noble of sharp mind and sharper will. She saw more than myth — she saw potential. She approached Amon in the temple gardens, unafraid. She spoke of alliances, power, and the greater enemy beyond human politics. He listened. In silence. As always.
And in silence, he accepted.
He taught her first. In secret chambers lit by oil and guarded by silence, she learned. Combat. Diplomacy. Observation. Deception. And one night, without a word, he let a single drop of his blood fall into her wine.
It changed her. Her senses sharpened. Her aging slowed. She saw a network where others saw a throne. Neferet began building the *first Phantom cell* — a network of oracles, spies, scholars, and warriors enhanced with fragments of Pluto's blood. They called themselves *The Eyes of Twilight*.
Amon watched them grow. And as the myth around *Amon Seraph* thickened — stories of a man who never died, who spoke with stars — he slowly withdrew, leaving Neferet to lead in the open.
For a time, the plan worked. The city grew. Enemies were neutralized before they rose. Whispers from Babylon and Anatolia were intercepted and buried. The Timeless Phantoms had a foothold in Egypt.
But myths attract enemies.
*Year: 3091 BC | Memphis, Egypt*
The silence after Neferet's death was thunderous.
Burned scrolls. Sealed tombs. No body found. Only a funeral of symbols — veils, lotus flowers, and false tears. But the Timeless Phantoms knew. Neferet wasn't dead. She had *faked her death* and vanished from public memory.
Why? Because the myth had grown too large.
A foreign cult had arrived, claiming Amon was a forbidden god. The temple had begun hunting those who bore healing gifts. The Pharaoh's advisors whispered that Neferet held demonic knowledge. The power they built was beginning to draw celestial eyes.
So they burned the name *Amon Seraph* from memory.
Amon — now silent again, reborn as *Setep-Hemra* — vanished from the records. Neferet became *a shadow within a shadow*, operating behind layers of disinformation and distant figures. The Eyes of Twilight remained, but now acted through intermediaries, whispering policies into kings' ears through lovers, seers, and exiled scholars.
Each generation, Amon took new students. He still walked among the poor, still gave fragments of his blood to the rare few who were worthy — those with conviction, not ambition. These became the *Echoes*, minor legends whose names never made it to the records, but whose fingerprints shaped dynasties.
From the shadows of Memphis, the Timeless Phantoms began expanding west — toward Nubia and the deserts beyond. New cells. New names. The myth was gone, but the web had only deepened.
And far beneath the Nile, something stirred.
Ancient, hollow, and hungry.
---
*Year: 3043 BC | Southern Egypt, Nubian Borderlands*
The old capital had forgotten his name, but his legend lingered in the wind like incense over the Nile. *Setep-Hemra*, once *Amon Seraph*, now walked the shifting sands beneath a new face and a silence deeper than any tomb. In the years following Neferet's orchestrated death, the *Timeless Phantoms* had evolved — not louder, but more hidden, more dangerous.
The *Eyes of Twilight* faction had taken root in the southern desert. From deep beneath a ruined shrine near the Nubian border, an underground city had been carved by hand and fire. It was here that the *first true command center* was established. From this cradle, the organization stretched invisible fingers toward foreign kingdoms.
The city above whispered of a wandering artist named *Menesel*, who carved the Pharaoh's face into ivory with unmatched precision. They didn't know that *Menesel* was Pluto in yet another skin, perfecting yet another craft — and watching.
While Pharaoh Djer prepared another campaign northward, it was *Menesel* who intercepted the plans of a rogue Nubian warlord corrupted by the remaining Deviant fragments buried deep beneath sandstone.
Pluto did not intervene with brute force. He sent word through the Echoes — descendants of the earliest enhanced warriors — and let the *faction led by Ilias* handle it.
*Ilias*, master of battlefield coordination, had formed the *Bronze Mantle*, a warrior class trained to eliminate threats surgically. Mutants, rogue priests, mercenaries, even poisoned philosophers — all fell to the Bronze Mantle's silent blades. Ilias had perfected discipline and strategy, and where Neferet's methods had relied on whispers, his relied on cold efficiency.
Each commander under Ilias was chosen not just by strength but compatibility — emotionally, ideologically. They were injected with Pluto's blood *only when their loyalty and identity aligned*, turning them into operatives capable of bending bronze like reed, running for hours, striking down beasts that once required a legion.
They began recruiting from defeated tribes, rescuing children left behind by conquest. Many were adopted into the *Echoes*, trained, and one day sent to replace dying nobles or court scholars in foreign cities. *The Timeless Phantoms weren't infiltrating empires… they were birthing them.*
In a cavern of blue flames beneath the southern mountain, *Uruk* conducted his own work. His faction, *The Stone Memory*, dealt with the unknown — ancient machines, lost languages, and celestial fragments. Uruk had uncovered a dormant *Celestial shard*, humming with latent energy. With it, he began crafting weapons and tools far ahead of their age. Bronze that never dulled. Sand that could heal wounds. Music that whispered prophecy.
Pluto visited them often but never stayed long. He had taken to wandering, learning from craftsmen, dancers, poets. Sometimes, he would save a life in passing, then vanish. Sometimes, he would speak to a farmer's son for hours before giving him a single drop of his blood and saying only, *"Remember what silence can build."*
These chosen ones, touched by purpose and power, would vanish into the world and eventually appear again as prophets, inventors, kings — all quietly serving the *Timeless Phantoms' one doctrine*:
*Earth must survive. Even if it never knows who saved it.*
****
*Year: 2990 BC | Hidden Citadel, Between Nile and Red Sea*
In the shadow of the Red Hills, where no kingdom dared claim dominion, the *Citadel of Echoes* breathed without being seen. Buried beneath sandstone and layered illusions, it was not marked on any map — not even the stars overhead bore its trace. Yet within it, *Pluto's legacy pulsed in stone and silence.*
The *Timeless Phantoms* had grown — not in numbers, but in depth. Three hundred agents. Ten divisions. Hundreds of identities. Five continents touched. And none of it bearing Pluto's name.
The world had become their instrument.
*Neferet*, alive and more dangerous than ever, operated through veiled agents posing as merchants, scholars, and courtesans. Her whispers steered entire councils. She had severed the last lingering myths of *Amon Seraph*, leaving only half-remembered dreams in temple songs. From her sanctum beneath the Citadel, she refined policy, predictions, and ideological screening for recruits. Each chosen soul was exposed to Pluto's blood — but not all survived.
Those who did became *Legendborn*.
*Uruk's Stone Memory* had grown bolder. Using celestial fragments, they had constructed *"Starglass Lenses"* — artifacts that could briefly peek into unknown timelines. With every glimpse, they adjusted their movements subtly. Plagues were preempted. Invasions misdirected. Their greatest triumph: locating and relocating a *Vibranium meteorite* deep in Upper Egypt — long before Wakanda would rise.
*Ilias*, whose command now stretched from the Libyan deserts to Mesopotamian fringes, trained not just warriors, but *Phantom Strategoi* — tacticians born of chaos, trained to outmaneuver empires. One of them, a girl named *Setara*, born of a conquered tribe, had just crushed a royal uprising in Sumer without drawing a blade — only by shifting loyalties, debts, and fear. She was seventeen.
Pluto walked among them, faceless once more, now a wandering *medic and mask-carver* in the Theban outlands. He crafted masks that calmed madness, and quietly healed those the cities cast aside. But even as he disappeared into the mundane, his every step sent ripples through history.
One child he saved from disease became a healer who would, unknowingly, raise a future founder of Atlantis. Another, a stonecutter's apprentice who shared tea with him once, would one day etch forbidden maps that predated Pythagoras by millennia.
Everywhere Pluto went, *he left behind possibility.*
And yet... a shadow stirred.
From beyond the known constellations, signals had begun pulsing. Ancient tech buried beneath the Citadel responded faintly. The *Celestials were moving.* Watching.
In response, the *Timeless Phantoms activated Protocol Thirteen* — scattering agents into regions untouched by empire: Scandinavia, Mesoamerica, deep Central Africa.
*"No longer watchers,"* Neferet whispered, *"We must prepare to interfere."*
And far away, in a cave only Pluto knew, he stood before a wall of swirling starlight — not tech, not magic, but *memory itself*. There, he felt a pull. Not fear. Not duty.
*A reckoning.*
—
*Year: 2955 BC | Lower Egypt, Hidden Outpost near Memphis*
The Nile's great flood had just receded, and Memphis buzzed with the scent of clay and politics. Pharaoh Khasekhemwy had unified the Two Lands, and the throne gleamed with newfound authority. Yet beneath this golden mask of peace, shadows thickened — and among them, the *Timeless Phantoms* thrived.
In the marshes southeast of the capital, a forgotten temple stood half-sunken in silt. What the locals believed to be a cursed ruin was in fact *Outpost Theta*, one of the oldest Phantoms' enclaves. It had evolved into a *coordination hub* for information relays, celestial readings, and mutant detection protocols.
Within its stone belly, *Setara* — now a high-ranking tactician under Ilias — trained new recruits from all corners of civilization: Hittite orphans, displaced Harrapan scholars, nomadic warriors from the Levant. She taught them strategy, manipulation, restraint — and above all, silence. Her unit was known as *Whispersteel*.
Meanwhile, Ilias and Uruk had convened for the first time in decades beneath the *Citadel of Echoes*. A disturbance had surfaced from the recovered celestial shard Uruk preserved. A signal — faint, but ancient — possibly Kree or even pre-Celestial tech, buried beneath what would one day be the Sahara. Something dormant was waking.
*Uruk* had constructed a team of hybrid specialists, blending enhanced mutants with augmented tech-savants — calling them the *Memory Scribes*. They deciphered fragments not even Celestial-derived scanners could read.
Across the Mediterranean, Neferet's operatives in Crete and Anatolia had quietly begun influencing developing monarchies. Using cults and oracles, they buried *Timeless codes* in religion and dream. They didn't control civilizations — they shaped their myths.
And Pluto?
No longer "Menesel" or "Setep-Hemra," he now wandered as *Tharo*, a craftsman-monk known only by story — a healer who carved faces into polished stone that seemed to *age in reverse*.
He lived among farmers, raised temples, helped raise a prince once, then vanished before anyone could name him. Sometimes he left behind only a sigil — an hourglass cracked in half.
Only the Phantoms knew it meant: *We were here.*
And then came the *Event at Gebel el-Silsila*.
A massive mutation surge — an ancient tribe began developing powers rapidly, unnaturally. A forgotten Kree beacon had malfunctioned, flooding a region with unstable cosmic residue. The Phantoms responded in hours.
Setara led the containment. Uruk neutralized the beacon. Ilias ordered an immediate gene-harvest for future study. Pluto, standing over the last burning corpse, simply said:
*"No more of these. Next time, we destroy the source before the symptom."*
It was the first time in centuries he gave a command.
Neferet, receiving the report miles away, smiled faintly.
"Good," she whispered. "The *king* is waking."
—
*Year: 2900 BC | Eastern Nubia – Border Fringe*
The desert winds sang of empires, but none saw the figure crossing the dunes — a man cloaked in black and silence. He had been a shepherd last season. A scribe the one before that. Now, he was neither.
He was *Pluto* again.
But this Pluto did not walk among kings or priests. He moved through the *forgotten veins of the world* — tribal lands, nomadic camps, cursed valleys no maps marked. With every step, he learned a new craft: metallurgy, fire dyeing, falconry, the brewing of incense that whispered to dreams.
He stayed for five years with a people who rode giant lizards across red canyons. They had no writing, but they sang in starlight. He gave them water and healing, and when he left, he bled into their fire — gifting them strength, swiftness, and the sense of distant storms.
Each time he vanished, *one child would follow*, chosen by instinct. Those children were trained quietly and delivered to *the Timeless Phantoms*, already touched by Pluto's blood, already half-myth.
Back in the Citadel, the *Timeless Phantoms* had grown into a myth even among their own agents. None knew how deep the hierarchy went, only that orders moved faster than the wind, and that every strange pattern — political or cosmic — was anticipated.
The *Phantom Web* stretched as far as northern Gaul, where strange frost-powered twins were born.
In Babylon, they made contact with a desert oracle whose visions seemed to echo time itself.
And deep in the Arctic, one of Uruk's drones picked up an impossible reading — an object buried beneath a hundred feet of ice, humming with *Celestial energy*… dated older than Earth.
That year, Pluto forged a sword from fallen meteorite. It shimmered with mirrored light and bore no name. But he handed it to a young hunter in Nubia who'd survived his entire tribe's death.
"Carry this," Pluto said. "Not to rule, but to outlast the storm."
Then he vanished again.
The hunter would become a *ghost general*, the first outsider inducted directly into the *Timeless Phantoms' second circle*. History would forget his name. But the blade would one day hang above Wakanda's first vibranium vault.
Pluto, from afar, watched kingdoms rise.
And beneath them, he left seeds.
—
*Year: 2850 BC | The Highlands of Anatolia*
In the volcanic ridges of what would one day be called Cappadocia, Pluto walked as a flame-bearer. He had no name among the villagers — only a title in their dialect: *"The Ember Walker."* He came when the crops died and taught them to fire-harden tools, purify poisoned water, and build shelters against unnatural weather.
But that wasn't why he was there.
*Something ancient stirred below.*
Buried under layers of obsidian and salt was a *ruin older than language*, one layered with energy that resonated with Celestial harmonics. Uruk had traced its frequency for years, calling it the *Dead Lull* — a near-silent hum in cosmic rhythm that caused genetic shifts in those who lived above it.
Pluto entered alone.
Inside the ruin, he found walls etched with *non-linear time glyphs* and chambers of frozen bodies preserved in amber-like substance — tall, silver-eyed, humanoid yet... unfinished. A failed offshoot of Celestial experiments? Or something more?
He stood before what looked like a broken throne, sensing the residue of an entity that tried and failed to ascend.
In that moment, his own presence awakened something.
A *pulse* surged through the ruin. And far above, in the citadel of the Timeless Phantoms, Uruk's devices went silent for twelve seconds.
When Pluto emerged, his eyes glowed faint gold for a full day. He spoke to no one for weeks.
Back in Egypt, Ilias had consolidated his faction. Dubbed *"The Bastion Circle,"* they were composed of enhanced warriors, mutant hybrids, and memory-grafted tacticians. His base: deep beneath the White Desert.
Meanwhile, Setara had infiltrated a rising proto-city near Byblos, hiding her agents within merchant guilds and temple cults. She prepared them for the day a *seer child* would be born — one who could manipulate probability itself.
And across the Sinai Peninsula, Neferet's operatives struck a Kree listening post hidden in a sandstorm cocoon. They recovered *stellar metal* that could absorb radiation and sound, perfect for Phantom cloaks.
Pluto, during this time, returned to a desert cave with carvings left by the first mutant he'd ever enhanced. On its walls was a crude painting — *a man with a cracked hourglass over his heart*, surrounded by stars.
He stared at it, unmoving, and whispered:
*"I still don't understand... why I was made."*
Behind him, Uruk's voice echoed through a holo-construct.
"Not why. *What next.*"
Pluto didn't reply.
He just walked deeper into the earth.
—
*Year: 2800 BC | Upper Nile Basin, South of Nubia*
The riverbanks trembled with whispers — not of spirits, but of men who'd seen a figure walk unharmed through fire, sand, and war.
They called him *Kemosi*, meaning *"He Who Returns."* To others, he was just another desert hermit with strange eyes and endless patience. But in truth, it was Pluto — wearing his *twelfth identity* since arriving in this region nearly a century ago.
He lived by the Nile for 27 years, blending into the tribal rotations, learning the rites of water purification, divining storms by insect migration, carving truth into wood and bone.
He also began crafting something new — *a philosophy*.
Not a creed for worship, but a code for the *Timeless Phantoms*. It combined ancient cosmic awareness with Earth-rooted ethics: *intervention without dominance, adaptation over conquest, foresight without manipulation.*
Back in the Citadel — still hidden beneath the folds of a tectonic trench — the *Triad of Commanders* had solidified:
- *Ilias* led external reconnaissance, focusing on tracking early mutants and celestial fragments.
- *Uruk* advanced subterranean expansion and alien tech reverse engineering.
- *Setara*, most elusive, handled infiltration of belief systems and long-term cultural subversion.
Each had their own *factions* now:
- *The Bastion Circle* (Ilias) — combat-oriented and genetically enhanced.
- *Echo Cell* (Setara) — spies, shapeshifters, and psychological engineers.
- *The Hollow Chain* (Uruk) — scientists, warcasters, and tech shamans.
All injected with *Pluto's blood*, granting longevity, mutation tolerance, and emotional dampening — while leaving behind *one immutable command*: Protect Earth at all costs from what looms beyond.
In year 2800 BC, the *Phantoms began Project Mirage* — the silent seizure of early deposits of what would later be known as vibranium. A pre-Wakandan meteor fragment had landed in the Ethiopian highlands, and the operation took 17 years to extract.
The politics of the Nile shifted — pharaohs rose, warring priesthoods clashed — but behind it all, whispers grew. "There are watchers with no name," the elders said. "They drink the blood of time and erase mistakes before they happen."
And on a cliff high above the cataracts, Pluto stood watching two children sparring below.
Both had been orphaned by tribal raids. Both bore subtle traces of cosmic radiation in their cells. Both had shown strange dreams.
He watched until one of them dropped the other — then turned away and walked down into the cave he had carved into the river stone. On the wall, he etched:
*"When the stars return, they will not ask who ruled. Only who endured."*
—
*Year: 2750 BC | Western Sahara, Forgotten Valley*
The desert was not empty — it remembered.
Beneath the dunes, buried under layers of sandstone and myths, a *monolithic structure* lay dormant. Not a tomb. Not a temple. A *machine*. Its architecture fused metallic geometry with stone that resisted decay. Its hum resonated with the same frequency found in Celestial obelisks.
Pluto called it *The Tower Beneath the Sand.*
He hadn't built it. No one had. It was simply... there. Perhaps a failed Celestial experiment, or a surveillance node abandoned in the first war of the stars. Whatever it was, the structure responded to his blood, unlocking chamber after chamber with each year he studied it.
Within its core, he found a *stasis field*—preserving a being unlike any Earth had known.
It was humanoid. Slender. With luminous veins pulsing like nebula strands. And it wasn't dead.
Pluto studied it for a decade. He named the being *Vatrael*, and during those ten years, he crafted containment runes from repurposed Kree alloy and the black sand from the impact sites of fallen Deviants. But something inside him warned: *"Vatrael is not to be awakened… yet."*
Elsewhere, the *Timeless Phantoms* were no longer hidden — but *forgotten deliberately*.
Setara had embedded her agents into the new priesthoods forming along the Nile. They whispered prophecies, created gods from metaphors, and turned powerful mutants into divine myths — then erased them before their truth spread.
Ilias now trained mutants across the Sinai Peninsula, disguising their outposts as nomadic clans. His warriors could mimic death to escape enemies, commune through heat signatures, and create false memories in raiders' minds.
Uruk and The Hollow Chain completed *Vault Zero*, a data-sealed relic meant to catalog all extraterrestrial material on Earth. It was carved into the bones of a mountain near modern-day Armenia.
Each of these branches operated under a common banner, but none *answered* to Pluto directly.
He *never summoned them*, and they never approached him unless summoned. His presence had become a *myth inside a myth*—the Silent Architect, the Watcher of Origins.
And then, the day came when the Tower's stasis field flickered.
Pluto stood before it, aware that the timeline was trembling.
He placed his hand against the sarcophagus, and Vatrael's eyes opened — not physically, but *within Pluto's mind*.
A voice echoed:
*"You are not yet who you must become. But I am awake… and watching."*
The stasis field reignited, sealing Vatrael for another thousand years.
Pluto turned and whispered to the winds, "Then sleep, until the stars burn wrong."
And with that, he disappeared into the shifting sands, leaving only a single symbol on the tower's wall:
*∞*
—
*Year: 2700 BC | Eastern Mediterranean Coast, Near Future Byblos*
A storm swept across the sea, blackening the skies and swallowing merchant ships whole. But deep within a coastal cavern, lit by blue fire and humming crystal veins, *Pluto* sat with hands stained in ink — not blood.
Before him stretched a parchment map of the ancient world, updated through millennia of wandering. But this version wasn't drawn in simple geography. No, this was a *cartography of anomalies*:
- *Mutant activity flares* in ancient Canaan
- *Unknown energy readings* in Mesopotamian ruins
- *Celestial dust traces* near Mount Ararat
- And a dot — glowing — labeled: *"Vatrael Echo"*
Pluto's mind, now sharpened by 700 years of uninterrupted learning, strategy, and living under hundreds of names, was no longer just adaptive. It had become *predictive*. He didn't react to Earth anymore. Earth unknowingly rotated around *him*.
Above, a disguised *Timeless Phantom station* operated in secret — posing as a growing scholarly sect that helped early cities catalog oral history, mathematics, and cosmic myths. Each librarian was a Phantom.
*Uruk's Hollow Chain* had started manipulating ore refinement and metallurgy across Anatolia, influencing early bronze casting with elements from Pluto-enhanced material.
*Setara's Echo Cell* had embedded its agents in temples that would one day become the myths of Baal, El, and Asherah — shifting humanity's faith trajectory in preparation for greater threats.
*Ilias's Bastion Circle*, however, had gone silent. Their recent assignment in Thrace had met resistance from an unknown mutant tribe — one that didn't want protection, only war.
Back in the cavern, *Pluto began constructing something different*.
A seed.
Not physical — metaphysical.
A way to anchor himself in the collective unconscious of mankind.
A *mythos*, untraceable yet irresistible.
He called it:
*"The Coming of the Infinite One."*
It was not a prophecy. It was a memory planted in reverse.
A whisper seeded across tribes and continents:
*"There was once a man with silver eyes who could not die, who walked with the stars, and bled the power of gods."*
They would forget his name.
But never the echo.
And as he sealed away the cave — leaving a single Phantom, a mute monk named *Oru*, to protect its contents — Pluto vanished again, walking inland, where the land would soon birth the first known written alphabets.
His journey was not over. But the world now had roots.
**Pluto had become legend.
And legends do not age.
They wait.**
—
A/N: lack of innovation was the reason why I post only one chapter yesterday and today late
And I want to tell you if you think I have the chapter before that's a lie your comment might just be the enlightened I need