Sekhmet stood before the golden palace of the dead and heard the news no one wanted to speak. Her father, Ra, lay trapped inside the corpse of a great serpent, sinking somewhere in the dark below. She was the weapon he made to punish the world. If any god could cut him free, it was her. She flexed her claws and started up the stone steps. Inside, painted pharaohs watched from the walls. A jackal-headed god turned away when she asked the question. A winged goddess only shook her head. Sekhmet gripped a lotus column until stone cracked under her nails. "I will tear the beast open and drag him out," she said. "You can't." The voice came from behind her. Bastet stepped from the shadow of a statue. Her sister. A golden rattle hung from one hand, and her cat's tail lashed slow behind her. She had come hunting a curse in this place, but she stopped for Sekhmet now. "The serpent is Apep," Bastet said. "Pure chaos. Its scales turn every blade." She lifted Sekhmet's hand and pressed a claw against her own palm. It did not break the skin. "Your claws are made of the sun. Chaos does not fear the sun. It eats it." Sekhmet pulled her hand back. "Then I strike until it bleeds." "You strike once and you die," Bastet said. "I have seen what chaos does to a body. I clean it off children every night." Her voice dropped. "You need a weapon that bites what claws cannot." Sekhmet's tail went still. She wanted to argue. But she had felt it herself once, the trick of a thing that looked like blood and was not. Her father had made her a weapon and then dulled her. Now she wanted to prove she was still the blade. Rushing in would only prove Bastet right. "Where do I find such a weapon?" she asked. Bastet walked to a wall carving. She pointed at a serpent split from the inside, a small figure standing in its belly. "The old records say Apep cannot be cut from outside. Only from within." She tapped the wall. "Ra learned that. It is how he killed it. The library of the scribe god holds the rest. Weapons that wound chaos. Things forged by wisdom, not fire." Sekhmet stared at the carved serpent. Her whole life she had solved every problem by burning it. Now the answer was patience, ink, and someone else's craft. It sat wrong in her chest. But she pictured her father sinking into the dark, and the wrongness burned away. "Take me there," she said. Bastet's ears flicked. "You'll listen before you kill?" "Once," Sekhmet said. "For him." They left the palace together. Behind them, the painted serpent kept its secret. Ahead lay the scribe's library, and the one weapon that could open a god of chaos from the inside.