Sethnakht didn’t waste time asking more questions than she needed to. That was one of the things Khaemwaset had come to genuinely admire about her. Give her a problem and she moved straight to solving it, no wasted motion, no circling back to relitigate whether she should trust him.
By midmorning they’d walked the corridor outside the Regent’s chamber three separate times, and Khaemwaset pointed out every detail his borrowed memory of tomorrow could offer. Where Meryre had stepped from. Where the second attacker had waited, hidden in the shadow of a support column that jutted out just far enough to hide a man if he stood still.
Know the Ground. Map every detail of the coming ambush. Small errors could let Meryre slip through again.
"Here," Khaemwaset said, stopping beside the column. "This is where he came at me from behind. If we put someone here first, someone good, we take that advantage away before it exists."
Sethnakht studied the spot, running a hand along the stone. "I have a man. Nebamun. Quiet, fast, doesn’t talk much, which suits this kind of work fine. I’ll have him in position before dusk."
"And Meryre himself?"
"That’s trickier." She crossed her arms, thinking it through out loud the way she often did, and Khaemwaset had learned to just let her talk rather than interrupt the process. "If we’re too obvious about guarding this corridor, he’ll notice and change his plan. We need it to look exactly like it looked the first time. Quiet. Empty. An easy target."
The Illusion of Safety. The corridor must appear unguarded to lure Meryre in. Hidden support is the only way to keep it both safe and convincing.
"I could be the bait," Khaemwaset said.
Sethnakht’s head snapped toward him fast enough that he almost laughed. "Absolutely not."
"I already know exactly what’s coming. I know the timing, I know the angle of the attack, I know it before it happens. That’s not recklessness, Sethnakht, that’s the single biggest advantage either of us has ever had against this man."
"It’s still you walking into a knife," she said, sharp and immediate. "Knowing something is coming doesn’t make the knife any less real."
He held her gaze, understanding the fear underneath the argument even as he pushed against it. "I already died once in this corridor. I’d rather die knowing I actually tried to stop it than die again the exact same way because we were too careful to risk it."
Passive skill triggered. Inherited Resolve. Significant Ma’at generation from choosing calculated risk over safety.
Something in her expression cracked slightly, the fear giving way, reluctantly, to something that looked more like grim acceptance. "Fine. But I’m closer than last time. Close enough to move before that second attacker gets anywhere near your back."
A Better Position. Sethnakht insists on staying nearer this time. This changes the fight’s dynamics from the first attempt.
They spent the rest of the day preparing, quiet and methodical, Nebamun briefed on his position behind the column, extra guards placed just far enough away to look routine rather than suspicious. Khaemwaset found himself checking the plan over and over in his head, the way he used to check an excavation site’s safety measures before letting a team go in, except this time the stakes weren’t a research grant. They were his own life, and Sethnakht’s, and whatever chance remained to finally end what Meryre had started eight years ago.
He also found time, in the quiet hour before dusk, to seek out Meret.
She was in the servant’s courtyard as usual, and her face went pale the moment she saw him, though he couldn’t understand why until she spoke.
"My prince. You look like you’ve seen a ghost."
Meret’s Instinct. Even without knowing what happened, Meret senses something has changed about you.
"Something like that," he admitted. He hadn’t told her about the rewind, not yet, unsure how to explain something he barely understood himself, but he needed her help with something else entirely. "I need you to stay away from the eastern corridor tonight. And tomorrow, if word comes that anything’s happened near the Regent’s chamber, don’t come looking for me. Promise me that."
Meret’s eyes widened, fear and understanding crossing her face in quick succession. "You’re expecting trouble."
"I’m preventing it," he said. "But I need to know you’re safe while it happens. You’ve already risked more for me than I ever should have asked. Not tonight. Please."
She studied him for a long moment, and then nodded slowly. "I promise, my prince. But when this is over, you’re going to tell me what’s really happening. All of it."
"I will," he said, and meant it, the same promise he’d made Sethnakht the night before, a debt of honesty he intended to pay in full once this was finally, actually finished.
New skill unlocked. Protecting What Matters. Passive. Small permanent Ma’at increase from actively shielding allies from danger they haven’t chosen for themselves.
Night fell, and the corridor outside the Regent’s chamber emptied out exactly as it had the first time, torches burning low, the palace settling into the quiet, exhausted rhythm of a city still recovering from the battle two nights before. Khaemwaset walked it alone, or appeared to, every sense sharpened, Hunted Instinct already humming faintly at the edges of his awareness even before any real threat had shown itself.
STATUS PANEL
Khaemwaset, Level 11
HP: 85/85
MAT: 54
He reached the spot, the exact place where Meryre had stepped out of the shadows the first time, and waited, pulse steady despite everything, because he already knew what was coming and knowing made all the difference in the world.
The shadows shifted.
The Second Time. Meryre has arrived. This time, you are ready.
"Prince Khaemwaset." Meryre’s voice, soft and almost gentle, exactly as Khaemwaset remembered it. "Alone again. Either very brave, or very foolish."
"Funny," Khaemwaset said. "I said almost the exact same thing to you last time."
Meryre went still. Just for a moment, but Khaemwaset caught it, the tiny hitch of confusion in a man who’d expected an entirely different conversation.
"Last time?" Meryre asked carefully.
"You told me my mother begged for her life," Khaemwaset said, letting every ounce of cold fury he’d been carrying since that first, terrible confrontation bleed into his voice now that he finally had the chance to answer it properly. "Then you had a man hiding behind that column put a blade in my side while we talked."
Meryre’s composure finally slipped, just slightly, real alarm flickering behind his calm eyes. "That’s not possible. No one else was told the details of—"
"Nebamun," Khaemwaset called, not taking his eyes off Meryre. "Now."
Spring the Trap. The hidden attacker has been exposed before he could strike. Meryre is alone and unprepared for this outcome.
The second attacker barely had time to react before Nebamun was on him, fast and brutal, the fight ending almost before it began. Meryre’s eyes went wide with something that finally, satisfyingly, looked like genuine fear.
"How," he said, backing away. "How could you possibly know—"
"Does it matter?" Khaemwaset advanced, sword already drawn, every careful restraint from months of hiding his true strength finally, completely gone. "You’re alone this time. No army at your back. No hidden blade you didn’t already lose. Just you, and everything you’ve spent years trying to bury."
Passive skill triggered. Recognized Threat. Meryre’s confidence has collapsed entirely.
Meryre lunged for a hidden dagger at his belt, desperate now, and Khaemwaset was faster, had always been faster since that first strange awakening in a dying body months ago, and this time there was no restraint left to hold back. He disarmed the priest with a single, brutal strike, and had him pinned against the corridor wall before Meryre could recover his breath.
Justice or Vengeance. Meryre is defenseless. This choice will define what kind of man you actually become.
"For my mother," Khaemwaset said, voice shaking now with everything he’d carried for eight years finally reaching its breaking point. "For Nakhti. For every person you silenced to protect your stolen gold."
Meryre’s eyes were wild, desperate. "Kill me, then. Finish it."
Khaemwaset’s blade hovered at the priest’s throat, close enough to end it right there, close enough that some old, furious part of him screamed to do exactly that and be done with it forever.
He thought of Ramose, taking a risk he hadn’t had to take, trusting him with evidence that could have destroyed his own family. He thought of Merneptah, quietly preserving a shrine for two frightened years, hoping someone might finally come looking. He thought of justice, real justice, in front of the whole court, not a quiet death in a shadowed corridor that let this man escape the full weight of what he’d actually done.
"No," Khaemwaset said finally, pulling the blade back. "You don’t get to choose how this ends. The court does. In front of everyone, with every crime laid bare, exactly the way my mother never got the chance to see happen."
Passive skill triggered. Genuine Grief and Inherited Resolve. Massive Ma’at increase from choosing justice over vengeance, even at personal cost.
New level reached. Khaemwaset is now Level 12.
Sethnakht arrived moments later, having heard the commotion from her nearby position, and took one look at the scene, Meryre bound and broken against the wall, Nebamun securing the unconscious second attacker, and let out a breath that sounded like weeks of tension finally releasing all at once.
"You did it," she said quietly.
"We did it," Khaemwaset corrected, and found, standing in that quiet corridor with the man responsible for his mother’s death finally captured instead of victorious, that the exhaustion hitting him now felt different from every other exhaustion he’d carried since waking up in this strange, borrowed life. Lighter, somehow. Like a weight he’d been carrying without fully realizing its size had finally, actually lifted.
New quest complete. The Second Time. Meryre has been captured alive.
The Reckoning. Meryre will face judgment before the full court. His confession may finally implicate everyone who benefited from his corruption, including Amenmose’s household.
"It’s not over," Sethnakht said, watching him carefully. "You know that. This ends the threat, but it doesn’t end the questions. People will want to know how you knew what was coming tonight."
"I know," Khaemwaset said quietly. "I’ll tell you everything. Tonight, if you want. You’ve earned that much and more."
Something soft crossed her exhausted face. "Tonight, then."
They stood together in the quiet corridor, torches burning low around them, and for the first time in three impossible, borrowed months, Khaemwaset let himself feel something close to real, uncomplicated relief.