Title: Blood of AmunRelease Date: Late 2026
When the Chosen One dies, she's going to step up.
Hatshepsut has spent her life preparing for one future: standing beside Tuthmose when he becomes pharaoh. He is destined to lead Egypt into a new golden age. Her role is simple — marry him, support him, and help secure his reign.
But when Tuthmose dies unexpectedly, everything changes.
His only heir is an infant. The court is divided. The priests want control. And Egypt needs someone capable of holding the country together now, not years from now.
So Hatshepsut does the unthinkable: she takes the throne herself.
To rule as pharaoh, she must outmanoeuvre ambitious nobles, survive the politics of the royal court, and convince the Two Lands that a woman can wear the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. But the more she consolidates her power, the clearer it becomes that the prophecies surrounding Tuthmose may not have been true after all.
Egypt was promised a saviour.
It just wasn’t the one anyone expected.
She had been very young when she first realised she was different to other children. She tried to tell them of the things she saw, flickering images that came to her in the dead of night. Images that were sometimes so faint, she could barely make them out. Other times, they were strong and insistent, as if they knew they were destined to come to pass. With time, she learned the fainter the image, the greater the possibility it might change.
That wasn’t to say the images which came to her forcefully and demanding couldn’t also change — the gods, it seemed, cared little for fixing the fate of an insignificant mortal — only that it took more effort to change them. Those faintest of images that blinked in and out of her sight sometimes seemed little more than suggestion. The possibility of what might be or could be, not necessarily what should be, and they were all too willing to be prodded in another direction.
“Demon,” the other children would cry, pointing at her as they ran away. “Lover of Isfet.”
“Hush, child,” her mother would say when the girl sat in her lap and sobbed. “You are more than they will ever be. In a different time, you might even have been a goddess.”
“But why won’t they listen to me?” the girl wailed. “I could help them.”
“They fear what they do not understand,” her mother said. “What do you care for them anyway? They shun you and mock you. You owe them nothing.”
“But I could help them,” was all she could say. “I could change their lives.”
“They do not deserve to have their lives changed. If they do not recognise what you are, then leave them to their fate. You, my dear child, will live to be a very old woman, and there will be folk who do listen to you. Important folk. They are the ones who will matter. You will guide them and mould them. Change their lives in ways they will never understand. You only need to wait for those folk to find you.”
“I don’t want to wait,” she said, sobbing. “I cannot bear to know what will happen and not be able to help.”
“That is your burden, my dear,” her mother said, rubbing the girl’s back as she cried. Her hand was warm and it soothed the girl even when she didn’t want it to. “You must find a way to make your peace with it. Those who will not listen do not deserve to benefit from your gift.”
“Nobody will ever listen to me.” Suddenly resigned to her fate, the girl sat up and dried her tears with the hem of her skirt. “I will ignore the visions. Maybe they will go away if I pay them no heed.”
“The day will come, my dear, and perhaps sooner than you think, when someone will listen to you. She will be important, but without your guidance, she will have no possibility of becoming what she might be.”
“How do you know?” the girl asked. “How could you possibly know such a thing?”
But her mother merely pursed her lips and refused to answer. It was not until many years later that the girl realised her mother must have seen images of her own.