I was only sixteen when I was chosen—plucked from my village by a royal official who said my hands were made for hieroglyphs, not harvest. I’d always loved copying the stories my grandfather etched into broken pottery shards. But this? This was the court of Pharaoh Setekh-Hemra himself. One mistake could mean exile. Or worse.

At first, I kept my head down. I copied religious texts, tallied grain, recorded temple offerings. But everything changed the day High Priest Mefari summoned me to transcribe a sealed scroll.

It was in a dialect I wasn’t supposed to understand. But I did. My father—before he vanished—had taught me the language of the border tribes. The scroll? It wasn’t about offerings or rituals. It was a trade ledger. Gold, livestock… and something called “Project Ka-Ba.” Human names were listed. Hundreds. With marks beside them.

I wasn’t stupid. These weren’t traders. These were people. Missing ones.

I tried to pretend I hadn’t understood, but Mefari watched me with those eyes—sharp like obsidian. He smiled when I handed back the scroll, like he knew I knew. After that, nothing was the same. I stopped sleeping. I saw guards posted outside my scriptorium at night. The old scribe I trained under vanished without a word.

Then last week, I received a message etched into a palm-leaf scrap:
“Your father died for speaking. Will you?”

Now I sit with my reed pen in hand, pretending to copy yesterday’s grain totals, but instead I write this—my secret account.

Because I have a choice. Stay silent and survive. Or expose what Pharaoh is doing beneath the Valley of Kings.

And I think… I’m done being afraid.

I kept that message hidden under a loose stone beneath my desk. Every day, I’d check it was still there, just to remind myself what was at stake. I started watching the court more carefully—what others said, what they didn’t. I noticed how certain names were never mentioned again. Not because they died. But because they were erased.

There was one other person who might understand. Her name was Neferi—she worked in the palace archives. She was older than me, maybe twenty-three, quiet, always carrying a folded linen bag of ink and reed brushes. I’d caught her once looking too long at one of the scrolls from Mefari’s chamber. She didn’t flinch when she saw me watching.

So one evening, after most of the scribes had gone and the air was thick with the smell of ink and candle wax, I left a small scrap inside her ink bag. It simply read: “Ka-Ba. You’ve seen it too. Meet me at the north wall after moonrise.”

I didn’t know if she’d come. But she did.

She wore a dark cloak and kept her face hidden. When I said my name, she nodded once and whispered, “You know what they’re building?”

I told her I didn’t. Not fully.

She explained it like she’d been carrying it for years. There was a tunnel beneath the Valley, not just for tombs but for something else. Not a burial place, but a prison. One that Pharaoh called “Eternal Service.” People who spoke out, people from the lower provinces, even former advisors—they were being sent there. Not to die. To work. Forever. Hidden.

“They erase your name from every tablet,” Neferi said. “As if you never existed. That’s worse than death, in our culture.”

She told me she had a brother who vanished after he questioned a shipment of cedar wood that never arrived. His name was on one of the Ka-Ba lists.

That’s when we made a plan.

It wasn’t grand or clever. We were just two scribes. But we had access to records. And we had pens.

We started copying names.

Every night, we’d take one scroll from the forbidden chamber, copy it onto our own clay tablets, and bury them under a ruined granary near the river. We used river mud and crushed brick to disguise the markings. We must have hidden over two dozen by the end of that month.

But plans like ours don’t stay secret forever.

I came into the scriptorium one morning and saw Neferi’s ink bag still on her desk. That never happened. She never left it. Something in my chest turned cold.

By noon, the guards were in our quarters. Searching. I stayed calm. Smiled. Said I didn’t know where she’d gone.

That night, I didn’t sleep.

Then two days later, a scroll arrived in my chamber. It was sealed with the royal stamp. I stared at it for what felt like hours before I opened it.

It said:
“Loyal scribes do not ask questions. Loyal scribes are rewarded.”
There was a gold ring inside the wrapper. And a token allowing me access to the Pharaoh’s personal library.

It was a warning. But it was also a test.

I could choose now. Accept the gift, forget Neferi, play the game. Or I could risk everything.

I still don’t know why I did what I did next.

Maybe it was the look in Mefari’s eyes that day. Maybe it was my father’s name etched into the Ka-Ba scroll I found the next week. But I stopped being afraid.

I used the library token. I acted like I’d accepted the “reward.” I told them I wanted to prove myself.

And they let me in.

The Pharaoh’s library wasn’t just books. It held maps, bloodline records, and a hidden chamber with scrolls bound in silver wire. That’s where I found the master list.

It had everything—dates, reasons, locations. Even the architects building the underground prison. I memorized as much as I could. I couldn’t take it. But I didn’t need to.

I just needed to find someone outside the palace who would believe me.

That’s when fate gave me the twist I didn’t expect.

As I was walking near the workers’ district one morning, pretending to be lost, a man selling dried dates looked at me funny. Then he said something in the border dialect—just one word.

“Liram.”

My father’s name.

I froze.

He leaned closer and whispered, “Your eyes are like his. He taught me the old dialect. He taught many of us. Before they took him.”

I couldn’t speak. I just stared at him.

His name was Saben. And he wasn’t just a date-seller. He was part of a quiet group—former traders, farmers, some soldiers—who had all lost someone to “Project Ka-Ba.” They weren’t fighters. But they listened.

When I told them what I’d found, they didn’t doubt me. One of them even remembered Neferi’s brother.

And they had a plan of their own.

It wasn’t violence. It was truth.

They had connections to temple speakers. Ones who still believed in justice. Ones who could smuggle out clay tablets to smaller villages and trading posts.

So that’s what we did.

I copied a new list—one I wrote from memory, over several weeks. I included names, dates, and places. I hid it inside a tablet that looked like a simple prayer offering. And they took it. Village by village, the truth spread like a slow-burning fire.

Pharaoh Setekh-Hemra had ruled without fear for decades. But whispers started. People began to ask questions again. Quiet ones. Careful ones. But questions all the same.

Then, one day, news arrived at the palace gates.

A construction site outside the Valley had been raided. The workers had vanished. And symbols painted in red clay had been left on the walls: Ka-Ba Is Not Forgotten.

That same week, Mefari fell ill. Or so the officials said.

He never returned.

The Pharaoh ordered a full investigation. But it was too late.

The silence had broken.

I left the palace not long after. Quietly. No ceremony. No punishment. Just… gone.

I settled in a fishing village near the western delta, where no one asked questions. I still write. I still remember.

And one day, a traveler brought me a tablet from the outer province. It was carved with the old dialect. A simple message:

“She lives. Hidden. Grateful.”

Neferi.

She had survived. Somehow.

I sat by the river for a long time that day, watching the current take dried papyrus down toward the sea. And I thought about how power can try to erase you, to silence you—but truth finds ways to surface.

It doesn’t always happen fast. But it happens.

I don’t tell people my real name anymore. It’s better that way. But I’ve taught three children in this village to read. And every now and then, I give them old clay tablets and let them copy names.

Not prayers. Not kings.

Just names of people who were supposed to be forgotten.

Because remembering… is its own kind of justice.

And I’ve learned that no matter how big the walls, or how loud the fear, the smallest act of truth has power. Even if it starts with nothing more than a reed pen and a hidden message.

If this story meant something to you—share it. Pass it on. Let others know that silence isn’t the end. And sometimes, the quietest voices echo the loudest.