It feels like a place that should not exist under any sky meant for the living.
The mesa rises first. Not like a hill, but like a judgment. Sheer walls plunge down into a maze of canyonlands, carved by time into vast, broken chasms. The land below is sun-scorched and endless, but up here the air feels… wrong. Thinner, colder, as if something has stolen the warmth from the world.
At the summit sits the temple.
The pyramid is enormous, but not in the way of proud monuments. It feels older than intention, as if it was not built so much as placed. Its surface is black, not the warm black of basalt but something deeper, glass-like, swallowing light rather than reflecting it. Obsidian, perhaps. Or something that only pretends to be stone.
No weathering marks it. No erosion softens its edges. The desert has devoured everything else, but this structure remains untouched, as if the wind itself avoids it.
And at its peak—
There is no capstone.
Instead, a black sun burns.
It does not illuminate. It does not warm. It radiates a kind of inverted light, casting shadows that stretch in unnatural directions, pooling like liquid around the base of the pyramid. The sky around it seems dimmed, as though the sun above has been challenged and is losing.
Around the pyramid, the greater temple complex sprawls across the mesa: colossal pylons, shattered courtyards, and immense statues of Anubis standing in silent ranks. Their jackal heads gaze outward over the canyonlands, not welcoming, not warning—simply watching.
Nothing moves.