The Nile ran thick with blood that season—not just the usual crimson of silt and sunset, but the deeper, richer red of human sacrifice. I watched from the reeds, my scaled body submerged save for eyes that burned like amber coals. They called me Sobek. They feared me. They fed me.

Tonight’s offering was different. A girl, no older than twelve summers, trussed like a piglet at the water’s edge. Her eyes were wide with terror, but not the usual kind. There was something else there—defiance, perhaps. Or madness.

“Please,” she whispered as the priests chanted their hollow words. “I don’t want to die.”

I almost laughed. Who does? But death comes for everyone, even gods. I should know—I’ve been devouring the dead and dying since before the pyramids rose.

The priests pushed her in. She sank with a splash, her bound limbs useless against the current. I waited. Patience is a virtue, even for monsters. When she surfaced, gasping, I struck.

My jaws closed around her waist. Bones cracked like dry reeds. Blood filled my mouth, hot and coppery. But as I dragged her under, she spoke again—through a mouthful of blood and broken teeth.

“I see you,” she gurgled. “Behind the scales. Behind the teeth. You’re just a scared old thing, aren’t you? Afraid of the dark.”

I froze. No mortal had ever spoken to me like that. Not in all my millennia of existence.

“What did you say?” I rumbled, the sound vibrating through the water.

She laughed, a wet, choking sound. “You heard me. You’re not a god. You’re just a big, dumb animal with a god complex. And I’m going to haunt you.”

I crushed her skull then, ending her insolence. But as her lifeless body sank into the mud, her words echoed in my mind. Scared old thing. Afraid of the dark.

The next night, I saw her. Standing on the bank where she’d died, transparent in the moonlight. Watching me.

“Still hungry?” she called out. “Or are you afraid I’ll taste better dead than alive?”

I ignored her. Gods don’t converse with ghosts. But I couldn’t ignore the cold that seeped into my scales when she was near. A cold I hadn’t felt since before I was worshiped.

She came every night after that. Sometimes she’d just watch. Other times she’d mock me, her voice carrying across the water like death’s own whisper. I grew restless. I stopped eating the sacrifices. The priests grew worried. The Nile grew stagnant.

One night, I surfaced near the bank where she stood. “What do you want?” I growled.

She smiled, and for a moment, I saw the girl she’d been—before the terror, before the blood. “I want what you took from me. Life. But since that’s not possible, I’ll settle for your fear.”

“I fear nothing,” I lied.

“No?” She leaned closer, her ghostly face inches from mine. “Then why do you sleep in the deepest parts of the river now? Why do you flinch when shadows move? Why do you whimper in your sleep?”

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because she was right. The darkness had become my enemy. The silence, once my comfort, now rang with her laughter.

The priests stopped bringing sacrifices. The people stopped praying. The river stopped giving life. And still, she came.

“You’re fading,” she said one night, her form barely visible in the moonlight. “Without belief, without fear, you’re nothing. Just a big reptile waiting to die.”

I was weaker now. My scales had lost their luster. My eyes no longer burned. The Nile that had sustained me for millennia now rejected me.

“I’ll make you a deal,” I rasped, my voice barely a whisper. “Release me, and I’ll grant you peace.”

She laughed, and the sound was like grinding stones. “Peace? I am peace. The peace of vengeance. The peace of knowing that even gods can be made to suffer.”

She faded then, leaving me alone with my thoughts. And my fear. The darkness pressed in, thicker than water, colder than death. I closed my eyes, but I could still see her—standing watch, waiting.

In the end, I did what any cornered animal does. I fought back. I rose from the Nile for the last time, a shadow of my former self, and crawled onto the bank where she’d died. I lay my head on the stones and waited.

She came as always, but this time, she touched me. Her ghostly fingers sank into my scales like hooks. “Ready to die, god?”

I didn’t answer. Just closed my eyes as the cold consumed me. The last thing I heard was her laughter, echoing across the silent Nile.

The next morning, the villagers found my body—massive, ancient, and very dead. They celebrated. They feasted. They forgot.

But I wasn’t truly gone. I was just… waiting. In the mud. In the dark. And sometimes, when the moon is right and the water runs just so, I can still hear her laughter. And I know that even in death, I’m not free.

The crocodile always gets his due. But sometimes, the due gets you first.