Ascension

In honour of the great pharaoh Khufu, work began on a pyramid far more magnificent than any other. It would be constructed in the heart of Giza at 280 cubits high, more than twice anything humanity had ever built. It was thought that this unprecedented monument would provide the great Khufu safe passage to the heavens.

On the day of the rapture, Khety, who was the first to ascend, was a member of one of the ramp construction teams. For every layer of stones placed, Khety and his team would extend the ramp to the top of that layer, providing a gradual route for transporting stones to the top.

He placed his ladder against a stone of the last layer ever laid on the incomplete pyramid and climbed to the top. Before he was able to place his foot on top of the stone, Khety began slowly floating upwards. Confused and panicked, he instinctively gripped his ladder, which accompanied him on his journey into the sky. His fellow builders watched in awe as he slowly drifted into the distance.

A second worker, having just witnessed the miracle, climbed to the top of the very same stone and began to ascend also. Laughing, cheering and looking up to the burning hot sun, more and more would climb to that top layer - the height finally discovered to be the gateway to the heavens.

After only a few hours, the spectacle of the masses visiting the gods could be seen from the greatest reaches. The entire population of Giza and surrounding settlements scaled the pyramid and began crushing one another as they climbed toward the top. The laughing and cheering slowly turned to crying and screaming. Thousands fell, fought, suffocated and were crushed in their desperation to ascend. To get to the top became a trial of climbing and crawling through the flesh of those who had failed. In the desperation to survive the climb, any movement upwards was punished by the clambering clutches of those who begged to be pulled from their suffocating and bloody grave.

Violently twisting and flickering like a flame towering high above the pyramid, fortunate souls would sometimes break off and make their way up to the skies, but their fortune would soon run out when they discovered that it was not heaven that awaited them, but a lack of oxygen and the relentless heat of the sun.