“Ouch!” I yelped, pulling my hand back. The metal object, once cool in the three-thousand-year old darkness, glowed a deep red. The hot light revealed the shape of an ominous eye. Soon, the floor, ceiling, and all four walls shone as the same eyes lit up one by one, so much that the room was no longer pitch-black. Grains of sand scattered on the tomb floor shimmered like crushed rubies, and veins of light sprawled across the limestone’s surface. The stale air radiated with evil magic as a low rumble, growing more intense each second, knocked me to my knees. 

As soon as all seemed to be lost, I remembered that I still had my rope. I rushed back to the center of the room and began pulling myself up. Thankfully, the rope held as I neared the trap door—but it wouldn’t open. No matter how hard I tried, it remained wedged between the wooden plank and stone frame. Then, after the earthquake intensified, the latch broke loose and the door swung out. I continued to hoist myself up and could even see the Egyptian night sky. Had I really been down there that long? As my fingers just touched the edge, however, the rope snapped and I slipped through the doorway. With only a mound of sand to break the impact, I fell about ten feet until I hit the hard ground. The last thing I saw until I woke up was the tomb swallowed in an impenetrable red smoke. 

The smooth bubbling of a waterfall greeted me as I returned to consciousness. I lay on a stone island in a high-ceilinged, well-lit room flooded with emerald-green water. The only evidence of my earlier whereabouts was that the hieroglyphs on the floor were the exact same.