The Maahes who carved in stone. Kheti-Wer was a mason before he was a Maahes, a quarryman's son who had learned to cut hard stone, and he saw what no one before him had: that the Pride's work lasted only as long as its watchers did. A gate could be held for a night. A mark in stone would be there in the morning.
At Abydos, where the first kings were being buried, he carved the first ward-marks: small, deep glyphs cut at thresholds, doorways and the mouths of tombs. They did not stop the Children of Apep. What they did was make them hesitate, for the length of a breath, at the edge of the mark. A breath is not much. It was enough to give a watcher time to act.
He spent the rest of his 33 years teaching a school of mason-watchers who could cut the marks, and the marks spread along the river. Every ward-mark in every Pride house in every age since descends from his.
What he left behind: the ward-marks, and the first school of the Pride.
