The Empire of Ozymandias was significantly less impressive than one may think. Though a large statue of him does exist within the Saharan Desert—far from any recognizable capital—the “empire” that surrounded him was strangely unaccounted for. Whispered margins claim he was among the first
MAGI: a ledger of names written in ash, practicing rites that bent attention like wire. The tale persists: that his court was a caged space, a stage built to hold inmates with no crimes and wardens with no faces; that the lattice around his likeness sang with a
psychotronic hum no wind could explain.
Some insist the statue isn’t a monument at all but an antenna aimed at nothing. Others swear the sand remembers footsteps that never belonged to any human census. Either way, the shape remains; and where the shape remains, the room notices you noticing it.