Chapter 6 The Chamber Below

We didn't fall far-ten, maybe twelve feet-but we landed hard. The floor beneath us had dropped like a trapdoor, revealing a second chamber, smooth-walled and cold as stone coffins. The air was damp now. Ancient. The kind of air that hadn't moved in centuries.

Lights flickered above us-pale blue veins of light running through the walls like glowing roots. They pulsed gently, in rhythm with the thrumming I had first felt on the ridge. A heartbeat beneath the world.

Will coughed. "Everyone okay?"

"Bruised," Derek said, standing and helping Samir up. "But alive."

I stood last, brushing dust from my jacket. The broken compass lay in shards at my feet.

Samir looked around, eyes wide. "This isn't a cave. This was built-cut by tools. Precision we don't even see in modern architecture."

He was right. The walls curved too perfectly. Seamless stone. No tool marks. And the ceiling-if you could call it that-was etched with an enormous mural: a star field unlike any I'd seen before, constellations that didn't match any known sky.

"They weren't from here," Will whispered.

At the far end of the room stood a single door. Unlike the one above, this one bore no symbols-just smooth, black stone.

Derek approached and ran a hand along its surface. "Feels... warm."

Then he recoiled. "It's breathing."

We watched. And it was.

The stone flexed, slowly. As if it were alive, or remembering how to be.

Then the door opened-without sound, without effort.

Beyond it, a narrow corridor, lit by that same soft glow. And in the distance, something shimmered.

We followed.

The corridor led to a chamber far larger than the last, dome-shaped and ringed with arches. At its center floated a structure unlike anything I'd ever seen-an orb of suspended crystal, larger than a man, hovering in midair.

Inside it, a faint light pulsed-soft, slow, like it was waiting.

Samir approached first. "It's a containment field," he whispered. "Whatever this is... it's being held here."

I stepped forward, and the light within flickered-then brightened. It was reacting to me.

The air shifted. A low hum filled the chamber.

Then a voice-not heard, but felt-slid through my mind.

"Blood returns. The gate reopens."

I stumbled back, gasping. "Did you hear that?"

Derek and Will shook their heads.

Samir looked pale. "No. But something just scanned the room. Every particle of it."

I looked up. The orb now pulsed red.

That's when I saw it-an object, barely visible, embedded in the crystal: a fragment of a journal. Its leather cover was marked with initials I knew too well.

C.E.G.

My grandfather had been here.

And he'd left something behind.