The candle’s burning bright and high, yet the night stretches on and on, unbroken and endless in its persistence. Down here, where the earth swallows light, time itself feels unmoored. Our last days in the shafts are upon us, and I know we are close. Too close. I can feel it, sense it, dread it. Why? I should be excited.
The air shifts, not with the breath of the deep, but with something else. Gusting winds wail through the cracks like an unseen storm, yet the flame before me does not so much as flicker. It stands frozen, a beacon trapped in time, unshaken by the howling void. A stillness takes hold, sinking into my bones, a silence so heavy it drowns even my heartbeat.
They have come.
The shadows lengthen, stretching beyond their rightful reach, twisting in ways they should not. The stone walls groan as if awakening from an ancient slumber. The ground trembles beneath our feet, not with the weight of the earth, but with something stirring far, too far below.
We should turn back. We should run. But we don’t.
The hollow world calls us, and like fools, we listen.
Beware all who follow. Beware the dark that does not move. Beware the stillness where no stillness should be. Beware the chasms of Zion.
From “The Lost Scrolls of Zion”
Translated by Jira Nicola Derrig, Agartha Nova, 20th Túsinel, 132 CE
