First Floor: Where Silence Learns to Breathe
The moment the last rope was secured and the final soldier stepped down from the fissure, the jungle above vanished.
Not gradually.
Not gently.
It was as if the world had closed its mouth.
The chamber swallowed them whole.
Their lamps struggled at first, beams slicing through thick darkness and revealing walls that were not walls at all—but crafted surfaces. Smooth in some places, jagged in others, the stone bore signs of deliberate shaping. Lines ran across it in patterns too precise to be natural, yet too organic to be human.
"Jesus…" one of the miners whispered.
"This isn't erosion."
Nicolas didn't answer. He was staring at the floor.
It was clean.
No rubble.
No collapsed debris.
No signs of decay.
As if someone had swept it… recently.
"Everyone halt," Nicolas ordered quietly.
Boots froze. Weapons rose a fraction higher.
Jhon crouched, running his gloved fingers along a faint groove etched into the ground. It curved, intersected, and vanished beneath the stone like veins beneath skin.
"This is a pathway," he said. "Or… it was. Something moved here. A lot."
A soldier snorted nervously. "You saying something lives down here?"
Jhon didn't look up. "I'm saying something lived here."
The air felt wrong.
Not stale—preserved.
Cold, but not dead.
Every breath carried a metallic tang, sharp enough to sting the back of the throat. The medics exchanged glances, checking oxygen meters, heart-rate monitors.
Everything read normal.
That somehow made it worse.
They advanced in formation, lamps sweeping across the chamber. The ceiling arched high above them, disappearing into shadow. Whatever had built this place had not been constrained by human proportions.
"These dimensions…" one of the archaeologists murmured. "This wasn't made for us."
As if answering him, the wall ahead revealed carvings.
Not crude.
Not primitive.
They were precise.
Humanoid figures—tall, broad,
unmistakably simian—were etched into the stone. They stood upright, adorned with armor that hugged massive frames, wielding weapons that looked less forged and more grown. Spears with serrated edges. Blades curved like claws. Shields layered like overlapping bone.
Above them, smaller figures knelt.
Not worship.
Submission.
Nicolas felt a chill crawl up his spine. "Hierarchy," he muttered. "This wasn't a tribe. This was a civilization."
"And a militarized one," a soldier added, pointing to a relief showing dozens—no, hundreds—of figures moving in formation. Flanking maneuvers. Encirclements.
Ambushes carved into stone with terrifying clarity.
"Gorilla warfare," Jhon said without thinking.
The word hung in the air.
They moved deeper.
That's when the first trap activated.
It wasn't dramatic.
No explosions. No darts.
The floor simply… shifted.
A soft click echoed, followed by a low grinding sound. Nicolas barely had time to shout before the stone beneath two soldiers collapsed inward, swallowing them up.
Their screams lasted less than three seconds.
A wet crunch followed.
Silence returned.
Weapons snapped up. Heartbeats thundered in ears. The medics rushed forward but stopped short at the edge of the newly formed pit. Below, jagged stone spikes glistened with blood far too fresh for a structure supposedly untouched for millennia.
"This place resets," one miner said shakily.
"Like it's… maintained."
No one corrected him.
They bypassed the pit carefully, moving slower now, fear beginning to eclipse curiosity. That was when they heard it.
A hiss.
Not singular.
Multiple.
From the walls.
Tiny slits opened in the stone, almost invisible until they moved. Venomous creatures poured out—centipede-like things with translucent bodies, their insides glowing faintly silver. They moved fast. Too fast.
"Contact!" a soldier yelled.
Gunfire erupted, echoing violently through the chamber. Bullets tore through the creatures, splattering ichor that hissed as it hit the stone. But for every one that fell, two more emerged.
"Fall back! Form a perimeter!" Nicolas commanded.
One of the medics screamed as a creature leapt, latching onto his arm. The venom acted instantly. Veins blackened. Flesh stiffened
.
Within seconds, he stopped moving.
The creatures retreated just as suddenly as they had appeared, vanishing back into the walls.
The silence afterward was worse than the attack.
Four dead.
Less than twenty minutes inside.
Nicolas wiped blood from his face and looked ahead.
A massive doorway loomed at the far end of the chamber.
Not sealed.
Waiting.
Inscribed above it was a symbol unlike the others.
A crown.
Simple.
Heavy.
Absolute.
Jhon swallowed hard. "Captain… this isn't a tomb."
Nicolas already knew.
"This is a threshold."
They crossed it.
The second chamber was smaller—but denser. The walls pulsed faintly, veins of the same strange silver substance embedded within the stone. Pools of it gathered along the floor like liquid mirrors, perfectly still.
The device Jhon carried screamed to life again—then shattered in his hands.
"Life-signs detected," he whispered. "Too many. But… dormant."
Nicolas felt it then.
A pressure.
Not physical.
Something ancient brushed against his awareness, fleeting and curious, like a predator turning its head in sleep.
Far below them—five floors down—roots tightened imperceptibly around a golden coffin.
And for the first time in an age measured not in years but in eras, something within stirred
Not awake.
Not yet.
But aware.
The intrusion had been noticed.
And the structure—his structure—had begun to count the blood.
To be continued.