Date: April 8, 2023
Location: Excavation Camp - Beneath Chamber Theta
There was blood on the sealing circle before we began.
We don't know whose.
We swept the chamber, took roll, counted everyone twice. No one is missing.
But there it was—three thick smears, like a hand had been dragged across the stone, fingers trembling, trying to claw something back. Or out.
We went forward anyway.
We couldn't afford to wait. The last entry I wrote—if it was even mine—was still smudged when I woke. The diary had more lines in it than I remembered. Words scratched at the margins like graffiti in another hand. A script I didn't write. One line repeated in a charcoal-black script across four pages:
"You are the echo, not the voice."
I've locked the diary in a sealed box now. I'll transcribe the entries elsewhere, but I won't let it rest beside me anymore.
---
The sealing attempt began at dusk.
Liang led the chant. The rest of us formed the mirror glyph around the relics—a rusted amulet, a cracked bowl with ash still inside, what appeared to be a ceremonial horn carved from human bone. We poured salt into the glyphs, traced the Pali syllables with consecrated ash from the Bodhi tree perimeter.
We were desperate.
And Bhantaragya responded.
The moment the final word was spoken, the horn shrieked. No one touched it. No one blew it. But it shrieked—long, high-pitched, as if a dying animal had been trapped in its hollow spine.
The ground cracked. Not much—just enough that the circle bled red from the soil itself.
Then came the laughter.
Not a human voice. Not even animal. Something else. It poured from the walls, from the stone, from our own mouths. I watched Arjun retch black liquid. Saw Priya fall to her knees and chant in a voice that wasn't hers. Her eyes rolled back, her hands twisted unnaturally as she screamed:
"THE UNENLIGHTENED WILL BURN BRIGHTEST."
We broke the circle and ran. The glyphs ignited, all by themselves—like the chamber had swallowed the ritual and was spitting it back.
Bhantaragya's seal was not weakened.
It was aware.
---
We buried what we could.
Raj, Kavita (yes—alive Kavita), and the surviving team from the southern dig helped carry the remaining relics out and bury them beneath a newly drawn symbol we found on the underside of a broken mural tile: a spiral inside a fractured eye. It's not found in any Buddhist scripture I know. And yet... it burned my hand when I touched it.
We buried three of the relics there, salted the ground, and chanted until sunrise.
There were fewer whispers last night. The diary remained blank. The screaming stopped—for now.
But we're fraying. Splintering.
---
Today we found Saito's notebook.
It wasn't among his things earlier.
But this morning, it lay open in the mess hall. On the floor. The pages soaked, warped. The last thing he wrote:
"Bhantaragya promised freedom from rebirth. Not peace. He lied."
"He wants the body, not the soul. He wants form. He wants shape again."
---
We don't know how many more we'll lose.
The mirror glyphs might be the key—but something is missing.
The sealing must be performed with something we've not yet found. Something older. Maybe something Bhantaragya once feared.
We're diving into the oldest texts tomorrow. There's mention of a black tongue, a rite of dismemberment, and a "Monastic Betrayer" who turned against Bhantaragya at the end. That may be our only lead.
The soil is breathing beneath us.
If you're reading this…
Don't answer the whispers
.
Don't follow the sound of your name.
They're not calling you. They're pulling you.