Date: April 10, 2023
Location: Unknown Sector, Chamber Theta Ruins
There were three of us left.
I blinked this morning and saw only one shadow beside mine.
I called Lusi.
She didn't answer.
Her notebook is still here—
Circles.
Circles.
Circles.
She scratched until the paper bled.
Until the floor bled.
---
Reader, are you still there?
I need you.
I'm not sure where I am anymore.
The door I walked through isn't here anymore.
The spiral is still faint under my nails.
I try to sleep, but I wake up with dust in my mouth and prayers carved into my thigh.
I didn't do that.
I DIDN'T DO THAT.
---
I saw Arjun an hour ago.
He was sitting backwards, his spine bent like a snapped reed, whispering to the walls.
He told me:
> "The diary's still writing."
What diary?
This one ?
I'm writing this. Aren't I?
---
STOP READING IF YOU'RE ALONE.
If you're alone right now, close this.
Walk away.
Come back with someone beside you.
If the ink moves, don't blink.
If you hear chanting, cover the page in ash.
If blood begins to pool from the margins, tear the entry out and burn it.
And if the spiral starts to spin on its own—
Seal the room.
Run.
---
We buried Bhantaragya.
We sealed the glyphs.
We used the broken chants from the monk's betrayal.
We buried the relics so deep they turned warm in the ground.
But something… remains.
The feeling hasn't left.
This morning, I woke with the word carved into the ceiling above my cot:
> "Open."
Was that… my handwriting?
No.
No, the letters were old. Ancient script. Etched in rust.
Exactly like the scribe walls we found near Pit Delta.
But we never opened Pit Delta.
Did we?
---
I tried to seal this diary last night.
Wrapped it in cloth soaked with ghee and camphor.
Chanted the name of every god I could remember.
Bound it with salt lines.
This morning, it was open on my chest.
Entry #1 was rewritten.
Not in my hand.
Not in any human hand.
It now starts with:
> "He speaks through the faithful. And the faithful always forget."
---
Lu is gone.
Arjun hums to the shadows.
I write and write and write, but my fingers keep cramping.
And when I stop writing… it doesn't.
---
I just want to go home.
I miss Delhi.
I miss sunlight.
I miss walking without the soil squelching like skin.
Reader—whoever you are—
If this is the last you hear from Advait Sen…
Don't come for us.
Don't send a retrieval team.
Don't investigate the spirals.
Let the cursed die.
I'm sealing this diary now.
Again.
One more time.
I don't know if it'll stay sealed.
But if it doesn't…
If you ever find it open again—
Don't read the next entry
.
Don't read Entry #27.
---
[End of Entry #26]
(A single word appears faintly below the signature. Not written in Advait's hand.)
> Come.
---