Date: April 12, 2023 (?)
Location: Bodh Gaya dig site... or what's left of it
I… don't remember writing Entry #27.
I found it open. Ink dried in jagged lines like veins.
It wasn't in my handwriting.
The signature at the end read "Advait Sen."
But I don't know who that is anymore.
I only know I'm writing this, because if I don't—
the diary starts to whisper.
It doesn't want silence.
It feeds on confession.
And now it's hungry again.
---
This morning—I think it was morning—what's left of us tried the final sealing.
We chanted the reversed mantras.
We reassembled the buried scripts, rewritten in blood on lotus bark and burnt sandalwood.
We traced the sigil of suppression in salt, bone dust, and saffron.
> It worked. For twenty-three minutes.
We heard nothing.
No chanting.
No whispers.
No movement from the sealed chamber Theta.
Then—the blood came back.
From the stone.
Flowing upward.
---
Shalini was first. She was drawing protection symbols on the tents.
She dropped her chalk.
Blinked twice.
And began chanting. Not Sanskrit. Not Tibetan. Not Pali.
It was something older.
Older than language.
Her jaw unhinged like a predator, eyes rolled back, and she carved the Spiral of Emergence into her own chest with a spoon.
She laughed while dying.
---
Riku—the Japanese intern who first copied the forbidden script—tried to stop her.
He couldn't.
He was next.
A flash of wind. The tents blew inside out.
His body split vertically, down the center, like a scroll unrolling.
His last words were, "He promised me clarity."
---
Reader—you're still here, aren't you?
Why?
You should've stopped.
Didn't you feel the cold at your back in Entry #27?
You know this isn't fiction anymore.
You're part of it now.
Each word you read feeds the script.
Bhantaragya lives in retelling.
The monks of the 4th century sealed him by erasing his story.
You're doing the opposite.
---
We burned everything we could.
Bags of relics.
Charcoal scribes.
Clay tablets engraved with his chants.
The fire screamed.
It screamed in our voices.
And we still hear it.
Inside our ears.
---
The diary is now… growing.
The leather pulses.
Last night, it opened by itself.
Wrote four words in crimson ink:
> "You brought them here."
---
We tried calling for help.
Nothing.
No signal.
The radios hum.
Sat phones don't connect.
And then we realized—we never tried before this.
No one reached out in weeks.
No one thought to.
The isolation felt natural.
How did he do this?
---
I now believe Bhantaragya reconstructed Nirvana—but wrong.
He built it not to escape suffering, but to trap it.
To contain souls.
To hold pain in a constant loop.
That's what his false Nirvana is:
A feeding loop.
A realm of eternal awareness where terror never ends, only repeats, always awake.
And we're opening it.
---
> 🔸 Interactive Fragment 3:
(Only for those who dare)
Draw a spiral.
Place your hand at its center.
Close your eyes.
If you feel warmth or pressure...
Stop.
It means he sees you.
It means you have begun the Entry.
---
The final sealing script was hidden deep in the southern trench, behind bones too ancient for carbon dating.
Wrapped in human skin.
Written in negative Sanskrit. The phonetics erased instead of spoken.
We've tried redacting it. It's working. We think.
But the cost?
We're dying.
---
There were 20 of us.
Then 11.
Then 3.
Now only me and the diary.
And honestly…
I'm not even sure about me anymore.
Last night, I dreamed of Bhantaragya.
He sat on a lotus.
Cloaked in ash and bone, a thousand mouths stitched shut.
He didn't speak.
He pointed at you.
Not me.
You.
---
If you're reading this and your lights flicker...
Don't look behind you.
Not yet.
If you see a spiral drawn somewhere you don't remember drawing it—
Don't touch it.
Not again.
If you hear your name whispered from inside your mirror—
Don't answer.
That's how he pulls you.
---
We've sealed almost everything.
We've buried what can be buried.
Burned what can be burned.
Even our own names.
But still, he chants.
Still… he waits.
And the diary?
The diary writes back now.
---
[End of Entry #28]
(Scribbled beside the signature: a child's drawing of a spiral with a single word written in blood ink.)
> "Almost."