Chapter 1 - The Arrival

  The road to the temple was little more than a path carved through a roots, winding deep into the heart of the ju wasn’t built for fort. The truck’s suspension groaned as it hit another dip, rattling the equipment secured in the back.

  Elian sat he window, watg the thick jungle blur past. The trees loomed over the path, their shadows shifting like sileinels. He had taken simir routes before, through ruins swallowed by time, but this time was different. The air was thicker. Charged. The weight of something unseen pressed against him, lingering at the edges of his awareness.

  He g the rest of the team—stists, military personnel, men and women who had bee not for faith, but for answers. Most of them were silent, absorbed in their own thoughts. A few soldiers murmured among themselves, cheg their ons, while the research team double-checked their instruments. The temple they were heading toward had been iigated before. The ruins held nothing of immediate value—at least, not in the way govers or historians defi. What made this time different was the signal.

  The Hollow Signal.

  No one knew what it meahat was why they were here.

  A voice crackled through his radio. “ETA five minutes.”

  He exhaled. Five mio history.

  Wherucks finally rolled to a stop, the team moved with methodical precision, unloading equipment, sing the area, seg their perimeter. Elian stepped out, adjusting his pack as he took in the sight before him.

  The temple was massive, its stoerior half-swallowed by creeping vines and twisted roots. A relic of something a, something fotten. Its presence felt heavy, as if it had been waiting. The carved stone bore deep grooves, patterns of symbols that had been eroded by time but still pulsed with significe. The signal had drawn them here, but it was not the structure itself that dematention—it was what y beh it.

  Elian pulled out his handheld ser. Numbers flickered across the s, erratic, pulsing. It had been growing in iy over the st few weeks, but now it was reag a peak. The temple acted as a duit for something deeper, something buried.

  Dr. Rivera, one of the lead researchers, approached him, her face tehe readings are unstable,” she said, eyes fixed on her own device. “We’ve never seen fluctuations like this before.”

  Elian nodded, already half-lost in thought. “We should move fast.”

  The dest into the temple’s inner chambers was slow and deliberate. Every step sent dust spiraling into the dim light of their fshlights. The deeper they went, the more the silehied. The air wasn’t just stagnant—it carried weight, as if the walls themselves had been holding their breath for turies.

  “Feels off,” one of the soldiers muttered behind Elian.

  “It’s an old ruin. Of course it feels off,” another replied.

  Elian ighem. He focused on the architecture, the carvings along the stone. Some were familiar—symbols resembling those found in Mayan ruins—but others were different. More primal. Older.

  The signal was stronger now, threading through the air like an unseen current.

  Then, a sound—soft, distant, like a pulse reverberating through the walls.

  A low hum filled the space, vibrating through their bones.

  Elian’s breath caught in his throat.

  The moment they stepped into the main chamber, all the readings spiked.

  The signal surged.

  The lights on their equipment flickered.

  And then, a whisper—not in sound, but in thought.

  You are not alone.

  A sudden pressure built in Elian’s skull, not painful, but present, like something brushing against the edges of his mind. He staggered slightly, blinking hard.

  “Did you hear that?” someone asked.

  Dr. Rivera frowned. “Hear what?”

  Elian wasn’t sure how to answer.

  Something had awakened.

  And it had noticed them.