Voyager Of Ages

Chapter 6: Chapter 6: Whispers Beneath the Stone



The dawn came quietly. A pale orange hue stretched across the desert sky as Ethan stepped out of Sahure's tent, his boots crunching softly against the sand. The air was cooler in these early hours, a small mercy before the sun turned the ground into a furnace.

He wandered, not far, just beyond the village to the edge of the construction zone. The base of the pyramid loomed above him like a frozen wave, immense and impossible. The low rumble of labor had not yet begun—most workers were still gathered in prayer or rest. For a fleeting moment, the silence made time feel frozen.

But Ethan knew better. Time was never still. It moved beneath the surface, just as water does beneath ice.

He removed the recorder from his pouch. "Day three. I woke up thinking this was all a dream. But the pyramid is still here. So is the boy. The scribe. The guards who don't trust me. And the spiral symbol—something about it makes my skin crawl. I've seen patterns like that in nature, in black hole simulations, in the Fibonacci sequence... but never drawn by human hands four thousand years ago."

He stopped the recording. It wasn't fear he felt. Not entirely. It was pressure—the kind that builds when your entire worldview begins to shift.

He turned as footsteps approached.

It was Hemiunu, dragging a small satchel behind him. "Come," the boy said. "Father said you should see the lower chambers."

"Lower chambers?" Ethan repeated.

The boy nodded and turned, not waiting.

Ethan followed him to the side of the pyramid where scaffolding met with a downward ramp of stone and packed earth. Workers watched them pass, some murmuring, others crossing their arms in superstitious gestures.

They reached a shaft, wide enough for two men to walk shoulder-to-shoulder, but steep and dark. A torch lay unlit in a brass holder near the entrance.

Hemiunu lit the torch with practiced ease. "It is cooler here," he said as he descended.

The torchlight danced along the walls, revealing carvings—old, precise, mathematical in nature. Ethan ran his fingers over the etchings as they moved deeper. Lines spiraled into triangles. Geometries morphed into symbols.

Sahure was waiting at the base of the shaft.

"You came," the scribe said. "Good. What you see here... was not made for men."

The room they stood in wasn't like the rest of the pyramid. It was smaller, circular, with polished obsidian stone embedded into the floor. A pattern—resembling the symbol from the cloth—glowed faintly, as if reacting to their presence.

Ethan's breath caught.

"This wasn't carved," he said. "This was melted. Laser-cut precision. But that's impossible."

"Perhaps not for gods," Sahure said, voice solemn.

Ethan dropped to his knees, pulling a small instrument from his belt. It buzzed softly as it scanned the chamber, unable to make sense of what it detected.

"This material—some of it doesn't exist on the periodic table. It's... alien."

Sahure raised an eyebrow. "You speak of elements, yet here we speak of stories." He pointed toward a mural in the chamber. It depicted a man in strange robes standing before a glowing orb. Behind him, a gate. And beyond the gate—a darkness consuming stars.

Ethan stared. "That's a black hole. Or... something like it."

"The last visitor said the gate leads to the 'great silence,'" Sahure said. "He feared it. He tried to close it. We think he failed."

Ethan ran his hand across the mural. "And now I'm here. Another visitor."

Sahure knelt beside him. "Perhaps the gate chooses."

Suddenly, the ground trembled. Just a shudder. But enough to send dust cascading from the ceiling.

Hemiunu clutched Sahure's robe. "What was that?"

Ethan stood. "Not natural. A feedback echo. Like time is pulsing."

They climbed out quickly. At the top of the shaft, the sun was rising fully, casting long golden rays across the sand. But the world no longer felt still.

That night, Ethan couldn't sleep. He sat outside the tent, recorder in hand, speaking low.

"Day three, end. Today I saw something I wasn't ready for. A chamber buried beneath the pyramid. With materials and symbols that predate everything we understand. Sahure believes it's a gate. A cosmic prison. Or maybe a door I wasn't supposed to find. I think... it may be tied to why I was sent here."

He paused, struggling for words.

"The machine didn't malfunction. It delivered me. With purpose. And I fear that purpose has just begun to whisper."

He shut off the recorder.

Above him, the stars shimmered. Below him, something ancient stirred.

Time was not a line.

It was a loop.

And Ethan had just stepped into the center of it.


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