The air in the Amazon jungle felt so thick that it almost tasted like water. Humidity stuck to every leaf, every rock, and every single breath that Daniel Colt took as he pushed through the heavy, wet bushes. He was 50 years old, which is kind of old. Daniel wasn't fast anymore, but he had something better from years of working: he had patience and he knew when danger was near.
The sunlight was weak. It slipped through the tall trees in thin, bright green lines. Somewhere way up high, birds made loud screeching noises and small animals kept jumping from one branch to another branch. Daniel didn't look up at all. His eyes stayed focused down on the rough, messy path that they were trying hard to follow.
"This place feels so wrong," said Liam, who was the youngest person on the team, walking right behind Daniel.
"Everything feels wrong to you, Liam," Daniel said, and he didn't even stop walking. "Once we reach the site, you'll forget everything else you're scared of."
Liam quickly wiped the sweat from his forehead. "But sir… even the GPS doesn't work here at all. We have no signal. Nothing. It's like the whole entire jungle is trying to block us from coming in."
Daniel finally stopped walking. He turned slowly and looked back at his team of six people. They were all very tired, soaking wet with sweat, and they were beginning to wonder why they came all this way.
"Listen to me," Daniel said in a calm but very firm voice. "Ancient sites do not want you to find them easily. That is why they manage to stay hidden for hundreds of years. If you wanted a really easy trip, you should have just joined a simple school group tour."
The group members looked at each other nervously, but they all nodded slowly.
"We're super close," Daniel continued. "Very close now. Maybe just one hour more."
Then he turned back around and started walking again.
Daniel Colt had spent most of his life searching for old, broken ruins and secret places that everyone else had forgotten about. Some people called him a crazy person. Other people called him a very smart guy. Daniel didn't care about either one of those names. He cared only about finding the truth, and he cared about feeling that giant excitement of finding something that the whole entire world didn't even know existed yet.
But this specific trip felt really different to him.
The map he was holding was really old—so old that it honestly looked like it might tear apart if he touched it too hard. But the marks on it were too detailed and weird to ignore them. The map had been found wrapped up in a stone box inside a temple that had collapsed over in Peru.
On the map, someone had drawn a super strange symbol in bright red ink: an eye.
Daniel didn't know what the eye symbol meant at all, but every time he looked down at it, he felt a small, cold shiver run all the way down his body.
After almost forty more minutes of hard walking, they finally walked into a small clearing.
"Sir… look over there!" Liam shouted, pointing ahead quickly.
Daniel stopped walking immediately and just stared.
There it was. It was a huge, giant stone structure covered all over in green moss and thick vines. It rose out of the ground like something that had been sound asleep for many, many hundreds of years. The entrance to it was shaped like a tall arch, and it was carved all over with symbols and spirals that no one knew.
Daniel started walking toward it very slowly.
"This… this is so much older than anything that has ever been written down about this area," he whispered, feeling amazed.
His team looked really nervous, but Daniel's eyes were completely filled up with wild excitement.
"Set up the equipment right now," he ordered. "We are going inside this thing."
The team quickly started setting up the cameras and bright lights. Daniel stood right at the entrance, running his fingers over the strange, rough carvings. The stone felt warm to the touch, which didn't make any sense at all to Daniel.
Liam walked closer to him. "Sir… can you hear that sound?"
"Hear what sound?" Daniel asked.
"That really strange humming noise. It's coming right from inside the structure."
Daniel stopped and listened hard.
He could hear it now too.
A deep, low humming sound… it sounded like a slow, heavy heartbeat coming from deep inside the stone itself.
Daniel smiled just a little bit. "This is exactly, exactly what we have been searching for."
Then he stepped right inside the dark entrance.
The inside felt much colder, almost exactly like a deep cave. Their bright lights showed giant, huge walls covered with strange carvings. Some looked like bright stars, some looked like really odd, strange creatures, and many—too many—looked exactly like eyes.
Daniel felt something inside his chest react suddenly.
Something strange happened… like he knew this scary place somehow, from a long time ago.
"Spread out, everyone," he said. "Take pictures. Write down absolutely everything."
His team moved carefully around the chamber. Their footsteps made sharp, loud echoes all over the place.
Daniel walked straight toward the exact center of the room, which is where the strong humming sound was the loudest. His flashlight beam shined brightly on a low stone pedestal.
On top of the pedestal lay a very small object—it was round, perfectly smooth, and it was glowing softly with light.
Daniel took another step closer to it.
It was a perfectly carved, beautiful eye-shaped artifact. It wasn't a normal human eye. It was something much, much older.
"Sir… please don't touch that thing," Liam said very quietly and scared.
Daniel didn't answer him.
He felt totally drawn to the object, as if something was calling his name out loud. His hand moved on its own, like he couldn't stop it.
The very moment he touched it—
The entire chamber started to shake really, really hard.
Dust and dirt started falling from the high ceiling. The huge walls vibrated wildly. The low humming sound turned into a loud, scary roar.
"Sir! Move out of the way!" Liam screamed at the top of his lungs.
But Daniel couldn't move his body at all.
The small artifact glowed brighter and brighter and brighter until the light completely wrapped around his hand… then his whole arm… and then his entire body.
The very last thing Daniel saw was the terrified faces of his whole team running very fast toward him.
The very last thing he heard was the ancient stone structure cracking and breaking apart all around him.
And then—
Everything went completely silent.
His body fell hard into the ruins and the broken stone.
But his soul…
His soul was pulled away to somewhere else entirely.
Somewhere far beyond the Earth.
Far beyond anything that his normal mind could ever, ever understand.