The grand lecture hall at Harrow University was still, save for the faint tapping of Dr. Eleanor Vance’s fingers on her laptop. The low hum of the old building seemed to seep into the air around her as she scrolled through her research notes. Her glasses caught the light from the screen, reflecting a chaotic web of symbols, fragments of forgotten languages, and incomplete theories. Every character seemed to lead to another, like a puzzle she couldn’t quite solve, and she couldn’t help but wonder—what was she missing?

"Civilization is built on the foundation of shared stories," she whispered to herself, more as a reminder than a revelation. Her fingers traced a passage about mythic cycles, but even as the words felt familiar, something about them left her restless. Maybe it wasn’t enough to just study stories. Maybe there was something deeper here, something that demanded more than just academic curiosity.

The soft glow of her desk lamp barely reached the far corners of the room, leaving the rest of the hall in shadow. She liked it that way. The quiet gave her space to think, to breathe. But tonight, the silence felt heavier, as if the room itself were waiting for something—waiting for her. Or maybe it was just the lateness of the hour, past when students and faculty had gone home, leaving the place to her alone. She thrived in solitude, but lately, even the comfort of this stillness had started to feel a little… wrong.

Eleanor’s gaze drifted to the artifact on her desk, a weathered stone tablet that had haunted her thoughts for months. She had tried to ignore it, but each time she returned to her research, it pulled at her like a question she didn’t want to answer. The symbols on the stone were unlike anything she had seen before—no one had deciphered them. Yet, as she ran her fingers over the grooves, it felt as though the stone was speaking to her, though she couldn’t say how. It was a foolish thought. She knew that. And yet, she couldn’t shake the sense that this tablet, this object, was part of something much larger—something she had been chasing for far too long.

“It’s almost as if you’re alive,” she muttered, tracing the lines with a hesitant hand. The stone shivered slightly under her touch, sending a faint tingle up her arm. She let out a short laugh, but it sounded strained. “If only you could talk.”

The air in the room seemed to thicken, the weight of it pressing against her chest. Eleanor’s mind buzzed with a mix of exhaustion and exhilaration. She wasn’t sure what it was about this tablet, but it made her feel something she hadn’t felt in a long time—a sense of purpose, maybe, or something darker, something she didn’t want to acknowledge. She couldn’t be sure.

Her eyes lingered on the artifact for a moment longer before she turned back to her scattered notes. The connections she had been piecing together over the past few weeks were starting to take shape—ancient flood myths, the hero legends of Greece, creation tales from Mesoamerica. All these disparate stories, these different cultures, seemed to share uncanny similarities. Could it really be? Could these myths, these shared fragments, be pointing to something larger? Something lost to time? She hated the thought. It was too much like the wild theories her father had always talked about, the ones that had driven him mad.

But maybe... just maybe, there was something to it. Maybe he had been onto something. But what if she was wrong? She could already hear the skeptical voices in her head, warning her to abandon this fruitless search before it consumed her the way it had consumed him.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“A unified myth,” she whispered, tasting the words, feeling the weight of them. The idea was absurd. Ridiculous, even. And yet, the more she thought about it, the more she couldn’t push it away. Was it real? Could it be real?

Then, without warning, the tablet pulsed.

Eleanor’s breath caught in her throat. The air seemed to change, the room around her shifting, becoming both too small and too vast at once. She leaned in, heart hammering in her chest, as faint light began to glow from the grooves in the stone. It wasn’t just light. It was something more—a presence that seemed to breathe with her, as if the tablet itself had come alive in her hands.

“No,” she whispered, unable to pull her eyes away. “This can’t be…”

The glow intensified, spreading across the desk, reaching out like fingers. Eleanor’s pulse quickened, and she reached for her phone, wanting to record the phenomenon. But her hands were shaking too much, and the phone slipped from her grasp, clattering to the floor. She didn’t pick it up. She couldn’t. Her gaze was locked on the tablet, unable to look away, even as the room around her seemed to shift in a way that felt wrong. As if time itself was bending.

A low hum filled the air, a sound that resonated deep within her chest, as if the earth itself were groaning in protest. The symbols on the tablet shifted, rearranging themselves like pieces of a puzzle. Each movement felt deliberate, purposeful. And with each change, Eleanor felt her fear growing, tangled with an overwhelming sense of curiosity.

Her thoughts became muddled. Was this an answer? Or had she just opened a door that should have remained closed? No, she couldn’t stop now. Not when she was so close.

“Wait,” she gasped, but her voice sounded fragile, thin in the thickening air. “Stop.”

The light flared, drowning out everything—her vision, her thoughts, even the air around her. The world splintered, the ground beneath her feet dissolving into a kaleidoscope of colors and sensations. Time stretched and compressed, seconds becoming minutes, minutes becoming infinity, until—suddenly—it all snapped back. And she was gone.

When the light dimmed, Eleanor found herself sprawled on cold, uneven ground. The air tasted strange, sharp and metallic. She blinked, disoriented, her mind struggling to make sense of what had just happened. Had she fallen asleep? No. This was real. It was impossible, but it was real.

Above her, the sky was an explosion of colors, hues she had no name for, stretching far into the distance. Towering structures loomed on the horizon, their surfaces reflecting the impossible sky. The ground beneath her felt alive, pulsing with an odd rhythm, like a heartbeat she could feel in her fingertips.

Her hands trembled as she pushed herself up, eyes wide with disbelief. The tablet was gone, but the imprint of its shape was burned into the earth below her, like a scar from some otherworldly fire. She could barely form a thought. What was this place? How had she gotten here? Her mind raced, but no answers came.

Figures were approaching from the distance, their forms indistinct at first, but growing clearer as they neared. They were tall, robed, glowing with a light that seemed to emanate from the very ground beneath them. Their faces were obscured, but their presence was undeniable.

“Where… am I?” she whispered, her voice shaking.

As they drew nearer, one of them raised a hand, and Eleanor froze. There was something about them that felt familiar, though she couldn’t place it. And then, one of them spoke.

“Welcome, Hero of Knowledge,” the voice boomed, deep and resonant, echoing as though spoken by many. “We have been waiting for you.”

Her heart skipped. "Hero of Knowledge?" she echoed, the words barely registering in her mind. But the weight of them pressed down on her, and she realized—her life, as she knew it, had changed forever. And this, whatever this was, was just the beginning.