Date: March 20, 2023
Location: Excavation Base Camp – Site 17B, near Lalitgiri Complex
I suppose paranoia festers best in silence.
For the past three days, the team barely acknowledged me. Tense glances. Short nods. Even the air inside the command tent felt electric, as if it, too, suspected me of something. But this morning... clarity came.
Liang approached first. He stood by my tent with that stoic unease of someone forced to confront their own assumptions. Behind him stood Zhang and Jae-won. They offered me tea—hot, bitter, and slightly over-steeped. A gesture. A peace offering.
Turns out, the disquiet wasn't born from what I found, but from what I represented. Leadership, ownership, control. To many, especially Lu and Dr. Jayaraman, my access to both the site and government protocols made me look like a gatekeeper to whatever power or recognition this site could bestow. And that made me a target for envy.
They confessed—guiltily, cautiously—that some in the group felt I was deliberately keeping discoveries quiet. That I had ulterior motives. That I was hoarding the manuscript's knowledge.
Funny how desperation twists intellect into suspicion.
But in truth, I hadn't shared everything—not because I didn't trust them, but because I feared what they might do with incomplete truths. This site… this text we've uncovered… it doesn't just belong in a museum. It belongs in a locked vault wrapped in salt, iron, and silence.
Yet now, we move forward together.
And perhaps that was the exact price the relic demanded—dissension. A seed of mistrust. A test?
This morning changed everything.
In the newly excavated west chamber beneath Structure C, beneath bricks untouched for centuries, we found a second ossuary-like vault. Ornate but sealed with layers of resin, the kind once used to embalm or preserve in ancient funerary rites. The resin had hairline cracks—enough to let in whispers.
Inside were:
A stone prayer wheel, etched not with standard Buddhist mantras but with an unfamiliar cyclic script. It doesn't spin the way it should. It halts… as if resisting certain directions.
A lacquered scroll box, still intact, housing a sheaf of fragile birch bark folios. The script matches the ink pattern of the first manuscript—but these are chants, not prose. Ritual invocations.
And finally: a decayed wooden idol, about the size of a forearm. A monk seated in Padmasana, eyes missing, mouth open—not in meditation, but in terror. Around its neck, a chain woven from what appears to be human hair, preserved unnaturally well.
It was Lu who noticed the carving at the base.
> "Na-mara-pathan-tat," he muttered. "Not a standard chant."
None of us could place it precisely, but it echoes a bastardized mix of Sanskrit and Pali. A mistranslation—or intentional corruption—of "Namo Amitābhāya" perhaps? Except the translation doesn't promise salvation.
It warns of rebirth without forgetting. Of endless awakenings where one is never allowed to rest.
Later in the afternoon, I spent time translating one of the bark scrolls. It mentions a monk—unnamed, simply referred to as He-Who-Refused-Nirvana. A rebel who, in pursuit of ultimate release, sought not to dissolve the self, but to anchor it. To cheat the cycle, to preserve identity across rebirths. A direct violation of core Buddhist tenets.
What he achieved wasn't Nirvana.
He created a tether—a ritual binding that allowed him to project consciousness into the written word. A soul not reincarnated but embedded.
My hands trembled as I read that line.
Could it be… that the manuscript is not just a record of this monk's journey, but a vessel?
If so… every word we read might be a doorway.
Every chant, a knock.
We must tread carefully. The scrolls contain diagrams. Ritual postures. Offerings. Even coded patterns—one looks like a mudra map, but another resembles the base schematic of a circuit board.
A monk… from the 6th century… designing glyphs that resemble digital logic?
I haven't told the team yet. They're optimistic again. United. The guilt of our tension has been soothed. For now.
But at night, I swear I can hear the faint rasp of the prayer wheel moving. On its own. Clicking softly. Clockwise. Then against its nature… anticlockwise.
I will document everything. If this is a living manuscript, then this diary is not just a record—it's a warning. For now, only I know how deep this hole goes.
The chant from the scroll repeats in my head. I must write it down.
> "Ātma nā gacchati, na śūnyatā, na jyotiḥ—
smṛtir eva bandhanāyā bhavati."
"The soul goes not to emptiness, nor to light—
memory alone becomes the chain."
I will not forget.
But I fear I'm being remembered back.
—Advait
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