When all around you falls, stand still. — Philosopher D’Kharta Nal, Ten Thousand Years of Silence, CY 7009
Day 41
The message on the cave wall had deepened again.
Not just in words, but physically—the stone caved inward, as if time itself had gnawed at the edges. Ravi was gone. His last recorded words weren’t spoken but etched—somehow—into his own bunk wall:
“I walked backward into myself.”
Signed: Ravi, Day 40
He had never signed anything that way.
And yet… Elena found the phrase again in her field journal. On a page she didn’t remember writing.
Day 44
Tariq’s face appeared on the rover’s rear camera feed—while he stood next to Elena, watching the monitor. Neither moved. Neither spoke. The recording showed them both at the same time… but only one cast a shadow.
Tariq didn’t scream when he disappeared. He simply glitched, like a corrupted video file. Gone between one frame and the next.
His empty boots remained in the dust. Still warm.
That night, Elena reviewed a log entry in her own handwriting dated Day 51—a date still a week away. It warned:
“Don’t trust my voice. Not all of me is me anymore.”
Day 46
She stood outside the well again. The stone mouth that had swallowed two probes and Ravi’s voice. She scanned it. Again.
Deeper. This time by 14 meters.
She reran the scan. Shallower now. She blinked. It was back to the deeper reading.
Jin-Soo noted it without emotion:
“It’s breathing.”
Day 47
Their comms began picking up faint clicks and hisses.
At first, they dismissed it as static.
Then the words emerged.
“You are still falling.”
“One of you has been here before.”
“Stop digging.”
“We remember you.”
Elena recorded them. Analyzed them. The voice shifted—first male, then female, then an echo of her own.
Day 48
Symbols began appearing on the inside of their helmets, visible only under infrared scan.
At first, they looked like scratches.
Then—patterns.
Geometric, rhythmic. Recursive.
They pulsed slightly.
Elena found her name etched in sequence, followed by the names of the others… and a final word:
“Next.”
Day 50
Jin-Soo collapsed during a routine vitals scan.
Bloodwork showed something impossible: his DNA had changed—a subtle signature, a repeating nucleotide not found in any Earth genome… but similar to the fossil structures they found in the melted “spheres” at the cave.
His voice had changed slightly in pitch.
And during sleep, he spoke in Tariq’s voice.
Tariq had been gone nine days.
Day 51
Elena stood in the cave, staring at the wall. The letters writhed.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
Stone threads were growing—like fungal tendrils, curling into the shape of symbols, names, warnings.
They pulsed under her flashlight, like a heartbeat.
“This isn’t your first time,” it said.
She backed away. The rock was wet now. With condensation. Or tears.
Behind her, she heard her own voice.
Whispering.
But her lips were still.
NEXT WEEK: Part VII – Descent Memory where the cave and terrain begin to open, shift, and lead them inward
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