With the sudden opening of the stone door, fine sand whirled through the air, and the ground trembled slightly. Arsh was shocked. He wasn't sure how it had happened or how he had managed to open the gate. And even though the torchlight wasn't strong enough, he could see an enormous chamber before his eyes.
Arsh stood frozen at the sight before him. He only came to his senses when he heard the voices coming from outside.
Because of the shaking and the noise, his father and the others, fearing a collapse, were shouting Arsh's name constantly.
Arsh tore his eyes away from the chamber and walked toward the tunnel entrance. "I'm fine. I found a door here. I'll wait at the door until you come down."
When he turned back toward the door and looked at the vast space that had opened before him, he felt a wave of astonishment once again. There was an immense darkness stretching out ahead of him. Yet, within the reach of his torch's light, he could see the colossal half moon shaped stairs in front of him and the massive pillars rising up to the ceiling.
In previous excavations he joined his father, they had discovered some burial chamber. But none of those chambers were larger than their own small two-room house.
He had never seen a place like this in his life. Slowly, he began to go down the stairs. The staircase opened into a wide area. This chamber was probably beneath the hill next to the site where they had been excavating. Its ceiling was too high and had the shape of a dome. Everything looked so magnificent yet so simple under the dim light. Arsh thought it must be one of the palaces from his grandfather's stories.
When he used to listen to those tales, he had imagined splendid, grand places—where every object was covered in gold, silver, and various jewels, and where curtains woven from precious fabrics hung from the walls.
But now, the vast darkness stretching before him was different from those imaginary palaces; its sheer scale filled him with both terror and excitement.
He continued walking slowly inside, examining his surroundings as he moved forward. On the pillars were symbols that featured various circular patterns. They looked similar to the ones on the gate. The floor was relatively clean. There were no dry branches or reptile bones scattered around. This place had been well preserved, even though no one had entered here for who knows how many hundreds of years.
As he moved forward, lost in thought, he noticed another staircase a little ahead. It was a bit odd. It was in the middle of the chamber. He walked around the stairs. It had a circular shape again, and there were carvings on it as well. It was about five and a half meters in diameter and two and a half meters high, with a platform on top.
When he climbed up to see what was on the platform in the center, he saw a sarcophagus. Like everything else he had seen that day, the shape of the sarcophagus was also different from the ones he had seen before.
"So, in the end, this place is also a burial chamber. But there's no treasure at all."
Still, the sheer size of this structure and its difference from the other burial chambers made him think that the person buried here must have been someone important.
"Could it be a king? A poor king... or a great scholar who didn't care about wealth," he thought.
He tilted his torch and began examining the carvings on the sarcophagus. When the others came down into the pit, they would carry the sarcophagus outside. He wanted to study it a little before they took it away…
He knew that they would take these sarcophagus and display them in places they called museums. People would come and gaze in admiration at the vases, stones, and tombs they took out unearthed from these lands. Who would want to admire a tomb? Standing before something that held a decayed body and gazing at it in awe, wasn't that a bit crazy?
He shivered a little at this thought. Right now, the sarcophagus in front of him also held a decayed body, and yet he was looking at it with admiration. It was not normal either.
When he thought about the body, his curiosity grew. He had also heard that these tombs sometimes contained jewelry, gold, and other valuable items—they made the deceased wear those precious belongings. Perhaps this person wasn't as poor as he had thought. He wouldn't take anything. So this wouldn't be theft. Even if he did take something, the real thieves were the people from the city, who constantly took things that belonged to this land. Like that, he decided to open the sarcophagus.
This was impossible to do alone. So a small gap would be enough for him to see its inside.
Then he placed the torch on the stairs. He went to the far end of the sarcophagus and planted his feet firmly on the ground, using his whole body to push the lid. But the lid was heavier than he had expected; it didn't budge an inch. He still had time before the others came down. He tried moving to the other sides of the sarcophagus to push, but it was futile... The veins on his forehead stood out more and more, and sweat began to run down his face.
Finally he stopped trying and sat down on the platform. In the faint light, he stared at the carvings again. As he thought about when the others would come to take him from there, he realized something in them.
Carvings looked like they were telling a story. They weren't repeating same scenes; rather, there was a flow between scenes.
When he realized it, he took the torch again and walked around the tomb, examining the carvings. At first, there was a picture of a woman wearing a dress that barely covered her most private parts. She looked young. Behind her, there were several people. In the next scene, a man kissed the woman on the forehead. Then, he plunged a dagger into his own hand, and then used it to stab the woman in the chest. Subsequently, the other figures followed him, repeating the same actions but targeting different parts of her body. It looked like some kind of sacrificial ceremony. After the ceremony, carvings depicted the woman kneeling on the ground, hugging her own body. Water was poured over her. Apparently, they were cleansing her. They washed her body with water and dressed her in a long gown. Finally, they knelt before the girl, placing their hands on their heads.
It showed that the woman entered the sarcophagus, and the lid was closed.
'A living sacrifice?'
Arsh thought about that. He read about similar traditions, but they weren't practiced in these lands.
'Maybe I found something even older than the history we know.'
He turned towards the last edge of the sarcophagus. It was the final scene. This time, it looked like the theme had changed. There was a figure that he couldn't tell whether it was a man or a woman. The figure approached the sarcophagus and took the dagger. Then, they cut their own hand with it and poured the blood into the sarcophagus.
'So what happened after that?'
Arsh stopped walking around the sarcophagus and looked at its lid. On the lid of the sarcophagus, there were also circles filled with various patterns, similar to those on the columns and the door, whose meaning he couldn't understand. At the very center of the sarcophagus was a relief of a dagger, resembling the one depicted in the scenes carved on the walls.
When he touched the dagger relief, it moved from its place. It wasn't a carving after all—it was a dagger made of stone, placed on the sarcophagus just like that. Arsh picked up the dagger.
The tip of the dagger was darker than the rest of it. "Is it…? Is it blood? Did they really stab the girl with this?"
It was thrilling to discover something like that. Now he fully understood why archaeologists talked about their discoveries with such excitement.
After turning the dagger over in his hands, he looked again at the scene where the man had stabbed the dagger in his hand. 'Should I give it a try? One drop of blood won't kill, right?' The dagger wasn't exactly very sharp.
He was still excited about this discovery. He wanted to reenact the ceremony. Without thinking much, he stretched his hand over the sarcophagus and plunged the tip of the dagger into the wound he had gotten when he fell into the well. After pressing a little, a drop of blood fell onto the sarcophagus.
The drop of blood fell onto the stone surface with a soft plop. The sound echoed through the enormous space, as if hundreds of blood drops were falling like rain.
At that moment, Arsh felt as if an ancient silence had been broken. A second later, he was on the floor with a pain in his heart, as if he hadn't plunged the dagger into his hand, but into his chest. It was difficult to breathe. His chest was burning with pain.
While he was gasping for breath, he realized the drop of blood on the sarcophagus was growing, spreading and seeping into every carving.
This time, the excitement in his heart had been replaced by terror. It was like as if a single drop of blood suddenly turned into a river, flowing beneath his feet.
Crimson lights began to emanate from the carvings filled with blood. Then, the lid of the sarcophagus slowly started to rise.
The terror Arsh felt was growing by the second. He had no idea what was happening. Everything was completely silent, yet it felt as if everything around him was so loud that his head might explode. He wanted to scream, but no sound came out from his throat. Fear had frozen him.
He slowly rose from the ground and, taking his eyes off the rising sarcophagus lid, turned his gaze inside. He wasn't sure what he was seeing, because what he saw was too beautiful to be real.
It wasn't a human. He was certain that the girl inside the sarcophagus was the same one from the pictures. Yet, she didn't look dead. It was as if she had just lain down inside it. Moreover, silver light emanated from her entire body. Delicate, lace-like beams of light covered her completely. The girl's entire being seemed like a delicate, intricate lace woven by the hands of the gods.
This time, the terror Arsh felt transformed into a different emotion—one still as intense as the fear he had felt before, but now caused by awe.
He was mesmerized by the sight before him.
'She must be a goddess.'
His voice echoed just like the sound of the drop of blood, before slowly fading into the silence. But he seemed to quickly forget the horror of the moment before. Arsh hesitantly stepped a little closer to the sarcophagus. He wanted to see the girl more clearly.
'Is it possible for a dead body to be preserved this well?'
He looked to examine the lace like symbols on the girl's body. When he turned his gaze to her face, what he saw were a pair of eyes looking back at him, as if radiating silver light.