"Adam, stop going off on your own already. This pyramid is unstable."
Adam adjusted the underwater lamp attached to his suit and raised his voice through the comms.
"I am not wandering. I am examining inscriptions that have never been recorded in any scientific archive. This is important work."
"That is not your job. You were hired as an assistant diver."
"I am also a licensed archaeologist with two degrees, Tony," Adam replied, sliding his gloved fingers across the wall's carvings. "And these markings are definitely older than anything we found outside."
"You are also a dentist," Tony shot back. "Try not to drill holes into ancient history."
Adam laughed under his breath while brushing away silt from the strange symbols. Their shapes were unfamiliar, sharp, and impossibly precise, more like something engraved by technology than chiseled by hand.
He leaned closer.
"This language… I have never seen anything like it."
"Do not touch it."
"…About that."
Before Tony could finish shouting, a deep cracking sound echoed through the submerged tunnel. Vibrations rolled through the walls and dust clouded the water. The ceiling above Adam collapsed in a single violent impact that sent him spinning backward.
"Adam! Adam! Respond!"
"I am here," Adam said, but the words barely left his mouth before a flood of water surged into the chamber. The force tore him off balance and carried him down the sloping floor. He reached out to grab something, anything, but his hand only found smooth stone.
The ground beneath him gave way completely.
He fell through an opening that had not existed a moment ago.
The sensation was unlike any underwater drop. The world around him changed immediately. The water vanished from his suit as if it had never surrounded him.
The tunnel was impossibly long; its walls curved and rippled as if he were sliding through the inside of a colossal hourglass.
"Where… where am I…?"
His rotation slowed, and he realized he was no longer falling in the traditional sense. He was drifting downward through a space that felt suspended between ocean and desert, between a cave and a sky without stars.
A circular platform appeared beneath him. He landed on it with surprising gentleness, as if invisible hands had guided him down.
Adam pushed himself upright and raised his lamp out of habit, only to realize it had stopped function entirely. The chamber around him glowed on its own. Tall pillars reached up into shadows that seemed endless. The walls were covered in carvings similar to the ones in the pyramid but far sharper, almost metallic.
"This is impossible. This entire structure is underwater. There should not be air, light, or… whatever this place is."
In the center of the chamber stood a massive stone mural of an eye. It was at least three meters tall, carved with such precise detail that Adam felt a prickling sensation on his skin, as if the eye truly focused on him. The pupil was a deep hollow, crafted so perfectly it created the illusion of depth far beyond the wall's thickness.
Adam approached slowly.
"I must be hallucinating from pressure, or maybe I lost consciousness during the fall."
Even as he said it, he did not believe it.
He lifted his hand, hesitated, and finally touched the carved pupil.
The mural responded instantly.
Black light erupted from the stone, engulfing Adam's entire chest. He did not have time to form a scream.
His body dissolved ..... muscles, skin, and bone all disintegrated until nothing solid remained.
Only his soul remained, drifting above the cracked stone floor like a dim spark.
"W—What… is happening…"
The eye on the wall began pulling him in, its force shredding the edges of his soul. He felt strands of his essence being ripped away. For a moment, he was certain this was the end.
And that was when he laughed.
"I was just having fun…" he whispered, half laughing, half delirious. "Just spending my two free days doing some archaeology instead of sitting at home…"
His memories slid through his fading mind.
Four days a week fixing teeth, dealing with nervous patients, measuring root canals, convincing people to floss.
Two days chasing ancient mysteries, diving into ruins, brushing sand from old stone, taking photos of broken artifacts like they were treasures.
Six months ago, his team detected an underwater anomaly in the Mediterranean Sea, close to the Egyptian coast.
A pyramid hidden beneath the seabed.
A dream discovery.
He joined the dive team because he wanted a break from dental drills and fluorescent clinic lights, not because he expected anything supernatural.
And now here he was — a floating soul with nothing left of his body except the faint outline of who he used to be.
He laughed again, the sound trembling.
"Great job, Adam… You finally found a real lost pyramid and it killed you. Amazing career move."
The pull from the stone eye intensified until Adam felt as if his soul was being peeled apart layer by layer. Instinctively, he tried to pull back even though he had no muscles or body anymore. All he could do was struggle mentally against the suction tearing at him.
"I really should have stayed home this weekend," he muttered as the pressure increased. "I had Netflix plans. I had leftovers. I had an actual life… sort of."
The eye continued dragging him in, its hollow pupil widening slightly with every passing second. Adam felt himself stretching thin, as if every memory and every emotion were being separated and examined.
Just when he thought he would be completely consumed, a tiny spark glowed within the dust that used to be his physical body.
The faint light grew brighter and steadier until Adam recognized the source.
It was his pharaonic pendant. The same pendant his grandmother insisted he carry everywhere, the one she claimed had been in the family for "longer than history remembers."
He had always assumed she meant a few centuries.
Apparently, she had meant something else entirely.
The pendant released a pulse of golden light that filled the chamber. The air trembled as if the entire place was reacting to the sudden burst of energy. Cracks formed in the space above it, opening like a tear in fabric.
The tear widened quickly into a swirling hole, sucking in loose stones, bits of shattered wall, and streams of light from the mural. The pull was so strong that even the enormous stone pillars began to groan, bending slightly toward the vortex.
The eye resisted at first, continuing to drag Adam toward itself, but the new force overwhelmed both of them. Adam felt the suction shift, dragging him away from the mural and toward the tear.
"Of course," Adam said helplessly. "If something strange appears, I go straight into it. Story of my life."
He had no time to say anything else before the vortex pulled him in completely. The stone eye followed him, unwillingly dragged from its place on the wall. The entire temple seemed to break apart as everything was swallowed by the spiraling tear.