Part 1 - The Cave

October 16th, 2026

He was deep in a cave with a torch in his hand. He held it up to the runes on the wall but could not quite make them out. They were some ancient language that he had never seen before. When he had entered the cave an hour ago, he never would have expected to find this. It appeared to be the site of some strange ritual or portal from some other time.

Though he could not understand the writing, he could marvel at the drawings. Pictures of what looked like people walking down into the cave, but then seemingly traveling through a ring in a wall and out into some other place. The sketches were scratched and the torch dim, but he thought he could make out some sort of sky or clouds and a weird creature in the “other world.”

As he kept traveling along the tunnel, the art became stranger and stranger. Beasts as big as houses walking alongside people and giant sea serpents emerging from the sea and crushing boats. There was one drawing with hundreds of people below a lone mountain that was circled by a ring of smaller mountains. It seemed to have some sort of special significance based on what he gathered from the drawing. Nothing was certain to him though. The whole drawing was full of mystery.

Soon he came out of the tunnel and into a huge open room. A stream came out from under the left wall and ran through the center and left under the back wall. That wall was perfectly smooth except for a small triangular hole near the bottom right. Nothing about that wall looked natural. First, it was too flat, too smooth, but more than that, it looked “wrong” almost as if it did not belong in the cave—as if it arrived there by mistake. The more he thought about it, the more the whole room seemed unnatural. The walls were just the wrong color and the stream just the wrong shape and even the air smelled a little too sweet. Later he wondered whether the room was built from earthly materials at all. But he took no notice of this at the time; no, what drew his attention was the small perfect triangular hole in the wall. This was because he knew exactly what went in it.

In the sketches, he had noticed this bluish triangle-shaped stone showing up again and again. It appeared to be significant, mostly showing up in the “other world.” It was placed above that important mountain. It also appeared on the crown of any kingly-looking person. As he traversed the tunnel, he kept comparing the pictures to the little blue stone in his hand. He could not quite tell if they matched—many of them did not seem blue—but it seemed promising. After all, the blue stone was the whole reason he was here in this cave at all.

A few months ago, before any of this cave exploration happened, he was taking a brisk walk along the stream behind his house. It was a pleasant spring day where everything had finally become green. The birds were back to their songs. It was the perfect day for a walk. As he was going along the gentle stream, he saw a strange stone in the water. It was not just strange because it was a perfect triangle, nor because of its slight blue glow in the sunlight. No, it was strange because it was clearly a stone, but clearly floating on top of the water. Quickly, he ran over and grabbed it out of the stream. Realizing that it was also just as heavy as a real stone, he became thoroughly perplexed and intrigued. How could a stone float? But that was only the first question.

That was in May and this was September. He had since discovered the only reference to this blue “floating stone” was in a 1500s copy of a 1100s letter from a knight in southern England writing to his lord—the rest of the letter was not about anything important; why someone would copy it, he could not tell. In passing, the knight mentioned a “stone with three sharp points having a faint blue glow” and that “floats atop the water as if it were a boat.” The knight mentioned that he had picked it up right outside “Old Brigands’ Cave” along the northern part of what is now called the English Channel. He had finally found a lead. After hours of poring over maps and books and letters, he eventually pinpointed the rough location of the cave. The part he could not figure out was how a stone from 12th century England arrived in 21st century America, but as far as he could tell, it must be the same stone. At this point, he needed to figure out where this stone came from. He made multiple trips to England over the summer searching for the exact spot of the cave. After a couple weeks, he found it and decided it was time to go in.

And so, back in the cave, he was distracted, very distracted by the triangular hole in the wall. He had a guess of what might happen if he put his stone in, but as he placed it, he began to realize what all he might be getting himself into. As the stone fit perfectly into the hole, the ground began to rumble, beginning from the back of the room and moving all the way to the front. The whole room started to quiver and shake, as if waking from a long slumber. A faint blue glow (like the glow from his stone) appeared on the flat wall in front of him. All of a sudden, a glowing blue scratch as bright as fire appeared on the wall, and then another and another, until the whole wall was covered in a circle of bright blinding blue.

At this moment he heard a booming voice coming from all directions. “Welcome, chosen one. You may enter.” It reverberated within the cave walls and after being in near silence for an hour, it sounded as if it could bring the cave crashing down on him. He could not choose between fear and excitement, nor did he have time. The glow on the wall grew brighter and brighter until it seemed as if daylight was shining through and he thought perhaps it was daylight.

Finally the shaking stopped and the room went quiet—except for a faint hum or buzz from the back wall. He slowly approached the “portal” as he later learned it was called. Now some might think this foolish, but he was not willing to give up a chance like this; not after the whole summer of searching. What if it never opened again? He knew he could not live without knowing what was beyond the portal. So in he went.