“The man who persists in knocking will proceed on entering.”

Three miles beneath the Earth’s surface, the heat wrapped around us like molten chains, thick and suffocating. Every breath clawed at our lungs, the air saturated with gases that shimmered with an unholy iridescence. Our expedition suits—hybrids of hazmat armour and deep-sea exoskeletons—felt useless against the crushing weight of the atmosphere. Beneath our boots, the ground pulsed as if alive, an unsteady heartbeat of the abyss.

I remember the moment I crossed the threshold into the abyss. My legs trembled, not from fear, but from something deeper—an instinctive warning to flee. The cavern was no mere void. It was an alien machine, its walls moving in patterns of glowing circuits, as though it were aware of our intrusion. Yet we pressed on, pulled by a force beyond reason, beyond survival.

We crossed molten rivers that shimmered like liquid obsidian, and all around us, the walls shifted, geometric forms twisting like hyper-dimensional fractals. The labyrinth itself felt like it was dreaming. Above, the desert writhed in heat waves, masking the devastation we had left behind. This was another world, ancient and unrelenting, with laws that bent to no human understanding.

Ana Sognozia’s eyes darted over Gray’s memories as they bloomed through the neural interface. The data streams formed vivid constructs, projected into her mind like an invasive dream. Her cyber-brain translated the subconscious fragments, and with each second, her unease grew.

“We’re just digging deeper into trauma,” she whispered, her voice hollow with doubt. “This is for his own good… isn’t it?” But the visions felt too real, too precise—like echoes of a memory older than Gray himself. Still, she recorded everything, oblivious to how deeply she had already entangled herself in a nightmare far beyond her comprehension.

When the British government enlisted Leon Kooms to build an advanced particle accelerator. The inaugural test collided with the Earth’s crust at incomprehensible speeds, unleashing a 9.9-magnitude earthquake. The United Kingdom fractured into four landmasses, each named for William Blake’s Four Zoas: Urizen, Luvah, Tharmas, and Urthona.

Cities collapsed into chasms, swallowed whole by the Earth. From these fissures emerged tunnels older than time, carved with grotesque hieroglyphs, their geometry defying logic and physics. At the heart of the chaos lay Choronzon, the Enochian entity of chaos and madness, whose name was etched into the first Gate beneath Stonehenge. Kooms deciphered the sigil, led by the Enochian writings of John Dee and Edward Kelley. As he uttered those words, he vanished into the labyrinth, his final scream a vacuum of despair that suffocated the cavern.

Then the whispers began.

My name is Elvander Gray. I was a journalist for Sly News and one of the first to step into the Choron Zone. What began as a documentary mission became something far worse. We thought we were explorers uncovering secrets. We were wrong.

Beyond the Gate, monolithic towers spiralled upward, twisting in ways the human mind could scarcely grasp. My camera recorded impossible angles, and the air shimmered with a distortion that bent light and sound. The labyrinth breathed with a pulse all its own.

One night, I dreamed of Kooms. He stood at the edge of a precipice, glowing with an unnatural radiance. When I reached for him, his hand disintegrated into ash. I woke gasping, the whispers louder than ever, promising a cosmic war beyond comprehension.

The labyrinth told a story, carved into its shifting walls: Morgellia, Daughter of Nuit, twisted by jealousy, cursed to grotesque deformity. And Enochia, Child of Hadit, radiant and pure, the embodiment of Agape. Morgellia sought to kill her sister, but her betrayal fractured dimensions, plunging Earth into an eternal night.

Enochia remained a sentinel within the labyrinth, her glow a defiant star. Her presence resonated with me, a call to something ancient—a yearning for transformation.

At the heart of the labyrinth was an altar pulsating with violet light. The stones carved with celestial patterns hummed with a forgotten power. I touched them and was thrown into a vision:

Morgellia stood above Enochia’s radiant form, her claws dripping venom, inscribing dark spells into the stone. Her voice cut through the void:

“ZIRDO IADNAMAD ELILA.”

The ground trembled. Stones moaned.

“MICALZODO SAANIR MADRIAAX.”

Purple light surged, the sigils pulsing like dying stars.

“FINIS BALZIZARAS IADA. IO KIA!”

The void split open, revealing Choronzon in his full, twisted form. Not as fire or shadow, but as a cosmic machine. His form emerged from the void like the night sky devouring itself, his limbs angular and infinite. Red stars glimmered in his many eyes—silent beacons of hunger. His presence consumed light, reason, and sanity alike. He spoke in a language that fractured reality:

<ERROR: K01D-ZRAE-S1L>

The words seared into my mind like corrupted code, jagged and venomous, their meaning lost but their intent clear—destruction, desire, dominion.

Then came the magpies, a cyclone of black feathers that coalesced into Manfred. His silver eyes glowed with sorrow. “Morgellia,” he said, voice heavy with regret, “you’ve gone too far.”

Morgellia sneered. “You always underestimated me.” She unleashed dark energy. Manfred, in one fluid motion, seized the Star of Choronzon and shattered it into three fragments: Love, Power, Chaos. The energy rippled through the labyrinth.

Manfred’s voice broke, soft and bitter: “I could have saved you.”

The void screamed as Choronzon disintegrated, his mechanical form splintering into data shards across dimensions. Morgellia vanished, her final words echoing: “The gate is open, Manfred. The true players are already here.”

I gasped, jolted from the memory. Ana stared, her face pale, her cybernetic pupils flickering. “That wasn’t just memory,” she whispered. “It was alive.”

“This isn’t over,” I said, unsteady but resolute. “The darkness isn’t done with us yet.”

Ana’s voice trembled. “What is it waiting for?”

I turned to the window, staring at the fractured skyline. “A key. And someone willing to turn it.”

© Aiwaz 2024