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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/mR-gray42 on 2024-11-05 00:13:01+00:00.

That’s the thing about getting old, isn’t it? The perspective. When you’re a kid, you think the whole world loves you. You can’t comprehend the idea of someone hurting you, and when someone or something does, it hurts that much more because of that lack of understanding. You can’t comprehend why the mean ants in the anthill began biting you after you stepped on their home. Then you become a teenager and you start thinking the whole world is out to get you, so you lash out at it. You want to make yourself known to the world. You get to adulthood, and you start thinking you can take on the world. It’s not until you realize that everyone else thinks something similar, that everyone else has that same ambition whether they realize it or not, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes even if it means trampling you unless you do the same. You ask yourself why someone would do this to you, and you realize something else. You realize that you’re little more than a blip, a gnat, dirt under someone’s fingernails. It hits you that you’re an ant, and something just destroyed your anthill.

My anthill was destroyed in the year 1968, when I was 27. Back then, I was studying archeology with the intent of uncovering evidence of civilizations people overlooked, nations beyond those born in Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica. I wasn’t some rugged, handsome adventurer type. Between my skinny build, glasses, and my mild-mannered disposition, the folks I spoke to probably thought I was some kind of clerk. I will say for the record, though, that I did carry a snub-nosed .44 with me whenever I traveled. Between the very real possibilities of grave robbers and the Kremlin’s finest, it was always comforting to have that weight on my belt.

The search I conducted took place in an Eastern European nation that I won’t name. For all I know, it lost its name during the collapse of the USSR anyway, as I’ve never found any records of it existing. I went there with a small team funded by an anonymous donor who had expressed interest in uncovering evidence of a lost civilization before the Soviet Union could find it. My team consisted of five others, Mike, Leo, Martin, Charles, and Keith. Mike and Leo were the medic and armed guard respectively, Martin and I were the people who handled the cultural and historical aspects of our journey, Charles was a linguist, and Keith was a quiet man sent by our donor to oversee the expedition, document our findings, conditions among the team, among other things. We often joked that he was also a hatchet man that our donor would use to keep us quiet about the operation. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. If I knew then what I know now, I would have begged him to just shoot all of us there and then. I would have handed him my gun.

The ruins we found were located 120 kilometers outside of a small village beneath a mountain range, the name of which I won’t mention. It was a sad, empty place, to put it lightly. The moment we entered, we could see that the few tired, fearful villagers outside seemed to know what we were after, and they didn’t want us to find it. Even then, I couldn’t help but liken it to Jonathan Harker’s experience with the locals of Transylvania. This comparison persisted when Charles began to ask about the ruins, as he asked a local man about surveys conducted on the mountains. The man grew agitated and began to say things that Charles translated as, “We don’t talk about that place.” Naturally, this piqued our curiosity, so Charles offered to buy the man a drink at the local tavern in exchange for telling us what he knew. This gesture being the universal icebreaker, the gentleman, however reluctantly, took him up on it. He and Charles went into the tavern, and the rest of us waited, feeling the oppressive gloom of the town weighing on us.

We tried to keep things casual, but that sensation persisted up until Charles emerged about an hour later. He said that he had used up half of the money in his wallet that he brought just to get the man to tell him anything, and what he said had been equal parts fascinating and eerie. According to the man, nobody who ventured into those mountains ever came back. At least, they never came back as themselves. There was always something odd about them. This oddness had resulted in no less than fifty people dying in his lifetime alone. He never discussed the exact circumstances, but Charles had enough empathy to not push him further, especially not when the man said own brother had been a casualty. He had told him that he didn’t know what lay in those mountains, but whatever it was, we would be entering at our own risk. At the time, we dismissed it as local superstition, as anyone would, and reasoned that anyone who came from the mountain and died had been affected by isolation, changes in air pressure, pre-existing mental and medical conditions, virtually anything that wasn’t supernatural. This village was old, and saw very few modern commodities, so it would make sense that they would rely on such things to see them through. Perhaps we were trying to reassure ourselves.

At any rate, the man had told Charles where to mark the location on his map, and with that, we soon departed from the village to begin the trek up into the mountains. As we left, I looked back and was unnerved to see that everyone in the village had turned out as if to bid us farewell. They said nothing, but the somber expressions on their sallow faces said that they genuinely thought we were headed to our dooms.

We hiked through the forest that grew along the mountain and by the fifth hour, we had thoroughly convinced ourselves that there was nothing to be afraid of. We took occasional breaks for meals and rest, but we were all quite eager to see what had our client so interested in these ruins. Martin and I engaged in frequent conversations over what civilization the structures belonged to, or if it was possible that people might even live there. This possibility in particular intrigued Martin, who postulated that we might happen upon a tribe or race of humans more cut off from the civilized world than the village. He regaled us with fantastical possibilities of our respective civilizations learning from each other. None of us had the heart to remind him that if there had been people still there, the mountains wouldn’t be as wild as they still were, lacking footpaths and markers among other man-made things that would keep them from getting lost. About two days passed, and we continued hiking deeper into the mountains. The further we climbed, the mistier the air became. It wasn’t until noon of the second day that we stumbled upon it, literally. Martin’s foot connected with a loose rock and he almost tumbled off the side of the mountain. Luckily we caught him and hoisted him back up. He was shaken, but no worse for wear. However, it was when we looked in the direction in which he almost fell that we saw it.

What we had previously mistaken for a mountain range was a circular formation of smaller “mountains”, something that shouldn’t have been geologically possible. It was as if a colossal mountain had previously existed, but something large, a meteor perhaps, had struck the pinnacle. The resulting impact had changed the mountain into something resembling an enormous “crown” of rock and trees. Between the mist and the illusory mountains on all sides, one would need to have traveled in the direction we had to understand the nature of it. But what struck us more than that was the inside of that “crown.” We all saw it clearly, even with the fog tenaciously blocking out the sun. We said nothing, but I know we all believed the same thing: what lay before us was impossible.

It was an edifice of immaculate and bizarre construction. It was constructed of a material like obsidian and possessing an almost pyramid-esque shape. The dread and confusion that had gripped us broke when Leo gruffly asked what we were waiting for. Pushing the dread to the side for now, we began to descend the other side of the mountain, which was far smoother than the outside. We were able to reach the bottom with ease, and, given Leo’s military background, he estimated that we could make a quick and easy escape. As he said that, I felt the dread that already permeated the air around us slither down my spine. Why would we need to escape? If these ruins were mere ruins, then the only thing to fear would be hostile locals, which should have been little issue to a man accustomed to warfare. But the tone of his voice told me that it wasn’t men he was afraid of. No, he didn’t know what he was afraid of, and that in turn frightened us.

Trying to put brave faces on it, we began walking towards the structure, and the closer we got, the more it seemed unlike anything made on Earth. What I had initially mistaken for a pyramid had eight sides, and at the top of it was a strange, cube-like object that rotated slowly, letting out odd pulsing sounds as it glowed. Had I not known better, I might have thought that this thing was acting as a kind of artificial sun. Something I also noticed was that it seemed smaller in scale than it appeared from a distance, like some kind of optical illusion. What I had taken to be a twenty-foot-tall behemoth was in truth no bigger than an average suburban home. Before us stood a narrow entrance that was lit up perfectly by the cube. Without warning, the cube ceased its motions, and the structure shifted. All of us had, until that point, ba…

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