Date: March 27, 2023
Location: Chamber Theta, Sublevel 2 — Bodh Gaya Excavation Site
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If you're reading this... you're already too close.
I don't know how long we've been trapped here.
Time is folding at the corners.
The birds are gone. No wind outside.
The interns say the satellite phones still show signal, but no call connects.
Our laptops show email drafts saved... but none were ever sent.
We've been documenting—but only within these walls. Nothing's gone beyond.
We were never meant to contact the outside. Not after he woke.
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From this entry forward, I am not writing just to stay sane—though, God knows, that's part of it.
I write this because if we die, if this team is consumed like the last…
then let this journal survive. Let it act as a warning.
A line drawn in ash before the abyss.
So, I will now begin recording everything we know about Bhantaragya.
Every deciphered page, every whispered clue.
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THE LIFE AND DESCENT OF BHANTARAGYA
(Compiled from Scrolls A, D, Theta Manuscript 3, and relic inscriptions)
Bhantaragya—his name roughly translates to "He Who Severs the Samsaric Flame."
He was once a revered monk in a forgotten monastic outpost, likely located near modern-day Araria, long since devoured by forest and time.
From what we understand, Bhantaragya was a genius—a visionary in a time when spiritual tradition ruled with iron silence. He questioned the Wheel. Saw reincarnation not as a blessing or a curse—but as a trap.
He believed Nirvana was a flawed promise. A stale, unfulfilling silence.
In his writings, he refers to the great lie of the Middle Path, calling it:
> "A lullaby for the sleeping spirit, so it forgets it is in a cage."
He began conducting forbidden rituals—spiritual surgeries.
He experimented with his own soul—attempting to isolate consciousness, shed identity, and reverse karmic imprinting. Some entries suggest he used acolytes, followers who "volunteered" for deeper initiations.
We found this line etched into an obsidian disc beneath the altar:
> "To exit the Wheel, one must become the spoke."
He built the Spiral Door Ritual, combining deep tantric isolation, blood-scribing, corpse fasting, and something we still don't fully understand—a chant that requires twenty-one voices in precise disharmony.
When performed, he claimed it pierced illusion, revealed "The Echo Realms"—places where thought dies and the soul floats in pure, terrifying awareness.
We believe Bhantaragya opened it.
But something came through.
Or maybe… he stepped into it—and what returned wasn't him anymore.
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From the chants we recovered, and the visions some interns report during dream states, we've patched together fragments of what followed.
> The sky around the monastery blackened for seven days.
The monks inside ceased to respond.
Villagers claimed the walls began bleeding.
Some say a single monk walked out—covered in gold dust, eyes sewn shut.
His tongue was gone. In its place, a spiral symbol.
Shortly after, the monastery was sealed from historical record.
No written text remains of its existence—except here, buried in this pit in Bodh Gaya.
We believe the manuscripts we found are what Bhantaragya transcribed after the transformation. They are alive with strange ink. Some change when unread. Others bleed when left open under moonlight.
The phrase "Anta-Vaana" returns often.
We now believe it was not a place, but a state—a cursed liberation, where the soul continues to exist, but under Bhantaragya's eye.
A living library of the damned.
A Nirvana twisted into a containment.
And now, someone here has reopened the Spiral.
The symbols have begun reappearing—in shadows, on walls, on skin.
We've confirmed the two dead team members bore the exact sigil from the spiral mudra in Scroll Theta-4. And now that we've translated the Final Canto of the ritual, it is horrifyingly clear:
> "The first dies for opening."
"The second dies for doubt."
"The third dies for warning."
"The rest—become vessels."
I do not know which of us will be next.
But I will continue to write, as long as I can.
We must find the Seal Chant. There must be something Bhantaragya feared.
If he left a gate open, maybe he also left a way to shut it.
I will gather the team tomorrow.
We cannot panic. Not yet.
If I stop writing and the ink keeps f
lowing—
Do not trust these pages anymore.
— Advait Sen
Senior Archaeologist
The last light in the Spiral Door