Date: March 30, 2023
Location: Chamber Theta – Bodh Gaya Site
---
It's not just the ground anymore.
Something is breathing in the walls.
We heard it last night—soft at first, like someone dragging cloth across stone.
But then it turned rhythmic.
Deliberate.
A pulse. A whisper. A breath.
And the sound came from inside the stone itself.
No wind. No rodents.
Only the chant returning, low and wet and thick with syllables that crack sanity.
---
This morning we found blood dripping from the top seam of Chamber Theta's entrance, though no one had gone near it all night.
It wasn't dry.
It was warm.
Krishnan vomited when he touched it. He swore he saw faces in the droplets. Infants. Old men. All of them... chanting.
I'd tell you it's impossible, but I don't write this diary to rationalize anymore.
---
Scroll Theta-9 has been partially deciphered.
It gives us Bhantaragya's final rites—not of ascension, but of infection.
He intended to plant a piece of his soul in every text, and let his echo become self-aware through human attention.
Every time someone read his chants, the words looked back.
They nested in the mind.
They restructured dreams.
He wrote:
> "I shall be read into flesh. I shall be remembered into bone. You will mistake my voice for your own."
He didn't just preserve himself.
He coded himself into language.
---
Zhang is no longer Zhang.
His skin is splitting into calligraphy—blackened ink lesions. His voice only chants, no language anymore.
We tied him down, but this evening, his restraints were cut.
No one confessed to freeing him. No tools were used.
It was as if the leather slit itself.
He now crouches in the far end of the chamber, smiling at the stone.
Every few minutes, he whispers:
> "You heard it too... didn't you, Sen?"
I didn't answer.
Because I did.
And I still do.
---
Intern Rukmini is deteriorating mentally.
She claimed her dream last night had her walking inside Bhantaragya's skull, each step on his tongue.
She could see us all trapped in his neural folds, like parasites.
She says he's dreaming us, not the other way around.
And now, she refuses to touch any more relics.
Good.
She's still sane enough to fear.
---
The most horrifying discovery of the day came from Devraj and Hiroshi.
They managed to decode the last layer of Tablet Sigma.
It was not a prayer.
It was a map.
But the coordinates?
They match this site.
Exactly.
But that's not the problem.
The problem is that the tablet is 1600 years old, and it includes blueprints of the current excavation tents, our satellite dishes, and our generator layout.
Down to the last bolt.
Down to the timestamp of our arrival—March 16, 2023.
And beside it, a line carved in Sanskrit:
> "They shall come when the chant returns, and they shall die not knowing they were always here."
---
I don't know if we were drawn here… or if we were always meant to be here.
Maybe we didn't discover Bhantaragya.
Maybe he remembered us.
Tomorrow, I begin digging beneath the altar of Chamber Theta.
There's something sealed beneath the chanting stones.
It pulses when I get close.
If I don't return, this diary is no longer a record.
It's a warning.
— Advait Sen
Lead Archaeologist, Team Theta
Bodh Gaya Ruins
March 30, 2023