Date: April 2, 2023
Location: Western Vault – Chamber 3A, Bodh Gaya Site
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I watched a man disappear today.
Vikram—one of the senior restoration analysts—was holding a sigil-carved amulet we unearthed near the reverse-mandala.
It pulsed once—like a heartbeat—and then he was gone.
Not vaporized.
Not dissolved.
Just… gone.
The dust beneath his feet didn't even scatter.
He screamed as he vanished.
But it came half a second after he vanished.
As if his voice lagged behind his soul.
We don't know what the amulet is.
But the same spiral is etched on two bones found near Bhantaragya's pit.
One team member whispered that they weren't bones—they were relics.
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We're now certain:
Bhantaragya did not ascend.
He was cursed to remain, locked in a karmic loop, a soul so bloated with lifetime residues that it could no longer escape.
He built this structure to contain himself, until someone foolish enough broke the stasis.
We were that someone.
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Lu, one of the Chinese interns, found an account in an alternate manuscript—a transcribed dream of Bhantaragya:
> "When my eyes shut, I see the world for what it is—a circle devouring itself. I will carve sigils into time. And when they are read, I shall wake in all who read me."
That's not poetry.
That's programming.
He embedded himself into syntax.
A linguistic contagion.
Every time we read, we invite him further in.
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I'm done obeying the fear.
We are scientists.
But we are also witnesses now.
I will document every word.
Every death.
Every breach in reality.
Because if this ends with me—someone, someday, must read and know that we were here.
That Bhantaragya was real.
And he is waking.
— Advait Sen
Lead Archaeologist, Bodh Gaya Site
April 2, 2023