Chapter 5: The Art of Stealing Glances at an Overpriced Notebook

Okay, so technically, I stole it.

But in my defense, he totally left it for me to take it. I mean, what kind of secretive sea-loving mystery man packs a single, leather-bound notebook in the same bag where he pulled out his artifact, then "forgets" to take it when he leaves in the middle of the conversation just to go to the loo?

Exactly. A man who wants his thing to be 'taken'.

And I'm not talking in a suggestive way.

...Maybe?

Still, as I sat on the chair he'd "vacated," holding the notebook in my hands like it might bite me, I couldn't help but feel like I'd just opened Pandora's box. Only this one smelled faintly of sea salt and, for some reason, bergamot.

The cover was plain. Old. Worn. No locks. No name. Except on the front page. And no dramatic "DO NOT READ" scratched in ominous ink. Just one thin leather strap, like the kind you find on overpriced journals in museum gift shops.

I opened it anyway.

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January 15, 2009

"If you're reading this, I probably messed up. Or maybe I planned it this way. Honestly, hard to tell exactly why I'm starting this.

There's something about writing things down that makes them feel more mysterious. But lately, it became too mysterious. I used to think this notebook was just a way to cope with… well, everything. Now I'm using it to wrote down my life that became incredibly weird lately. Maybe I may find something by writing down my life from now on. Or maybe I'm just losing it."

"..."

"An old guy gave me this trident-shaped pendant today. Didn't speak much. Just stared at me with eyes that looked like they'd seen Atlantis and weren't impressed. He told me I 'had a role to play'. Whatever that means. I told him I don't do theater. He didn't laugh.

Anyway. I kept the pendant. For a day. Or at least I tried. It's ugly, heavy, and probably cursed. But every time I try to throw it away, it shows up somewhere in my stuffs. So... cool."

——————————

I blinked at the page. "Okay, we're officially in Crazytown."

And yet… something about it made me frown. Not the words—those were textbook cryptic nonsense—but the sketch on the side. A trident, yes, but not some random doodle. There were lines. Curves. Repetitions. Symbols that didn't feel decorative. They felt... linguistic.

But I was still very skeptical of the reality of all of this. If I didn't made some previous backgrounds check on this... Arthur Curry, I would have thought that he was just a guy who read too many comics and was trying to mess with me.

I turned the page, a little faster than I meant to.

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February 3, 2009

"It's getting weirder.

I started going to the beach more. It wasn't a conscious decision—it just kind of happened. Like I'd wake up and my feet would already be in the sand.

Thing is, I never liked the ocean. Big fish? Creepy. Saltwater in the eyes? Literal torture. But now… I don't know. It's like I can breathe better out there. Think clearer.

I even started swimming. Not well at first. But it's coming faster than it should. My muscles remember things I never learned. I move like I've been doing it for years.

I'm not training. I mean, sure, I did Muay Thai a lifetime ago, but this? This is different. And when I swim out farther—especially past the tide—I feel this… pull. Like I'm home. Like the ocean is waiting for me to remember something."

"..."

"Also, a seal followed me for two hours yesterday. Just… casually. Like a sea puppy with boundary issues. And other than the fact that a seal being near the Japanese sea is weird, what even weirder was the...tattoos? it had on its skin. Did I stumble into someone's pet?"

——————————

I snorted. "Sea puppy with boundary issues. I'm stealing that."

But my grin didn't last. It slipped right off my face the second my eyes landed on the seal sketched in the margin. There was something unsettling about it. Too precise. Too… deliberate. This wasn't some absentminded doodle. It was a studied reproduction, like someone had spent hours memorizing every line, every shadow, every curve.

And then there were the symbols. Those same unfamiliar markings danced around the seal in a tight, unbroken formation. No repeats. No lazy filler squiggles. Just a quiet, stubborn pattern I couldn't crack—yet.

——————————

February 15, 2009

"There was a shark.

Don't panic. I didn't.

It just… appeared. Not fast. Not aggressive. Just there. Watching me. I swear it was studying me. I felt like it knew me. And—here's the insane part—I wasn't afraid.

There was this moment where we just… connected. Not through sound. Not even eye contact, really. It was like a feeling passed between us.

And then it left."

"..."

"When I got out of the water, I felt something buzzing in my skin. Like electricity, only gentler. I don't know what's happening to me. But every time I go deeper into the sea, something in me shifts. Subtly. Quietly. Like a puzzle piece sliding into place."

——————————

My eyes trailed slowly over the next drawing.

Not a shark. Not exactly. The jaw structure was wrong. The fin placement was… off. Whatever it was, it wasn't in any marine biology textbook I'd read, and I'd read more than I care to admit on long flights with questionable Wi-Fi.

I glanced back at the symbols.

My archaeologist brain kicked in—the one that usually tangoed with ancient scripts and dead languages—and it started identifying familiar shapes. Recurring patterns. Repetition without randomness. This wasn't gibberish. This was something else.

Traces of some real culture.

'...But on a shark?'

I closed the notebook, flattening my hand over the cover as if I could calm the heartbeat suddenly hammering in my chest.

"Okay, Arthur," I murmured to the empty room. "For some reason, you're starting to make me doubt myself. And I really don't like that."

I flipped another page.

The handwriting had changed. Slightly. More confident? Or maybe just steadier, like whoever wrote it had finally stopped second-guessing every letter. There were coffee stains on the edge of the paper—real ones, not the Pinterest kind—and a crust of something that looked suspiciously like dried sea salt. Not the table kind. The kind you only collect after a proper dive.

Not a cruise. Not a guided tour.

A dive.

——————————

Journal Entry – October 8, 2009

"They said the coast off Galicia was cursed. That no one dives there without feeling… watched. But legends have always been magnetic to me.

I found something today. Not a shipwreck, not exactly. More like... remnants of a temple. There were pillars, eroded but still standing, and what looked like carved steps leading nowhere, swallowed by silt and coral. I brushed off one of the stones and found a mark. It looked like a trident—but not like the usual depictions. This one curved inward, almost like it was meant to contain something."

"..."

"I spent almost forty-five minutes underwater without noticing the time. That never happens. I should've been freezing. Or at least cramping. But I wasn't. Actually, I felt… stronger when I came up."

"Might be the adrenaline."

"Or something else."

——————————

I tilted my head and studied the sketch on the side of the page. It wasn't just a doodle. The proportions were meticulous, the lines carved with the obsessive care of someone who knows what they're looking for, even if apparently, he don't know why.

"Not bad." I muttered, tapping the trident symbol with a finger. I'd seen similar designs on ancient coins before, but this one had a flourish in the center. Almost like an eye. Or a sun. Either way, not decorative. Functional. Deliberate. Because it was drawn like it was inside a hole.

But the next page caught my breath.

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Journal Entry – November 2, 2009

"I went back. Had to."

"This time, I found a slab covered in strange carvings. Not quite Greek. Not quite Phoenician either. But still something of the same time. I've been sketching them every night, trying to match them to any known language. No luck. Not even close.

But something weird is happening. I'm starting to… understand the symbols. Like I'm seeing patterns I couldn't before. It's like my brain is rewiring itself slowly. Like the glyphs are teaching me."

"..."

"I don't think I'm sleeping much these days. But I don't feel tired."

"..."

"Also, my wetsuit's tighter around the shoulders. I must've put on a few pounds of muscle without realizing. Should probably stop lifting antique stones like a maniac.

But I need to know more."

——————————

I let out a long breath. "Okay, that's... weird."

People didn't just start understanding ancient languages by accident. Especially not languages that didn't match any known origin.

I scanned his notes again. The glyphs were everywhere now—lining the margins, filling in the blank spaces between paragraphs. He wasn't just copying them. He was thinking in them.

And some of the symbols repeated often. A lot of circles. A lot of three-pointed shapes. Water like glyphs. Something that almost look like a real language. This was either the world's most elaborate fantasy... or—

'No. Don't jump to conclusions, Lara.'

Still…

There was a timestamp scribbled in the corner of the next page. December 16, 2009. I remember that day. It was all over the news: Stark Industries had just pulled out of the weapons game. It was global headlines. And that meant Arthur had to be paying attention. He had some share in that company after all.

"Note to self: Stark came back. Good news. But he also stops selling weapons? Big shift. World feels like it's turning under us faster than before. Makes sense Atlantis would wake up now, if it ever did exist."

I stared at that line.

Atlantis.

He said it like it wasn't a metaphor anymore.

I turned the page, and I swear, my pulse slowed. Not from fear. From anticipation.

Something was changing. In the way he wrote. The tone had shifted. Less curious tourist, more reluctant… believer.

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Journal Entry – February 21, 2010

"I almost died today."

"No, seriously. Not like that one time I thought I could handle a Thai street curry without crying. Like actually died.

The dive was supposed to be easy. Shallow waters near the Portuguese coast. I'd been tracking sonar anomalies there—faint echoes of symmetrical stone formations. I found them. Little archways just barely visible under layers of sediment. Beautiful. Mysterious. Promising.

But my regulator jammed. Oxygen tank went from 40% to none in seconds.

I should've panicked. Should've drowned.

But I didn't. I kicked off the seabed and rose like a damn torpedo. No cramps, no blacking out. I broke the surface like some kind of oceanic miracle, sucking in air like it owed me money.

I didn't time it, but I swear I was under for… sixteen, maybe 20 minutes? More?"

"Note to self: start carrying a stopwatch. If I broke the world record, I want bragging rights."

"Even if it kills me."

——————————

I raised an eyebrow.

"No way," I whispered.

But then again… I'd once held my breath for 10 and a half minutes trying to open a sarcophagus in the Ganges delta. When the adrenaline kicks in, time gets slippery. Still, 20 minutes require more than luck. Much more.

——————————

Journal Entry – March 18, 2010

"The Bermuda Triangle."

"Yeah, I know. Everyone's favorite cliché.

But this wasn't just a lark. I had leads—real ones. Maritime whispers of something ancient buried deep. A tremor on a private seismic scan no one bothered to investigate.

So I dove."

"..."

"And there it was.

A structure. Small, no more than twenty feet wide. Stone covered in coral, but unmistakably carved. A temple. The kind meant to be worshipped in, not just admired.

And at its center… proof.

Carvings depicting a city underwater. Domes and towers. Glyphs I've only seen once before—in Galicia. Symbols that shouldn't match, but do. A broken tablet with coordinates etched along the rim. It was half-buried, but I photographed everything. Every. Damn. Inch.

Good thing too.

Because five minutes later, the place exploded.

No warning. No tremor. Just boom. The entire temple crumbled around me. Columns snapped. Ceiling collapsed. Something didn't want that place to be found. Or someone."

"..."

"I made it out by sheer instinct. My left shoulder's still sore. But just as I kicked away, I swear—I swear—I saw a shape in the shadows.

Humanoid. Watching. With a spear I think.

But when I blinked…nothing.

There's no photo of that unfortunately. But I will still have some new pictures to put in my USB drive."

——————————

I paused, fingers tightening around the edge of the notebook.

Photos. Those were the proof I needed.

I glanced around the room—Arthur's bag was still there. If he didn't bring the USB with him when he vanished…

'No. Focus.'

——————————

Journal Entry – April 10, 2010

"Brazil. Dead end. But Turkey was almost promising. Found shards of pottery with spiral motifs matching the triangle symbols. Might've just been coincidence.

Or someone cleaning up behind me.

This is happening more often. I get a lead, I follow it, and what I find is either gone—or just about to be. Like the ruins in the Aegean, bulldozed the day after I left. Or the archive in Dubrovnik, mysteriously "reorganized" before I arrived.

The closer I get to Atlantis, the faster it disappears.

And it's not just the sites. The records. The people too. One sailor I talked to vanished two weeks later. Left all his belongings behind. His fishing boat was found adrift with nothing but nets full of seaweed.

No blood. No signs of struggle.

Just... gone."

——————————

I swallowed.

Something was happening here. Something big. And if Arthur hadn't written this journal just to mess with me—and frankly, who has the time—then he might've stumbled onto some big conspiracy. Thinking back of Istanbul, I couldn't help but think about if they were responsible of it.

But the way they were so determined to catch me, was like they didn't want the world to know about it. And with the rumor of a Nordic god being seen in New Mexico a month ago, I'm weirdly starting to believe all of this nonsense.

But at the same time, I didn't want too, because now I was in the middle of it.

With his damn notebook in my hands.

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Journal Entry – May 5, 2010

"Another dead end.

This time it was off the coast of Mauritania. I arrived forty-eight hours after a local diver claimed he'd found 'stone steps underwater.' When I got there, the area had been completely dredged. Like someone vacuumed the ocean floor.

They even took the damn fishes around the area.

It's becoming a pattern. Someone's covering their tracks. Fast, clean, efficient. Makes me think I'm not the only one looking for this.

And whoever's ahead of me? They're winning."

——————————

I leaned back in the wooden chair, eyebrows drawn tight, a pen tucked between my lips like it held the answer to the universe.

I'd read thousands of fake journals in my life—half-baked myths rewritten by overzealous collectors or treasure hunters with too much time and not enough sanity. But this one... this one felt different.

It wasn't just what he wrote. It was how he wrote it.

The phrasing. The strange specificity. The quiet, almost apologetic doubt hiding between the lines. This wasn't some pompous man trying to impress the world with tales of grandeur.

No. This was the voice of someone genuinely searching for something.

But was getting frustrated by the dead end he found. I could relate to that.

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Journal Entry – May 29, 2010

"I started paying more attention to the medallion.

At first, it felt like a souvenir from a trip I didn't remember taking. But the more sites I visited—scattered ruins deep in the Atlantic—the more I noticed it.

Not the exact shape, not always… but parts of it. Engravings on broken walls. Carvings buried under algae. Bits and pieces that felt too familiar.

And the tridents… there were always tridents. 5 different kinds. But the one on my medallion wasn't of those 5. That the reason I previously ignore it

It was very different. More refined. Symmetrical lines, three blades curved inward instead of outward. As if meant to pierce within, not without.

That has to mean something."

——————————

I blinked.

'So, that's your secret huh?'

The drawing beside the text stopped me cold. It was detailed—painfully, obsessively so. That same trident symbol again, this time next to a sketched mural of what looked like an underwater chamber. Coral bloomed across the stonework with careful shading, fortunately he didn't mimicked the way water distorted the edges, that would be very inconvenient and stupid. But he did drawn his medallion on the side for comparaison.

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Journal Entry – June 11, 2010

"It hit me on the Pacific this time. A salvage crew tipped me off about a sunken cargo ship east of Bermuda—stuffed with relics not matching its manifest. The relics were fake. But hidden in a cracked wooden crate, I found a slab of metal with the same curvature as the back of my medallion."

"..."

"I lined them up. It clicked.

Literally.

There was a groove. A perfect one.

The medallion… it's not just symbolic.

It's a key."

——————————

My eyes widened.

I flipped the page, already leaning in, breath caught in my throat—and got half a sentence before—

Footsteps.

Close. Unhurried. Confident.

"Dammit," I whispered, snapping the journal shut.

Arthur's voice echoed faintly from the hall, something about cheap museum plumbing and ancient pipes. Cute. He had seconds of a head start. I had maybe three to disappear the evidence of my felony.

I scanned the room—dim lights, dusty corners, a dozen half-labeled relics watching me like they knew I'd been bad.

Then I saw it. A cracked ceremonial urn near the wall, stuffed with packing straw and forgotten dreams. I slipped the journal inside, careful not to stir the dust too much, and turned just in time.

He strolled in, hands deep in his pockets, smile crooked like he knew exactly what I'd done. His eyes were too calm.

"Miss me?" he asked.

I didn't bother matching his grin. Just leaned against the worktable, folded my arms, and snorted. "Barely."

------------------------------------

(Arthur pov)

So, I didn't stay in the hallway the whole time like a creep, but finally went to the restroom. But, I hadn't done a damn thing in that restroom.

Unless you count leaning against a suspiciously damp wall, arms crossed, waiting for the exact number of minutes it would take a brilliant woman with kleptomaniac tendencies to steal a certain old-looking notebook from my backpack.

Which she did. Of course she did.

I mean, who wouldn't?

I'd even left the strap unbuckled, like a dinner bell for archaeologists with boundary issues.

But that wasn't the reason I knew.

No. I knew because as I leaned there—one eye on the flickering ceiling light and the other on the old graffiti scratched into the door—I started remember things. Things I hadn't lived through five minutes earlier.

Like the sound of ancient stone cracking beneath my feet.

Or the pressure in my chest as I clawed upward, lungs burning, during that accident off the coast of Portugal.

And I remembered the photos.

Thousands of them, stored neatly on a USB drive I didn't own yesterday but was now resting safely in my pocket, as if it had always been there.

The images were clear. Blue-green ruins. Glyphs half-buried in coral. A fresco no one had ever seen—because it no longer existed.

But now, apparently, I had proof.

That's how I knew she read it. Lara Croft—impossibly sharp, always a step ahead, and just skeptical enough to keep me from becoming a Greek god overnight.

Her belief was cautious. But it was there.

Which was all I needed.

Well… maybe not all. The reality wrapping was minimal this time. No sudden eight-pack, no random trident tattoo glowing on my back. Just a vague sense of strength in my arms, like I'd started lifting again but forgot the gym.

Disappointing, really.

Still, the USB had manifested. And that meant progress.

I pushed the door open just in time to hear the scrape of wood against ceramic.

'Very subtle.' I thought sarcastically.

When I walked in, she didn't even flinch.

She didn't match my smile either.

Leaning against the worktable like it owed her money, she snorted in my direction.

"Barely."

And for some reason, that made me smile wider.