DIARY ENTRY #11

Date: March 25, 2023

Location: Offsite Camp, Chamber Theta

Vicinity – Bodh Gaya

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I do not wish to write this anymore, but the pen moves regardless. Maybe it's my compulsion to document everything. Maybe it's the thing that now breathes behind my ears.

One of us is dead again.

This time, I watched it happen.

It was Tanmaya. A gentle soul, one of the youngest on the Indian team. Her curiosity had always reminded me of myself when I started in the ASI—fascinated by lost cities and ancient rituals. But today… the sound she made before she collapsed—it wasn't a scream. It was like a prayer being sucked inward. Folded.

We were inside Chamber Theta, deeper than we've ever gone, with the full core team—20 members—and at least 6 interns. I had finally given in to the pressure to allow a collective exploration after the inscriptions from the outer walls began bleeding through carbon-layer rubbings. They weren't just writings—they were directives. Ritual instructions. Patterns. Maps. Summoning rites.

I remember distinctly telling the team to not engage in any interpretative performance of the chants. But I've come to learn that one of our members—Nakamura Kazuo (the Japanese epigraphist from Kyoto)—had already broken that rule days ago. Quietly. Alone.

He had made rubbings and transcriptions from the Bhantaragya scribe series—what we now believe were fragments from something called the Kaala Sutra Sangha. He thought it was Buddhist. He said it aligned with lost Mahāsāṃghika texts. But he was wrong. Dead wrong.

Tanmaya's death was not natural. Her body convulsed into a spiral—a literal spiral, as if her bones coiled inside her. Her mouth leaked ash. When we reached her, a symbol was etched across her forehead. Fresh. Carved—not tattooed—a circle intersected by three tapering points.

I froze. And then I remembered: Anoma's corpse had the same mark. We had assumed it was an old ink tattoo—maybe tribal, maybe symbolic.

I confronted Kazuo. He was pale. Shaking. Confessed everything.

> "I only chanted once," he said, voice thin as parchment.

"It didn't sound evil. It was melodic. Peaceful, like a heart murmur..."

He showed us the copied page he had written it from. The ink had bled across the rice parchment. We looked closer—beneath the handwritten lines, something was appearing. Not from the top. From beneath. Like the paper was being rewritten from the other side.

That's when the chanting began.

Not from us. Not from any human throat.

But from the walls.

From behind the bricks of the chamber. The sound looped—like a guttural mantra. Not Sanskrit. Not Pali. Not Tibetan. Something older, more primal.

Even our Srilankan historian, Dr. Chandrika Illangakoon, turned pale. She whispered that the rhythm matched no canonical Buddhist cadence—but perhaps something from pre-Buddhist folk-monastic cults. The kinds that were purged from the Tripiṭaka.

I wanted to evacuate. I demanded it.

But then I realized—we can't.

Our radios don't work.

Phones won't dial out.

The backup satellite modem won't connect. No outgoing signals.

We tried to leave—there is no exit anymore.

Where our road used to be, there is now an endless wall of overgrowth and stone. Like the jungle moved.

Even the sun doesn't rise quite right anymore. The light bends differently. As if we're not in Bodh Gaya at all. As if we've been moved.

Trapped.

The team panicked. There was yelling. Some blamed me again. Others broke down crying. The Thai intern Mira began reciting verses from the Mangala Sutta. I heard her voice crack. The walls listened. I swear they did.

It was then that I snapped us back. I told them:

> "Panicking won't save us. We're too deep in. If Bhantaragya has been awakened… then maybe the scribe Kazuo read holds more than just invocation. Maybe… maybe it contains the key to seal him again."

They listened.

Not because they trust me anymore—but because I am the only one not falling apart yet.

I ordered every copied page and digital file to be brought to my tent. I've locked myself in. The manuscript is open. The symbols are not still anymore.

They breathe.

Somewhere outside, the chanting continues. The wind now carries it like a lullaby meant for corpses.

I'm going to start decoding the next verse now. If this is madness, then I must lose my mind with precision.

I do this not to save myself,

but because Bhantaragya kn

ows my name now.

— Advait Sen

Senior Archaeologist, ASI

Trapped.

Still writing.