Chapter 2: The Secret of the Guardians

Leah's fingers paused on the waterproof pouch in the innermost pocket of her backpack. The rough texture of the bark-paper star chart pressed through the plastic film, carrying the last traces of her father's presence. Behind her, the innkeeper's worried gaze and the muddy roads faded into irrelevance. Now, she stood at the true threshold of the rainforest, where the air was so thick it could be wrung out, saturated with the metallic sweetness of soil and the overwhelming scent of countless plants decaying and reborn. Sunlight struggled through the layered canopy, casting fractured, swaying patches of light on the soft humus beneath her feet.

"Dr. Castro?"

Leah snapped back to attention. Renée Monteiro stood a few paces away. The indigenous guide was more powerfully built than Leah had imagined—her practical khaki expedition clothes stretched taut over a sturdy frame, her exposed arms and legs marked with old scars of varying depths, badges of honor bestowed by the rainforest. Her jet-black hair was pulled tightly into a thick braid that hung down her back. Most striking were her amber eyes, sharp as a hawk's, piercing enough to see straight through a person.

"Renée," Leah said, extending her hand, forcing her voice to remain steady. "Thank you for agreeing to help me."

Renée's grip was dry, rough, calloused—strong as a vise. "Your father was a good man," she said, her voice low and steady, devoid of unnecessary pleasantries. "Finding out what happened to him matters to me too. But we don't have much time." She glanced at Leah's backpack. "The river's receding slowly. What's beneath the water is hungrier now."

The gear check was brief and efficient. Compass, water purification tablets, first-aid kit, insect repellent, rope, machete. Renée's equipment bore the marks of a hunter: a well-worn, heavy hunting knife and a sleek composite bow with a dull sheen.

"Can you use that?" Leah couldn't help but eye the bow.

Renée's lips twitched into something close to a feral grin. "Quieter than a gun. And," she patted the quiver slung across her back, "as long as I can draw the string, I'll never run out of bullets. Enough to handle whatever surprises this jungle throws at us."

For the next two hours, they squeezed into a narrow dugout canoe, paddling upstream along the turbid main river. The water was like melted chocolate, carrying broken branches and unidentifiable plant debris. The rhythmic dip of the paddles was swallowed by the endless green walls on either side. Then the boat turned into a more secluded tributary. The water grew shallower, the vegetation on the banks like frantic prisoners, stretching out vines and aerial roots, eager to seal off the river entirely. The canopy closed overhead, plunging them into sudden gloom. The air grew stifling, thick with clouds of mosquitoes that swarmed toward any exposed skin.

"Here," Renée's voice shattered the oppressive silence. She signaled for the boatman to drag the canoe onto a small patch of muddy bank. "From here on, the boat's just dead weight."

Stepping onto the true rainforest floor, Leah finally understood the weight of this "green hell." Beneath her feet was a thick, seemingly endless layer of leaf litter, each step sinking in with an unsettling squelch. The sounds from all directions formed an unceasing backdrop—shrill bird calls, the drone of insect wings, the distant shrieks of monkeys, and closer by, the rustling of something sizable moving cautiously through the undergrowth. The humidity wasn't just in the air—it clung like a film, drenching her shirt in sweat almost instantly.

Renée moved like a sharp machete, silently cleaving through the tangled vines and low-hanging branches ahead. Her motions were precise, efficient, carrying an innate rhythm, as if she were an extension of the rainforest itself.

"You're like him," Renée's voice came from up ahead, without turning. "Stubborn. Won't stop until you hit a wall."

Leah carefully stepped over a brightly colored venomous snake coiled on a rotting log, her heart still hammering. "You went into the rainforest with my father?"

"Three times." Renée's footsteps seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second, her voice lowering. "The last time, he said he'd found a solid lead. Insisted on going alone. I should've gone with him." There was a hint of something unreadable in her tone—regret?

Leah's chest tightened. "Did he… mention any particular discoveries?"

Renée stopped and turned. In the dim light, her amber eyes looked bottomless. She studied Leah, as if weighing something. "He said it wasn't the Golden City—at least, not the kind piled with gold we imagined." Her voice dropped to a whisper, the kind reserved for forbidden truths. "He said… there was something there. Something not of this world."

A chill crawled up Leah's spine. The Guardians! The door! The vague, unsettling phrases from her father's notes and letter suddenly crystallized. She nearly tore the waterproof pouch from her inner pocket, pulling out the star chart. "Did he mention this?"

Renée's gaze locked onto the unfolded star chart, her pupils dilating. "That's it!" Her hand lifted, fingers hovering over the aged bark paper with something like reverence. "He called it the 'key'—something that could open the door to… somewhere."

"Where?" Leah pressed, her voice strained.

Renée shook her head slowly, her expression complicated. "He wouldn't say. But that night…" She paused, as if reliving a distant memory. "I'd never seen him like that. Thrilled enough to fly… and terrified enough to have seen hell." She said no more, turning back to lead the way. "Move. We need to reach the first high ground before dark."

The terrain grew treacherous. Slick rocks covered in moss, enormous gnarled roots forming natural steps that hid pitfalls. Leah's legs felt like lead, her lungs burning with every climb. But she gritted her teeth. Her father had sweated through this same jungle. She wouldn't stop.

By the time the last light of dusk was nearly swallowed by the dense canopy, they finally reached a small, relatively flat and dry rocky outcrop. Renée swiftly cleared a space and lit a fire using a special technique for damp wood. The smoke curled upward, pungent and sharp, driving away most of the bloodthirsty insects.

"Eat." Renée thrust a pack of ration bars and a water bottle at Leah, her tone brooking no argument. "Tomorrow's path will only be worse."

Night swallowed the rainforest whole. The darkness wasn't just an absence of light—it had mass, temperature, sound. The crackling fire was their only feeble light and barrier against the void. Leah lay in a hammock strung between two trees, her body exhausted but her mind unnervingly alert. She stared up at the few stars visible through the canopy gaps, like chips of diamond scattered on black velvet. From her inner pocket, she drew her father's pocket watch. The cold brass gleamed dully in the faint light, the family crest etched clearly on the back. Her fingers traced the familiar dent—her clumsy childhood mark. The hands were frozen at 3:17 p.m.—the eternal moment her father's signal had vanished.

"Renée," Leah's voice cut through the night, faintly trembling, "did my father… ever say anything specific about the Guardians?"

By the fire, Renée froze mid-motion as she inspected her bowstring and arrows. Silence stretched between them, broken only by the fire's crackle and the rainforest's endless background noise. After a long moment, she spoke, her voice so low it seemed afraid of disturbing some unseen listener.

"Only once." She lifted her head, her amber eyes reflecting the firelight with something unreadable. "He said they were the guardians of the Golden City… but not human, not any living thing we know." Her gaze drifted beyond the firelight, into the ink-black darkness. "He said they'd slept so long even time forgot them… but if they woke…"

"What happens if they wake?" Leah held her breath.

Renée's voice dropped to a whisper. "He didn't finish." A pause, as if chewing on the weight of the memory. "But the look on his face… I'll never forget. It wasn't fear of beasts or disasters, Leah. It was… staring into an abyss cracking open at your feet."

Leah clenched the cold pocket watch, its edges biting into her palm. Dread coiled around her heart like icy vines. Legends of the Golden City swirled in her mind—an Incan refuge? An Aztec treasure vault? An alien outpost? Her father, rigorous, rational, an enemy of pseudoscience, had scoffed at such tales. Yet now, it seemed he'd been pulled into a vortex far beyond ordinary comprehension. The Guardians… What were they, really?

The next day, the rainforest greeted them with an even fiercer face. Overnight rain had turned the already slippery ground into a quagmire. Vines and thorned plants seemed even more desperate to block their path. Renée's machete swung faster, sweat glistening on her copper skin. Leah followed closely, every step cautious, exhaustion seeping into her bones—but her father's star chart and Renée's words lashed at her like invisible whips.

At noon, they reached a cliff edge. Below, instead of jungle, stretched a black swamp ruled by massive red mangrove roots. The murky water was dotted with oily green duckweed, unnervingly still. The air reeked even more strongly of decay.

"The entrance marked on the star chart should be near here," Leah panted, unfolding the bark paper again. Her fingers traced the river's endpoint, stopping at the strange symbol beside it—three concentric circles and a cluster of star-like dots. Her father's small notation echoed in her mind: "When the stars sink beneath the water, the path will reveal itself in the reflection."

Reflection? The water was murky as ink—what could it reflect?

"When the stars sink beneath the water…" Leah muttered. Her gaze flickered between the swamp's surface and the isolated symbol on the star chart. Three concentric circles… dotted markings… sinking beneath… Not a reflection on the water's surface! A perspective—looking up from beneath the water! That symbol was an orientation marker for specific constellations viewed from below!

"Renée!" Leah's voice rose with excitement. "I've got it! It's not about reflections on the water! We need to go under—look up from below at the specific star positions! That's how we find the entrance!"

A sharp glint flashed in Renée's eyes. Without hesitation: "Which stars? Where?"

Leah quickly looked up, struggling to orient herself through the canopy gaps. "Orion's Belt! The three-star alignment! Right now, they're… southeast, low angle!" She pointed toward a section of the swamp's edge choked with dense vines and roots. "The entrance should be underwater there! About thirty meters out!"

Renée's gaze locked onto the target area like a precision scope. That patch of bank looked no different from the rest—tangled with serpentine mangrove roots, draped in thick green curtains, lifeless.

"We'll chance it," Renée's voice was steel. She swiftly shrugged off her pack, wrapping it tightly in waterproof fabric before slinging it back on, leaving only the machete at her waist. She turned to Leah, her gaze unyielding: "I'll go down. You keep watch. Anything moves, use this." She pressed a flare gun into Leah's hand.

"Renée! It's too dangerous! Whatever's down there—" Leah stared at the occasional dark shapes darting beneath the murky surface, at the ominous ripple gliding silently farther out, her throat dry.

"The stars won't stay at that angle forever, Doctor," Renée cut in, already kicking off her boots. "Trust your chart, or trust whatever teeth are down there?" Her lips twisted into something closer to a hunter's snarl than a smile. Before Leah could protest further, she took a deep breath and slipped into the black, treacherous swamp like a fish returning to the depths, swallowed instantly by the dark water.

The surface rippled briefly, then stilled into suffocating calm. Leah's pulse pounded in her ears, her fingers white-knuckled around the flare gun's cold trigger. Her eyes stayed fixed on where Renée had vanished, and beyond, where the water lay ominously still. Time seemed to freeze, every second stretching into eternity. No sound came from below—only, in the distance, the ominous splash of something large disturbing the water.

Then—

A violent churning erupted about ten meters downstream from where Renée had disappeared! The murky water frothed and fumed as a long, indistinct shadow thrashed beneath the surface! A caiman! It had been disturbed!

Leah's blood turned to ice! Her finger jerked toward the flare gun's trigger!

At the last possible second—

"Here!" A sharp, muted shout came from beneath the vine-choked bank they'd marked! Renée! Then a deep, wet grinding, like heavy stone sliding through mud!

"Leah! The door—it's open!" Renée's voice was ragged, echoing as if through a tunnel.

Leah whipped her head around—there, behind the thick vines, gaped a dark, upward-sloping passage! Murky water was already swirling inside! And downstream, the disturbed caiman had clearly noticed the bigger disturbance—its massive tail slapped the water as its armored head swung toward the opening, accelerating with terrifying speed!

"RUN!" Renée's soaked form flashed at the entrance, arm outstretched.

Adrenaline exploded through Leah like magma. She grabbed her pack and sprinted for that passage reeking of mud and corroded metal, her boots slipping on the slick bank. She seized Renée's wet, freezing but impossibly strong hand and was yanked violently inside! As she tumbled into darkness, her peripheral vision caught the caiman's gaping maw, rank breath hot on her heels, already at the entrance's edge!

​BOOM—!!!​​

A deafening, stone-on-stone impact! A massive, unmistakably mechanical slab dropped like a guillotine from above the entrance, crushing down with a force that sent water and debris flying!

The caiman's snout smashed full-force into the suddenly sealed door with a sickening crunch! The entire tunnel shuddered, loose stones clattering down. Outside, the enraged beast's roars and tail-thrashing were muffled but no less terrifying.

Inside, pitch black. Only their ragged, wheezing breaths filled the narrow, dripping space. Water rose to their calves. The near-death terror and the door's unnatural, mechanized slam hung like ice around Leah's heart. Renée fumbled for her waterproof flashlight—the dim beam pierced the dark, illuminating the flowing black water and the smooth, unmistakably carved stone walls of the tunnel. The passage sloped upward, into deeper unknowns.

Had they succeeded? No. This cold, seamless, undeniably artificial tunnel felt more like prying open Pandora's box. Her father's desperate warning—"The Guardians awaken. The door cannot be opened."—echoed in this enclosed stone throat like a living curse.

After what felt like an eternity wading through the narrow, water-carved tunnel, time lost meaning in the absolute dark and monotonous sloshing. The passage abruptly steepened, the water thinning to nothing. Ahead, a faint glow appeared—not daylight, but a cold, subterranean radiance.

They crawled out of the tunnel mouth. When their eyes adjusted, breath and time alike were stolen by the impossible sight before them.

They stood on a high cliff's edge. Below, stretching vast enough to induce vertigo, lay an enormous subterranean space. And in its heart—a city.

But no city from human history.

No stone palaces, no vine-choked ruins. Instead, sprawling before them were sleek, metallic structures of impossible design—smooth curves nested, stacked, extended in geometries both organic and unnervingly precise, like the fossilized innards of some ancient deep-sea leviathan turned to metal. Their surfaces, under the faint ambient glow (from cracks in the cavern roof? Or the city's own dim luminescence?), were a deep, uniform gunmetal gray, untouched by rust, impossibly flawless.

The city wasn't entirely dead. A vibration, almost imperceptible yet omnipresent, hummed through the metal ground beneath their feet—like the slow, deep breath of a slumbering beast. It resonated in their bones, syncing unnervingly with their heartbeats, stirring primal unease.

No plants. No water. Just cold metal curves gleaming dully. The air was dry, frigid, tinged with something like ozone and ancient dust. Vast, twisted shadows slithered between the non-Euclidean structures, alive in a way that made the skin crawl.

"My God…" Leah's voice was a dry rasp. All romantic notions of the Golden City shattered before this surreal vision. This was no Mayan, no Incan, no human creation.

Beside her, Renée's flashlight beam trembled slightly as it swept over a vast, sloping metal wall below. Her face—usually so composed, so attuned to jungle dangers—was frozen in unprecedented horror. Her grip on the machete turned her knuckles white, but the primitive weapon seemed laughably insignificant against this cold, silently screaming metal labyrinth.

"Your father was right…" Renée's voice was a stunned whisper. "…this wasn't built by humans."

Was this what her father had sought? Not ruins. The star chart had led not to a tomb, but to a… nest? The Guardians… Was that deep hum their slumbering breath?

"Move." Renée's voice was taut as an overstrung bow. She pointed toward the city's center, where a structure loomed taller and more complex than the rest—a pyramidal spire, its apex pulsing with a faint blue glow, slow as a sleeping heart. "There… the core." Her hunter's instincts, honed in the jungle, seemed to latch onto the most lethal target even here.

They picked their way down a steep, narrow staircase carved into the cliff—equally metallic, equally seamless, equally unsettling with every echoing footfall. The hum grew louder, vibrating through their soles, syncing unnervingly with their pulses.

The city's central plaza was unnervingly vast, its floor a single seamless metal plate mirroring the twisted cavern roof and the central spire's distorted reflection. That spire—altar? control tower?—stood monolithic, its surface etched with incomprehensible ridges and grooves that looked less like decoration and more like… circuitry. The faint blue pulse at its peak was stronger here, stubborn as a dying ember.

As they neared the spire's base, Renée's flashlight suddenly froze on a patch of metal. There, on the smooth gray surface, was an inscription.

Not Mayan glyphs. Not any human script. The symbols were jagged, frenetic, painful to look at—like needles stabbing the optic nerve, radiating pure, nameless hostility.

But what made Leah's blood freeze was what lay beneath those alien marks:

​THE GUARDIANS AWAKEN. THE DOOR CANNOT BE OPENED.​​

The words were gouged violently into the metal, the edges ragged, desperate. Her father's handwriting. Leah would know it anywhere—the same script that had filled her childhood notebooks, his expedition journals. He had stood here, two decades ago, and carved this final, damning warning into this impossible metal.

"Dad…" Leah's voice broke. Her fingers trembled as they brushed the cold grooves, as if she could touch the terror he'd felt. What had he seen? What could make a seasoned explorer so desperate? The hum… was it truly the Guardians' slumbering breath?

Renée's hand clamped on Leah's shoulder like a vise, her flashlight beam jerking toward the spire's strange grooves and the shifting, monstrous shadows around them. Her breathing turned ragged, her body coiled like a spring, ears straining for the slightest anomaly.

"The marks…" Renée's voice was disbelieving. "…they look fresh." Her eyes locked onto her father's carving. This metal city felt ancient as the stars, yet his words looked as sharp as if etched yesterday. It defied logic.

Then Leah's gaze caught something on the spire's base—a recessed circular slot, exactly the size and shape of her star chart's strange material. Inside the slot, fine grooves converged on a small, cross-shaped protrusion.

The star chart was the key. The trigger for this inhuman mechanism.

The realization struck like lightning. Her father had found this place. He'd had the star chart. He must have seen this slot. Yet instead of inserting it, he'd carved his warning in abject terror, then… vanished. Had he halted some process? Were the Guardians only half-awake because he refused to turn the key? Was this "breathing" just the edge of slumber?

Fear and desperate curiosity warred in Leah's mind. Her father's fate, this city's secret, the truth behind the hum—it was right here. But his warning, carved with such violence into this impossible metal, burned like a brand into her soul.

"No—" Renée snarled, instantly recognizing Leah's intent.

Too late. A compulsion—twenty years of obsession, of needing answers, of a buried hope that maybe he wanted me to finish this—overwhelmed reason. Leah's shaking hands drew the star chart from her pocket. In the dim glow, its edges seemed to faintly pulse.

"Leah! Look!" Renée's grip became bone-crushing, her voice a near-roar. "Your father carved that warning with his life! The door cannot be opened!"

"I know! I know!" Leah's voice was a raw shriek, but her eyes stayed locked on that slot. "But why leave the chart? If he truly wanted to stop anyone, why not destroy it? He took it out! Out of here! Renée! He wanted someone to know! To find the truth! Or—or maybe he needed someone to finish what he couldn't—" Her mind fractured—was her father the terrified man who left the warning? Or the explorer who left clues, who needed the truth uncovered?

"Or it's a trap! His last desperate line of defense!" Renée roared, trying to physically drag Leah back. "This place is wrong! That sound—it's changing!" The hum had grown louder, quicker, as they neared the spire.

The argument was meaningless. Leah's arm was already lifting, the star chart trembling violently in her grip as she pressed it toward the slot.

The chart's edges fit perfectly, as if made for it. When the cross-shaped protrusion met its counterpart—

​Click.​​

A tiny, deafening sound.​

No longer a slow breath. A sound beyond description erupted from the spire's core, from the metal beneath their feet, from every smooth surface—a roar like a billion metal beasts unchained, like the planet's core igniting. Deafening highs and bone-grinding lows merged into a physical shockwave!

The ground beneath them was no longer solid—it bucked and twisted like boiling liquid metal! The cavern roof groaned, raining metallic dust! Leah and Renée were hurled to the ground like leaves in a hurricane, ears filled with mind-breaking static, organs churning, vision whiting out!

Light! Blinding light!

The spire's faint blue glow exploded like a supernova! Cold, searing blue-white energy erupted from its peak, racing along every groove and ridge like living, furious lightning! The entire structure transformed in seconds from dead metal to a snarling, light-wreathed monstrosity!

The energy didn't stop. It surged outward in waves, igniting similar patterns on the plaza floor, the surrounding buildings—the entire city lighting up like a chain reaction!

​BOOM—!!! BOOM—!!!​​

More detonations shook the cavern as distant structures awoke! The darkness was banished by an unnatural, icy radiance, reflecting off every metallic surface, casting monstrous, writhing shadows on the walls!

The city! It was alive!

Leah and Renée were tossed like driftwood in this storm of light and sound. Renée clung to Leah's arm, her face bloodless in the blue glare, mouth moving soundlessly. Leah's world was reduced to violence and noise, her mind fraying at the edges.

Then—amidst the chaos—Leah's gaze locked onto something at the spire's base.

A small, circular platform had slid smoothly from the metal, unnoticed until now. At its center, hovering a few centimeters above the surface, untouched by the cataclysm around it, was an object.

An old, brass pocket watch.

The dent on its case was unmistakable—Leah's childhood mark.

Her father's watch.

It floated serenely at the heart of the maelstrom, turning slowly, as if existing outside time itself.

In that moment, all the fragments—her father's warning, his watch, the awakened city—collided. The answer seemed to hover there, in the watch's cold rotation, just out of reach. The secret of the Guardians, like the watch itself, revealed only a sliver of its depth amidst the storm.