FIELD LOG 04 — THE SECOND DESCENT

Expedition Archive // Restricted Access
Recovered Documents Dated: October 18th, 1911
Author: Elias Voss

My father became impossible to reason with after Hollow Peak.

The black fragment never left his side. He carried it constantly, wrapped inside cloth beneath his coat as though afraid someone might take it from him.

Or as though it might try to return to the mountain without him.

The dreams grew worse after our first expedition.

No longer fragments.

Entire places.

Endless corridors beneath black stone towers.
Ash falling like snow across ruined kingdoms.
And always the same distant sound echoing somewhere beneath the world itself.

Three slow impacts.

Every dream ended the same way.

With something enormous moving behind the Black Sun.

My father stopped denying what was happening to us.

He believed the fragment was connected to whatever remained sealed beneath Hollow Peak. More than once I caught him holding the object against maps and journal pages, tracing patterns only he seemed able to understand.

Then, one morning, he simply announced we were returning.

Not because he wanted answers.

Because he believed the mountain was “calling” to the fragment.

I refused at first.

For the first time in my life, my father looked genuinely angry with me.

“You heard it too,” he said.
“You know this is real.”

Three days later, we descended into Hollow Peak for the second time.

The tunnels had changed.

Passages we previously used no longer existed. Entire walls had collapsed inward, exposing smooth black structures buried beneath the natural rock itself.

Not ruins.

Architecture.

The deeper we travelled, the warmer the tunnels became. Condensation covered the walls despite freezing temperatures outside the mountain.

Then the whispers began.

Not faint this time.

Clear.

Dozens of overlapping voices somewhere beyond the stone.

At first I could not understand the words.

My father could.

He stopped repeatedly throughout the descent as though listening to instructions only he could hear.

I should have left him there.

But he was still my father then.

We eventually reached a vast chamber far below the original excavation tunnels.

Ancient chains descended endlessly into darkness beneath the floor. Massive pillars surrounded the chamber walls, covered in the same symbols we had discovered near the Black Sun carving.

And at the centre stood another stone door.

Larger than the first.

The black fragment reacted immediately.

The markings across its surface illuminated beneath the lantern light while the whispers inside the chamber suddenly fell silent.

Every sound stopped.

Even the mountain itself.

My father stepped toward the door slowly, almost hypnotised.

Then the stone moved.

Only slightly.

Just enough for darkness to appear within the opening.

Something shifted behind it.

Not a figure.

Not an animal.

Something vast.

I remember my father smiling.

Actually smiling.

As though he had finally found what he had spent his entire life searching for.

That was the moment I realised the mountain no longer frightened him.

It wanted him there.

And for the first time…

I think he wanted it too.