FIELD LOG 10 — THE CROSSING

Expedition Archive // Restricted Access
Recovered Documents Dated: November 18th, 1911
Author: Alias Voss

The whispers knew my name.

Not spoken loudly.

Not shouted through the chamber beneath Hollow Peak.

Breathed softly from beyond the doorway itself.

“Alias.”

The sound emerged from the crimson light ahead while the chains hanging above the abyss trembled slowly around me.

Every instinct inside my body screamed at me to run.

Instead…

I continued forward.

The chamber had changed dramatically since our last descent with my father. Massive fractures now spread across the black pillars surrounding the abyss while entire sections of ancient stone had collapsed inward toward the doorway beneath Hollow Peak.

The seal was breaking apart.

Crimson light pulsed through the chamber like the heartbeat of something buried beneath the world itself. Each surge illuminated drifting ash spilling outward from beyond the threshold while the whispers echoed endlessly through the darkness around me.

“THE GATE OPENS.”

Hundreds of overlapping voices.

Ancient.

Hungry.

The air itself felt wrong.

Heavy enough to press against my chest with every breath. Heat radiated from the doorway in violent waves while the metallic scent from the mountain became almost unbearable deeper within the chamber.

Then I saw the footprints.

Fresh.

Leading directly toward the threshold.

My father’s.

The damaged heel mark in the right boot remained unmistakable even beneath the drifting ash coating the stone floor.

I followed them slowly across the chamber while chains groaned overhead like enormous machinery awakening somewhere beneath the abyss below.

The footprints stopped at the edge of the doorway.

Not turning back.

Not struggling.

Ending.

As though my father had stepped directly through reality itself.

The whispers stopped instantly.

Every chain hanging throughout the chamber became motionless.

Silence swallowed the mountain.

Then the doorway erupted.

Crimson light exploded outward from the threshold in a violent shockwave powerful enough to throw me backward across the stone floor. The lantern flew from my hand and shattered against the chamber wall while dust and ash spiralled upward into the air around the abyss.

The chains began tightening violently.

The entire mountain shook.

I remember hearing stone cracking somewhere deep beneath the chamber while the doorway continued widening before my eyes.

Not opening like a door.

Tearing.

Reality itself splitting apart.

The darkness beyond the threshold twisted violently into spiralling crimson light while impossible symbols burned across the surrounding pillars. The Black Sun markings carved into the stone illuminated one after another across the chamber walls until the entire abyss glowed beneath blood-red light.

Then I heard him scream.

“ALIAS!”

My father emerged from the crimson storm beyond the threshold for only a brief moment.

He was no longer fully inside the chamber.

Nor fully beyond it.

His body convulsed violently within the expanding portal while streams of crimson energy wrapped around him like chains made of light. The fragment beneath his coat glowed so brightly I could see the fractures burning through the fabric itself.

He was being pulled inward.

Not gently.

Violently.

Like the Gate itself had attached to his soul.

“Dad!”

I forced myself toward him against the pressure flooding outward from the threshold. Every step felt impossible. The air itself pushed against me hard enough to steal breath from my lungs while ash and fragments of stone spiralled upward around the chamber.

The whispers became deafening.

Thousands of voices screaming through the mountain at once.

The chains above the abyss snapped one after another with thunderous cracks.

And beyond the threshold…

I saw another world.

Not flashes anymore.

Not dreams.

An entire world stretching beneath a blackened sun.

Towering black structures rose across endless ash-covered plains beneath a crimson sky fractured by colossal chains hanging across the horizon itself. Storms of glowing embers moved through the air beyond the threshold while enormous silhouettes shifted slowly in the far distance beneath the eclipsed sun overhead.

The scale of it shattered my mind.

The Black Sun world was real.

And my father was being dragged into it.

Corvin slammed against the edge of the threshold as though fighting against invisible force pulling him deeper beyond the Gate. Blood ran from his nose while crimson fractures spread across his skin beneath the glow of the fragment.

For the first time since Hollow Peak began consuming his life…

I saw genuine terror in his eyes.

Not obsession.

Not wonder.

Terror.

“It’s using me!” he screamed.

The chamber shook violently again.

One massive impact rolled upward from beneath the abyss below hard enough to collapse part of the ceiling behind me. Stone exploded downward into darkness while chains whipped through the air overhead like living things.

My father looked directly at me through the storm of crimson light.

And suddenly…

I understood.

The fragment had connected itself to him.

The seal recognised him now.

The Gate was pulling him across because he had become part of whatever ancient mechanism existed beneath Hollow Peak.

If he remained…

the doorway would continue opening.

Corvin realised it too.

I saw the understanding cross his face in the same instant.

Then he stopped resisting.

“NO!” I screamed.

I tried reaching him.

The force erupting from the threshold lifted me from my feet and hurled me backward across the chamber floor.

The portal widened again.

The Black Sun above the other world darkened further while colossal shadows moved slowly beneath it somewhere beyond the crimson storms.

My father stared at me one final time through the chaos.

Then he shouted the words that would haunt the rest of my life.

“DO NOT FOLLOW ME!”

The Gate consumed him.

Not like falling.

Not like walking through a doorway.

Reality itself folded inward around him in a violent eruption of crimson light and ash while the chains throughout the chamber snapped simultaneously with deafening force.

The scream that followed did not belong entirely to my father.

Something else screamed with him.

Something ancient.

Something vast.

Then the threshold collapsed inward violently.

The chamber went dark.

Silence returned to Hollow Peak.

And my father was gone.