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Imagine describing a Mayan temple to someone that has never seen one in their life. Now tell them to draw it. They would get some details, sure.

But by and large, it'd just come out... wrong.

That would not be too far off a description of what structure lay in front of us.

In the middle of a field, a pristine field that looked tended to, was a pyramid made of stone.

It was hard to make out, but there were drawings on every layer of the pyramid. Every layer of it told literal stories of some sort. Carved into the face of each tier were figures of people going about their lives. Working, walking, gathering around something sometimes. Their gods, I think.

Lining either side of the walkway leading up the pyramid were poles, and mounted at the top of each were birds. None that I had ever seen.

It should have been beautiful.

But when I spotted the remains of a line of corpses toward the side of the walkway, Miss Kuroshi's cookies decided to make a reappearance—straight back out into the world.

Because they were not skeletal remains.

Their flesh was intact.

Deathly white, with their eyes, irises colored in gold, staring into the sky. Their bodies were contorted, and they weren’t breathing either.

So how weren’t they rotting?

"Nobody knew about this?" Daisuke's voice cracked slightly. "No one? In all this time, nobody thought to bury them? What happened here?”

Miss Kuroshi nodded sadly. “They have to be centuries old by now.”

Indeed. The corpses had all kinds of attire. Bare linen, pure steel, some crucifixes as well. Samurai armor, too. A fair few wore ancient Japanese and Chinese clothing.

But one thing was very clear: not all of them got here at the same time as each other. So generations upon generations of travellers heard the Call in modern-day Fukuoka… and all of them met the same fate?

"I think..." I was a coward for saying this out loud. "I think we should leave."

"You're kidding,” Daisuke said flatly. “After coming all this way?”

I stared at him, uncomprehending.

This wasn’t for us nor our ofudas to decide anymore.

I shook my head. "You wanna end up dead?” I pointed my finger. “Like them?”

“And then what?” Daisuke countered. “The Calling won’t go away. They are going to seal this place off for study. And they won’t let anyone but their top scientists here, let alone us. This is our only chance!”

"Don't you get it, kids?"

We turned around to face Miss Kuroshi.

She was looking at the line of still corpses.

"They are pilgrims. We are pilgrims," she said quietly. "Only people like us can come into this place. That’s why those scientists have been calling us crazy. No satellites have found it, because they cannot find it."

Silence settled in the open field.

It made horrible sense.

"I think we need to face whatever this is ourselves. Before anyone else gets hurt." She looked at us both. "You kids have your phones?"

"Of course,” Daisuke chirped up instantly.

"Can you record?”

"Sure. I—" Daisuke looked down at his phone. His face went from red to pale in about three seconds flat. "What do you mean? I charged it this morning. I-I used it this morning, on the way here." He jabbed at the screen. Nothing.

I checked mine.

It was the same.

Daisuke shook his head. “Look, we don’t need it, anyway. People will think the video is AI-generated. They are never going to believe us.”

Holy shit. What was happening?

These people were being unreasonable!

“Can’t we just leave, come back another day?” I cried. “We can find the GPS code and come back to it when we are in the right headspace. I don’t know, get more equipment? Just anything but…”

It was at this point I realized they weren’t listening to me. Their eyes were locked squarely at the pyramid.

…

Look.

If we were going to be stuck here, if they were going to insist on heading into this thing, I was going to make sure these two got out safely.

Yeah. That much I could do.

“It bears repeating,” Miss Kuroshi said. “But being careful is our top priority. Got it? Otherwise…”

She pointed toward the corpses.

\\

Walking up these steps was surreal. I imagined this was something like what the first Spanish explorers felt, climbing the overgrown Maya pyramids for the first time.

Nothing left to be said, we stepped into what looked like the main entrance.

The sounds came first.

I felt Miss Kuroshi close on my right. Daisuke slightly further to my left. It was now or never.

We clicked on our flashlights.

The hallway stretched ahead without any apparent end. We walked and walked, the sunlight getting dimmer, the sounds getting louder the closer we got, until we rounded a corner.

I heard Daisuke mutter softly, “Holy…”

Floating in a body of still water were discs. Plates of some material, arranged in patterns that were clearly intentional, shifting almost imperceptibly on the surface, bumping into each other. Simple, yet effective. Designed, I thought, to invoke exactly this feeling—a slowing down, a loosening of something held tight.

This was a religious site. It could not have been anything else.

But for whom?

I swept my flashlight along the edge of the water.

Then I stopped.

Sitting on a stone ledge among bags and waterskins, wedged between a rusted tantō and a well-worn leather satchel, was a journal. Hopefully it was in a form of Japanese I can understand... and not just ancient Japanese where Confucius still had an iron grip on the Asian peninsula.

Yes, I failed Mandarin.

Stepping forward carefully, I lifted it from the ledge. It did not crumble.

May 13, 1761

Old armor of samurai dot the landscape. I was clearly not the first to find this place.

Jesus Christ be praised.

The Lord has answered my pleas. Even as fellow Kirishitan are unjustly captured, converted, or killed, I stand tall!

This is our Garden of Eden! For I hear my late soulmate’s voice and soul present in every corner of this place, and such a thing was akin to paradise, is it not? I will find her again, I must—

"So what's it say?"

I screamed. “Shit!”

I pressed a hand to my chest.

“Miss Kuroshi, you do not sneak up on people in a room with no light!"

She chuckled. "I suppose I'm too enthusiastic for my own good."

"It's fine. It's fine. Just… gimme a sec."

She waited approximately one second.

"So? Any clues?"

"Eh." I read further along the page. "Just confirms what we already suspected. These people were here for the same reason as us." I closed it carefully and set it back on the ledge. “If these ancient people thought this place was already ancient by their standards… then…”

This place was built by a civilisation from beyond the bronze age.

Miss Kuroshi nodded slowly.

I turned around.

"Daisuke, let's go."

Nothing.

"Daisuke?"

I swept my flashlight left. Right. Back toward the entrance hallway.

The beam found Miss Kuroshi. Found the floating discs on the water.

No Daisuke.

"Daisuke!"

My voice bounced off the stone and came back to me alone.