The murals and inscriptions

August 12th, 9:24

I am quite tired. We have been translating a passage that has been found in many places. We hope it will have some sort of significance. *** Has been making some odd observations on the architecture. First, he pointed out that the structure is built for people almost ten feet tall, based on the size of the steps to different levels, doorframes, and hallways. They are all just the right size. He also pointed out that there are no light sources like torches or anything, the entire structure is just pitch black. Other than that, *** has ordered some rock samples from both Greenland and Nunavut, Canada, seeing they are the two closest landmasses to the island. Recently ** has also found some pretty interesting inscriptions talking about the orb. It reads:

“The ruler of the heavens, the king of the great beyond the orb.”

To be honest, we don't know what they would call the orb, seeing we don't know how to speak the language out loud. We can only read it. * has been quite distant. Whenever I talk to him, all he can ever do is either nod yes or no, or say a rare word or two. I'm worried he is not getting enough rest, so I told him he should take a day or two off. While * has been quite distant and exhausted, he has gotten us quite a bit of field data, what with him being the main person to go into the structure. Recently, we received some interesting murals from * that seem to depict the structure in its entirety. The mural shows a huge structure that looks almost like an upside-down pyramid going into the ground. The funny thing is that in the mural it shows the structure as something bigger than what we could have ever imagined. The structure goes down for 10 levels, where it stops at a room.

August 14th, 7:52

Recently we have finally started going down to the fourth floor. The biggest difference on the fourth floor is that there are countless murals depicting grotesque and unsettling scenes of sacrifice to the orb. * has been feeling much better, and he came up with a theory that the entire structure is like a time capsule, or history book, for the people who built it. He has also started to work on piecing together the story in order. I doubt he will be able to finish it, seeing we have only 13 days left here, but he has made some significant advancements with the murals and inscriptions on floor one. So far he says his timeline is mostly the mythological origins of the structures' builders, but he has found some interesting things. He says the builders of the structure mainly lived off of fish and they spent a large amount of time on the sea. The people, according to the inscriptions, lived inside the structure. However, it's quite hard to believe because of how inhospitable the structure is.

August 15th, 9:02

We have found some interesting murals on the fourth floor of what seems to be a plague or disease. They show people covered in this substance. It looks a lot like what rust would look like on a metal surface. The mural shows this corroded person praying to the orb. This could mean many things. One, the person could be sick and praying to the orb for help, or two, it could be that the person is being punished by the orb. However, there is one other possibility that I somewhat dislike, which is that the human could be merging with the orb. That last idea was **’s. * finds this mural quite fascinating because it helps him with his goal of piecing the entire history of the structure together.

August 18th, 8:47

Some rock samples arrived, but none of us are quite sure what to do with them. None of the three of us had any plans for them, so I am at a loss as to why I ordered them. Today *, **, and I couldn't leave the living quarters' offices because the temperature was much too low, so we decided we didn't need anyone to go to the structure today. We made some steady progress on things here and there, but not much. A few days ago, * found some gray plant-like thing growing in the structure on the fourth floor, with no light it probably uses some form of chemosynthesis. Probably not a coincidence that the gray plant looked exactly like the gray plant was in the story of the drowning lady. After bringing some up from the plant up from the fourth floor, we sent some to the University of Greenland for tests. We have been finding many ghoulish, devil-like depictions of creatures on the fourth floor. And we have finally translated that text we have been working on for a while; the text we have translated goes like this:

“The god, the king, wants us to become one with it; it corrodes, it eats our true inner self, and we welcome it.”

Quite an eerie passage to be repeated all over the place. The passage is referring to the orb as the god and the king, which shows a very interesting type of faith in which the believer sacrifices their body and being to the orb. It goes hand in hand with all the sacrifice. The one thing that is still bothering me is the meaning of all the devilish figures that show up in the murals on the fourth floor.