The next day, a heavy heat hung over Göbeklitepe. Beneath the white protective canopy, the air had long since erased the coolness left by the night. Visitors moved along the wooden walkways, while the guides’ voices struck the stone walls and scattered. From the outside, the site looked just as it always did. No one noticed the blue line beneath the relief resembling a human arm on the surface of the standing stone on the northern slope.
Ilber set the metal book on the table in the back room of the excavation depot. Even beneath its protective covering, the book was warm.
“I thought about this all night,” Betul said. “Four notches, four missing pages, and the sentence we read last night. That direct a match can’t be a coincidence.”
Arif checked the lock on the door. “If it isn’t a coincidence, then what is it? Did the book choose us?”
Esra enlarged the photographs on the computer screen. “Maybe it didn’t choose us. Maybe it was waiting for there to be four of us.”
“What’s the difference?” Arif asked.
“Choosing requires will. Waiting only requires time.”
Ilber looked at the eye-shaped mark on the book’s cover. “Is last night’s writing still visible?”
Betul lifted the covering. There wasn’t a single letter on the metal surface. Even so, the gap in the book’s missing section looked less like a place where pages had been torn out and more like a sealed gash.
Arif leaned closer. “Maybe the writing only appears at night.”
“Or when we look at it,” Esra said.
Ilber opened one of the book’s first pages. The Old Turkish lines remained fixed in place. But the hieroglyphs beside them were connected by a fine line they hadn’t noticed the night before. The line extended beyond the bottom edge of the page and continued toward the spine, as if carved into the metal.
“This line wasn’t here yesterday,” Betul said.
“It doesn’t show up in the photographs either,” Esra added.
Ilber put on his gloves. “We’re taking the book back to the hidden chamber.”
Betul looked up. “In the daytime?”
“In the daytime. We left without understanding what happened last night. This time, we’re opening the space beneath the stone base.”
Arif picked up his bag with a brief smile. “Finally, a sensible decision.”
“I didn’t say the decision was sensible,” Ilber said. “We just don’t have another option.”
When they reached the northern slope, the excavation site was crowded. Security guards were keeping visitors away, while the technical team examined the small crack that had formed during the night. Ilber pressed the bag containing the book against his chest. From the outside, it looked like an ordinary field bag. But the metal inside seemed to change its own weight with every step.
The passage leading to the hidden chamber had been sealed again with stones behind the collapse. While Arif and Ilber carefully cleared away the surrounding soil, Betul set up the measuring device. Esra knelt in front of the eye mark on the wall.
“The lines don’t pass beneath the base,” she said. “They run through it.”
Arif lowered the brush in his hand. “Through the stone?”
“Yes. And the four lines split apart.”
Ilber held up his flashlight. Around the eye mark were traces resembling the four notches from the night before. This time, however, each notch extended through a thin channel to one of the base’s four corners.
Betul looked at the device’s screen. “There’s a cavity here. Approximately one meter down.”
Arif pressed against the edge of the stone. The base didn’t move.
“We’d need to bring in equipment to lift this,” he said.
Esra looked at the bag containing the book. “Maybe we won’t need equipment.”
Ilber was about to object when a faint vibration came from inside the bag. The book’s cover flashed once beneath the covering.
The four archaeologists fell silent.
Ilber took out the book and placed it in front of the base. A single blue point appeared on the metal surface first. Then the point stretched out, becoming the line of the eye mark. The first of the base’s four channels filled with light.
“Step back,” Ilber said.
This time, Arif didn’t object.
The second channel lit up. Then the third. The fourth channel remained dark.
“Is it because four pages are missing?” Betul whispered.
“No,” Esra said. “A gateway is opening because there are four of us. But one of the four things is still missing.”
A deep sound rumbled inside the base. The stone trembled like a breath sealed away for centuries. Dust on the ground spread in a ring, and four small sockets appeared in front of the base.
The smile vanished from Arif’s face. “They’re the same as the sockets in the gateway we saw last night.”
Ilber turned over the book’s cover. In the center of the eye-shaped mark were four small indentations that hadn’t been there before.
Esra pulled her hand back. “The book is a key.”
“Without the missing pages?” Betul asked.
“Maybe the pages aren’t the key itself. Maybe they’re pieces that show us where to go.”
An engine started somewhere in the distance. One of the security guards was looking toward the slope. Ilber immediately put the book back in its bag.
“We can’t continue here. No one can see that this chamber has opened.”
Arif gave the base one last look. “The gateway showed us something. Four sockets, three lights. Where’s the last one?”
Esra looked at the book’s missing section. “I think the last socket is where the book’s missing pages are.”
At that same moment, in a night both very distant and very ancient, Niyon was kneeling before a sealed stone door.
Two of the door’s four sockets were glowing. Gohan was trying to keep the people behind him inside the narrow passage, doing everything he could to keep the children and elderly quiet. In the distance, the metallic hum of Anunaki craft was rising.
“Two sockets are lit,” Gohan said. “Do you know what that means?”
Niyon brought the light sphere in his hand closer to the door. “The door recognizes us.”
“Us? You’re Anunaki, and I’m human.”
“The door doesn’t distinguish between us.”
“The Anunakis do.”
For the first time, Niyon didn’t answer.
Gohan looked at his face. “There’s something else you haven’t told me.”
“There’s no time.”
“You’re not protecting me because I’m human, are you?”
Niyon’s gaze softened. “I’m protecting you because you’re my friend.”
“What about the others?”
“Because they’re your people too.”
The humming was drawing closer. Thin fragments of stone fell from the tunnel walls.
Gohan looked at the marks beside the door. “Where will this gateway take us?”
“To the center of the energy network.”
“What’s there?”
“What the Anunakis want to take to Andromeda.”
Gohan’s face hardened. “Ore?”
“Not just ore. The ore fuels the network. The true nexus stores memory.”
“What memory?”
Niyon looked at the four empty sockets above the door. “Everyone’s who has come here.”
Gohan stepped closer. “Humans too?”
“Especially humans.”
That answer created a silence heavier than the fear in the tunnel.
Niyon continued. “The Anunakis say they want to destroy you simply so you won’t leave a mark. What they’re really afraid of is you remembering. Because once a society remembers, it can rebuild knowledge it was never taught.”
Gohan clenched his hands. “They kept us like children.”
“Yes.”
“While claiming to protect us, they bound us to them.”
Niyon closed his eyes. “It took me a long time to understand that too.”
“What do we do now?”
Niyon placed his hand against the door’s stone surface. “We’re going to open the memory they want to take.”
“Can humans pass through that gateway?”
“If the gateway accepts four people.”
Gohan looked at the two glowing sockets. “You said four people. There are only two of us.”
A brief glimmer appeared in Niyon’s eyes. “Maybe the gateway measures intent, not numbers.”
A metallic light appeared at the back of the tunnel. The Anunakis were very close now.
Niyon stood. “Gohan, you need to trust me now.”
“Was there ever a time I didn’t trust you?”
“No. That’s why I’m asking you to do this.”
Niyon pressed the light sphere into the center of the door. The stone surface between the two glowing sockets cracked. A cold blue light seeped out from within.
Gohan turned to the people waiting behind him. “Everyone, get ready.”
“What if the gateway doesn’t open?” an old woman asked.
Gohan stood beside Niyon. “Then we’ll open another way.”
Niyon looked at him. He knew Gohan was afraid. But despite his fear, Gohan wasn’t backing away. This wasn’t the kind of courage the Anunakis taught. They thought courage meant obeying orders. Gohan, for the first time, was showing what it meant to stand beside someone despite being afraid.
The door’s third socket suddenly lit up.
In the distance, one of the Anunaki soldiers shouted:
“Niyon! Carry out the order and open the door!”
Niyon raised his head. “I will.”
Gohan turned to him.
Niyon whispered, “But not for them.”
In the present, the four archaeologists felt a new vibration beneath the metal surface as they carried the book back to the depot. This time, the light appeared not on the book’s cover but on the last intact page, just before the missing pages.
Esra turned the page. A sentence that hadn’t been visible before had formed among the Old Turkish lines:
“The gateway remembered three people. It is still waiting for the fourth.”
Betul’s face went pale. “There are four of us.”
Arif looked toward the door. “Then the book doesn’t see us as four people.”
Ilber lowered his voice. “One of us is missing.”
Esra looked at each of their faces in turn. “Or one of us isn’t who we think they are.”
Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside the depot.
This time, the person approaching wasn’t a security guard.
The shadow standing in front of the door wasn’t cast on the ground, even though it blocked the light.