When the stone gateway of the passage closed behind them, the sound died with it.
The footsteps of the workers outside, the squeak of the metal shelves, and the dry murmur of the night all cut off at once. The four archaeologists stood frozen, holding their breath in the cold air flowing through the stone. Only the blue line on Betul’s chest cast a faint glow over the walls of the narrow passage.
Ilber raised a hand.
“No one talk.”
“That’s the fifth time you’ve said that,” Arif whispered. “And we kept talking the first four times.”
“Because the walls hadn’t started moving the first four times.”
Esra tried to turn on her device. The screen went dark, then four white points appeared, moving toward one another. The points advanced along the twists of the passage, growing brighter with every turn.
“This tunnel isn’t straight,” Esra said. “We’re going down, but we’re also moving north.”
“How far down?”
“Twelve meters… No, the reading changed. Nineteen.”
Arif stared at the wall. “Is it possible there’s a nineteen-meter-deep void beneath Göbeklitepe?”
“It’s not on the maps,” Esra said.
Ilber kept the book against his chest. “How many things have we found tonight that aren’t on the maps?”
Betul was staring into the darkness ahead. “This isn’t just a passage.”
“What did you see?” Ilber asked.
“There are other routes beneath the walls. It’s as if the whole hill is connected.”
“How do you know that?”
Betul didn’t answer. A few steps later, she stopped. On the wall to her left, small lines were arranged around the eye-shaped mark. When she brought her fingers close to the stone, one of the lines lit up with blue light.
“This…” she said. “This is a nexus.”
The surface of the wall split open without a sound. The image rising from within first showed the Şanlıurfa plains. Then it widened: the bends of the Euphrates, the mountains to the east, roads stretching west, and cities glowing along the coast all appeared on the same surface. Göbeklitepe stood at the center of all those lines, a small but intense point of light.
Esra lowered her voice. “It’s a map.”
“No,” Ilber said. “It’s more than a map.”
Two separate networks appeared over the image. One showed ancient roads stretching from east to west; the other showed blue veins advancing from the past toward the future. They intersected beneath Göbeklitepe.
Approaching the stone surface, Arif said, “The place where East and West meet.”
Without taking her eyes off the image, Betul finished the thought:
“And past and future, too.”
At that moment, a sound came from far away. It resembled neither footsteps nor the creak of stone. It was more like the first breath of a great machine operating deep underground.
The book trembled.
Ilber opened the cover. The empty space in the section containing the missing pages began to fill with blue light. No page appeared. First, a line was drawn across it. The line split in two. One end stretched east, the other west. Then lines of text formed.
“This nexus was not built in the middle of the roads.”
Esra studied the mark beneath the line. “There’s more.”
“How are we supposed to read it?” Arif asked.
Betul placed her hand on the book. Light spread between her fingers.
“Together.”
Ilber looked at her. “Are you sure?”
“No. But the book doesn’t want to be read by just one person anymore.”
The four archaeologists placed their hands on different corners of the book. The metal surface softened beneath their fingers. The writing inside the book shifted away from its Old Turkish form and transformed into a language each of them could understand in their own mind.
A new sentence appeared:
“East is the memory of beginnings. West is the gateway of return. The one who joins them passes not through time, but through oblivion.”
Arif pulled his hand away. “Is this a prophecy?”
“No,” Esra said. “It sounds more like operating instructions.”
Ilber shot her a sharp look. “Operating instructions?”
“The Anunakis may have written poetry. But that doesn’t mean they powered their devices with poetry.”
Betul’s face tightened. “I think that’s what brought us here, too.”
“Who brought us here?”
“Not the book.” Betul listened to the passage behind them. “Someone was waiting for the book to find us.”
Just then, they heard the heavy scrape of stone from behind them.
The shadowless man had appeared at the other end of the passage. His face looked older in the blue light, his shoulders more stooped. But the darkness that did not fall on the ground remained unchanged. His shadow walked along the wall, not beneath his feet.
Arif raised the iron handle.
“Don’t take another step.”
The man stopped. “Weapons won’t work here.”
“You won’t know that until you try.”
“I have tried.”
Ilber stepped in front of the book. “You know this nexus.”
“Knowing is one thing. Remembering is another.”
“Why did you bring us here?”
The man’s gaze shifted to Betul. “I didn’t bring you here. I only stopped you from going through the wrong gateway.”
Esra pointed to the two networks in the image. “What are these lines?”
“The routes the Anunakis used when they departed Earth.”
“Space routes?”
“Some of them. Others passed through people.”
Arif frowned. “A road can’t pass through people.”
“It can pass through memories.”
The lines in the book trembled. Four bright points appeared at the western edge of the map. One broke away from the others and began moving toward Göbeklitepe.
The moment Betul saw it, she clutched her head.
For an instant, another image replaced the passage.
The sun hung low over the stone walls. In the distance, people ran, children were gathered into arms, and women dropped the vessels they carried. The fires around Göbeklitepe went out, while a long column of white light rose into the sky.
Gohan stood in front of Niyon.
“You can’t get us out of here,” Gohan said. “The people won’t listen to you.”
The familiar calm was gone from Niyon’s face. The light in his eyes flickered.
“They don’t need to listen to me. They only need to reach this gateway.”
“If the gateway opens, where will we go?”
“Not east. Not west.”
Gohan stared at him in confusion. “Then where?”
Niyon pressed his hands against one of the gateway’s four sockets.
“To a time that doesn’t exist yet.”
Among the lights appearing beyond the gateway were children, the elderly, and people whose faces were twisted with fear. Their images rippled like memories, then were swept toward the future.
Gohan grabbed Niyon’s wrist. “If people are destroyed there, too, won’t the Anunakis be able to return?”
Niyon shook his head with a bitter smile. “They’ll return. But then they won’t find a silent people waiting for them. They’ll find a world that remembers what happened.”
The image suddenly withdrew from Betul’s mind.
Betul dropped to her knees. Arif immediately knelt beside her.
“What did you see?”
“Gohan and Niyon…”
“Again?”
“They were trying to get the people out. But this wasn’t an escape route.” Betul looked at the map on the book. “They were scattering memories.”
Ilber’s expression hardened. “That’s why the last four pages are missing from the book.”
The shadowless man lowered his head. “The pages didn’t disappear.”
“What does that mean?”
“They were sent away, too.”
Esra looked at the book’s empty section. “Where?”
The man pointed to the blue line on Betul’s chest.
“Some of them went to her.”
Betul got to her feet. “I’m not a container.”
“No,” the man said. “You’re the evidence the gateway left behind.”
Silence followed. Betul reached for her necklace. Beneath the cracked silver surface was the same eye-shaped mark that had appeared in the book.
Ilber spoke slowly. “If this is where East and West, past and future intersect, why did the Anunakis choose Göbeklitepe?”
Before answering, the man looked at the map.
“Not because this is the center of the world.”
“Then why?”
“People didn’t have writing yet. But they knew how to remember. Before words were turned into stone, the Anunakis trusted human memory.”
“And now we’ve opened that memory again,” Esra said thoughtfully.
“No,” the man said. “You only realized that the gateway had awakened.”
Suddenly, the entire passage shook. Dust fell from the ceiling. The light of Göbeklitepe at the center of the map grew and spread all the way to the feet of the four archaeologists.
A new sentence formed in the book:
“The bearer of the fourth mark has been found. The nexus is opening for the future.”
Far away, deep underground, they heard the sound of stone breaking.
Arif gripped the iron handle tightly. “I don’t think that’s a good thing.”
“It isn’t,” said the shadowless man.
“What’s going to happen?” Ilber asked.
For the first time, open fear appeared on the man’s face.
“The thing beneath Göbeklitepe is going to come out.”
Betul looked at the map on the wall. The blue line coming from the east was connected to the four points in the west. Then the line rose into the sky and stretched toward the dark region where Andromeda lay.
A single word appeared there:
“Return.”
At the same moment, the entire hill shook.
Beneath the stones of the present day, the path left unfinished five thousand years ago opened again. But this time, there were more than memories of the past beyond the gateway.
A light was also moving toward Earth from among the distant stars.
And that light was the return signal of the Anunakis who had never truly left Göbeklitepe.