The finger breaking through the stone floor resembled a human finger, but it was far too long to belong to a human hand. Its joints slowly curled beneath the stone, while blue veins flickered across its dark surface. The finger wasn't probing the floor. It was as if it were trying to remember what lay beyond a door that had been sealed for thousands of years.
Arif raised the iron handle.
"Step back."
"Don't touch it," Esra said.
Arif looked at her. "Aren't you a little late to say that?"
The crack widened. Chunks of stone silently rolled downward. Beneath them, there was neither soil nor empty space. Deep within the darkness stood another structure. A circular surface, thin metal rings linked together, and at the center of the rings, a closed shape resembling a human eye.
The blue line on Betul's chest stretched toward the center of the gateway.
The shadowless man took a step back.
"This isn't a gateway," he said.
Ilber opened the book. The pages turned by themselves, and the writing changed faster than ever before. Where the missing pages should have been, four separate symbols appeared: a human hand, a star, an eye, and two interlocking semicircles.
"You just said it was a gateway," Ilber said.
"I meant the gateway above."
"Then what's below?"
For the first time, the man's face was completely swallowed by darkness.
"The Gateway of Passage."
The moment he said those words, the structure beneath the floor awakened. The stone rings began rotating in reverse. Images from thousands of years ago appeared on the chamber walls. The people of Göbeklitepe dragged enormous stones; women worked over grinding stones; children traced the animal reliefs with their fingers. Another time was superimposed over the same scene: the excavation site beneath the protective canopy, wooden walkways, floodlights, and security guards standing watch through the night.
Esra looked at her device. "The magnetic field is rising."
"How much?" Arif asked.
"I can't take a reading. The device says there's nothing here it can measure."
"Great. The device quit too."
A voice rang out. It belonged neither to the past nor the future. It came from every stone in the chamber at once.
"The passage carries not those who come, but those who are chosen."
Betul approached the gateway. "Where do the chosen go?"
There was no answer. Instead, an image opened across the gateway's surface.
Gohan stood at the entrance to the tunnel on the northern slope. The villagers stood behind him. People carried torches, clutching their children to their chests, while the elderly moved forward holding on to one another. In the distance, the sky was split by a white line. The lights of the Anunaki craft moved silently over the hill.
Niyon came to Gohan's side within the image.
"Did you activate the gateway?"
"Not yet."
"We're out of time."
Gohan looked back. "Where will the people go?"
"Not somewhere they know."
"How am I supposed to explain that to them?"
"You won't explain it. You'll ask them to decide."
Gohan spun around angrily. "The children? Frightened people? Are we going to tell them we don't know what's behind the gateway?"
Niyon's face hardened. "We'll tell them their lives can no longer be saved by our decisions."
Those words echoed in the chamber in the present as well.
Ilber closed the book. "This gateway didn't hide the people. It forced them to choose."
"No," the shadowless man said. "The gateway carried them. The choice was about who would be remembered."
Betul turned to him. "Why does it remember me?"
The man didn't answer.
The line on Betul's chest flared again. This time, the pain didn't remain in her body alone. An image from her childhood fell into her mind: a little girl walking among white stones, clutching her mother's hand tightly. There was no protective canopy overhead yet. At the edge of the excavation site stood a stone half-emerged from the soil. The same eye-shaped mark was carved into it.
Her mother knelt and took the necklace around her neck between her palms.
"Don't show this to anyone," she had said.
"Who gave it to me?"
"You'll understand when you remember."
The image cut out.
Betul held her breath. "I've been here before."
Ilber stepped closer to her. "When?"
"When I was a child. With my mother."
"Was your mother an archaeologist?"
Betul shook her head. "No. But she knew something about this place."
The shadowless man spoke from within the darkness.
"Your mother knew because the gateway had chosen her too."
Betul's face tightened. "You knew my mother?"
"You didn't have to be human to know her."
Arif took a step forward. "Could you make your sentences a little less mysterious?"
"I'm not being mysterious," the man said. "I'm leaving things out. Because when certain truths are completed, they don't save people."
At that moment, the circular structure below opened completely. Within the earth, a second Göbeklitepe rose, surrounded by stone walls. But the pillars weren't standing on the ground. They were erected within the void. Each one bore a different symbol—not a human, animal, or star, but abstract shapes that seemed to represent a decision.
Esra whispered, "This is a transit station."
"More precisely," Ilber said, "a choice center."
New text appeared on the book's pages:
"The first gateway carries the body. The second gateway carries memory. The third gateway carries the future. The fourth gateway tests those who wish to return."
Betul stared at the last line. "Who are those who want to return?"
A deep rumble rose from within the gateway. In the distance, a gigantic object appeared in the sky of the image from the past. A moving city made of stone and metal approached Earth from among the stars. But there were no lights from Anunaki craft around the object. It was older, darker, and heavier.
The shadowless man raised his head.
"They were sent."
Ilber gripped the book tightly. "Who was sent?"
"Those who came here before the Anunakis."
"And you?"
The man was silent for a long time.
Then he turned his face toward Betul.
"I came with them too."
At that moment, the gateway's four sockets ignited at once. Three were blue, and one was white. The white light joined with the line on Betul's chest. Every sound in the chamber stopped.
Then the gateway opened.
Before them was not a corridor, but a view of the Şanlıurfa plains stretching into the night. Yet there were no modern lights across the plains. The land appeared as it had thousands of years ago. People gathered around fires, shadows moving among the stones, and a black structure rising toward the sky.
A child stood at the exact center of the image.
The child looked like Gohan.
But the face was Betul's.
Betul stepped back. "That's impossible."
For the first time, the shadowless man's voice trembled.
"The passage isn't showing the past."
"Then what is it showing?" Esra asked.
Looking at the child beyond the gateway, the man answered:
"Who the past has been waiting for."
The child raised his head. His lips moved. His voice reached the chamber after passing through thousands of years:
"You remembered us."
Betul's necklace warmed against her chest. The stone city on the other side of the gateway began to move. At the same time, the first dark shadow appeared above Göbeklitepe, covering the modern sky.
Esra looked at her device.
"There's something up there."
Arif tightened his grip on the iron handle. "The Anunakis?"
Without raising his head, Ilber answered:
"No. This time, the gateway didn't open."
"What happened?"
Ilber looked at the book's final line. The writing had changed again:
"The Gateway of Passage did not open. The world split in two."
The entity beneath the stone floor pushed a second finger out through the crack. As the gateway began to close, Betul saw the child from the past reaching a hand toward her.
The child whispered:
"Get us out of here."
And darkness closed over both the past and the future.