Neil remained on the floor of the chamber for several more minutes, letting his racing heart slow and his breathing return to normal. The contrast between the hostile environment above and the calm sanctuary below was so stark that he almost wondered if he'd imagined the whole ordeal. But the scrapes on his hands and the lingering ache in his chest told him otherwise.
Whatever had happened up there, this place had saved his life.
Gradually, his eyes adjusted further to the dim light. The chamber was indeed larger than he'd first realized, with corridors branching off in multiple directions like the spokes of a wheel. The walls were covered in the same flowing script he'd seen on the platform above, but here the symbols pulsed with a steady, gentle light that seemed to breathe with a rhythm all its own.
Neil pushed himself to his feet, his instincts taking over. When you found yourself in an unknown place, the first rule was to understand the layout. Map the exits, identify potential hazards, figure out what you were dealing with.
He approached the nearest wall, running his fingers along the carved symbols. The stone was smooth and warm to the touch, almost like living flesh. The script seemed to respond to his presence, the light growing slightly brighter where his hand passed over it.
"Okay," Neil said aloud, his voice echoing softly in the chamber. "So we've got responsive lighting. That's... something."
He counted five corridors leading away from the central chamber, each one disappearing into darkness beyond the reach of the glowing symbols. As Neil stood there trying to decide which way to go, he noticed something odd.
The light in the symbols wasn't uniform. In most places, it was a steady, pale blue-white glow. But in one corridor—the one directly across from where he'd entered—the symbols pulsed with a warmer, golden light that seemed to beckon him forward.
Neil had never been particularly superstitious, but something felt right about following that golden trail.
The corridor was narrow, just wide enough for two people to walk side by side. The ceiling was low enough that Neil, at his full height, could reach up and touch it. More symbols covered every surface, creating a tunnel of softly glowing text that stretched ahead into darkness.
As he walked, Neil tried to make sense of the script. It didn't look like any language he'd ever seen—not Arabic, not Chinese, not even the strange runic alphabets he'd encountered in some of his gaming. The characters seemed to flow into each other, creating patterns that were almost hypnotic to follow.
The corridor twisted and turned, branching into side passages that disappeared into shadows. But the golden light continued ahead, always staying just bright enough to guide his steps. It was like following a breadcrumb trail made of starlight.
After what felt like ten minutes of walking, Neil came to another door.
This one was nothing like the illusory barrier he'd passed through above. It was a massive thing, clearly physical, made of the same dark stone as the walls but polished to a mirror shine. Strange mechanisms were embedded in its surface—gears and levers and geometric shapes that looked like they belonged in some mad inventor's workshop.
The golden light in the symbols seemed to concentrate around the door's edges, pulsing faster now, almost urgent.
Neil examined the mechanisms carefully. The joints and fittings were seamless, the proportions somehow wrong for human hands. Everything about the door's construction screamed of non-human origin. No human architect would have designed something like this, with its impossible angles and mechanisms that seemed to exist partially in dimensions he couldn't quite see.
But as he reached toward the nearest lever, the door suddenly groaned and began to move on its own.
It swung inward with surprising silence, revealing a staircase that descended into absolute darkness.
Neil hesitated at the threshold. Every rational part of his mind screamed that this was a terrible idea. He was alone in an alien structure on a dead world, following mysterious lights toward unknown depths. This was exactly the kind of situation where the smart person turned around and found another way.
But the alternative was going back to the surface, back to whatever force had nearly killed him on the platform. And something about the golden light felt... welcoming. Not safe, exactly, but not hostile either.
Neil pulled out his phone and activated the flashlight. The LED beam cut through the darkness, revealing stone steps that descended at a steep angle. The staircase was wide enough for several people, with smooth walls on either side covered in more of the glowing script.
"Well," Neil muttered, "I've made worse decisions."
He started down.
The staircase was longer than anything he'd ever encountered. Step after step, turn after turn, the stairs descended in a gradual spiral that seemed to go on forever. The golden light in the wall symbols kept pace with him, always staying just bright enough to supplement his phone's flashlight.
After the first few minutes, Neil tried counting steps, but he lost track somewhere around three hundred. His legs, already tired from the day's events and the stress of his arrival, began to ache. The air grew warmer as he descended, and he could hear the sound of dripping water getting louder.
Time became difficult to judge in the unchanging environment of the staircase. Neil's phone showed no signal, unsurprisingly, but the clock function still worked. By the time he finally saw light ahead—real light, not just the glow of symbols—nearly two hours had passed.
The staircase ended at another doorway, this one standing open to reveal a vast chamber beyond. Neil stepped through and immediately felt dwarfed by the space around him.
The room was enormous, roughly octagonal in shape, and easily half the size of a football field. The ceiling soared high above, disappearing into shadows that his flashlight couldn't penetrate. Eight walls surrounded him, each one featuring what looked like a doorway or portal, though most were sealed with the same dark stone as the walls.
The architecture was impossible. The angles were wrong, the proportions alien. No human civilization could have built something like this. The very geometry seemed to bend in ways that made Neil's eyes water when he tried to focus on the details.
But it was the center of the room that drew his attention.
A pedestal stood there, carved from a single piece of white stone that seemed to glow with its own inner light. It rose about waist-high, its surface covered in intricate patterns that hurt to look at directly. And on top of the pedestal sat a spherical object about the size of a basketball.
The sphere was made of the same material as the pedestal, smooth and luminous, but its surface was broken by a single depression. As Neil approached, he could see that the depression was shaped like a handprint—but not a human handprint.
This one had six fingers.
Neil circled the pedestal slowly, his mind racing. The chamber, the stairs, the symbols—none of it was human in origin. The six-fingered handprint made it viscerally real. Whatever species had built this place, they weren't like him.
But they had expected someone to come here. The responsive lighting, the guiding trail, the unlocked doors—it was all designed to lead someone to this moment, to this choice.
Neil stared at the sphere for a long time, weighing his options. He could turn around, try to find another way out, maybe explore one of the other sealed doorways. But the golden light that had guided him here was now concentrated around the pedestal, pulsing with an intensity that made his skin tingle.
His mind catalogued all the reasons this was a bad idea. Unknown alien technology. Clearly designed for non-human physiology. No idea what it would do or if it was even safe.
But his intuition was telling him something different. This wasn't a trap. It was an opportunity.
And he was running out of alternatives.
Neil took a deep breath and placed his right hand on the sphere.
The moment his palm touched the surface, the entire chamber exploded into light. The sphere blazed like a captive star, and energy raced up Neil's arm in waves of heat and electricity that should have been painful but somehow weren't.
His hand was stuck. He tried to pull away, but his palm seemed to have fused with the sphere's surface. Panic flared in his chest as he tugged desperately, but the connection held firm.
The light grew brighter, and Neil felt something changing inside him. Not just in his body, but deeper than that—in the fundamental structure of who he was.
Whatever was happening, there was no going back now.
The ancient chamber filled with power, and Neil Hayes began to transform into something more than human.