Part 1: The Return of the Keys
The night sky rippled, as though something unseen moved behind its fabric. I stood barefoot on the earth, soil cool beneath my feet. The dig site stretched before me—ancient, half-excavated, circular structures emerging from the dust like half-buried memories. Someone pointed towards them, and I knew before they spoke.
"Yes, that’s where the discs land."
The realization didn’t come as a thought, but as something remembered—an echo from another time. Without hesitation, I stepped forward, dropped down into the hollow of the ruins. The instant my feet touched the stone, the world shifted.
The excavation site dissolved around me, and I was somewhere else entirely—standing at the edge of a landing ramp on a classic silver disc. The hull beneath my fingers was not smooth, but pitted, scarred by time or travel. Below, the exchange was happening again. The dark-skinned women in red skirts stood in ritual stillness, hands outstretched, placing brown-skinned infants wrapped in crimson loincloths into the arms of tall, pale-skinned figures. The air crackled with energy, something both solemn and unspoken passing between them.
I knew these figures. The Annunaki. The ones who had walked the earth before the flood, the engineers of flesh and civilization. Their hands, long and delicate, bore the same handbags depicted in Babylonian reliefs—not ornaments, but controls, the keys to their discs. I understood now: these were not artifacts of power, but navigational instruments, tools that allowed them to weave between dimensions.
I opened my mouth to speak, the sarcasm rising unbidden. "Yeah, hand over your babies—you can just make more, right?" My voice was sharp, cutting through the ritual’s quiet.
One of the tall figures turned to face me, fear flickering behind its humanesque eyes. The woman before them did not understand my words, but she felt the vibration of my meaning, her hesitation a ripple in the exchange. Had I said this before? Had I always been here, watching?
A presence stirred behind me. Heavy. Aware.
The Watcher.
The flames of revelation licked at the edges of my awareness, something deep and hidden unraveling in real-time. The flood had not washed it all away. Not everything had been lost. The structures beneath Göbekli Tepe, the chambers where the discs still landed, they had been waiting to be uncovered. The knowledge was returning—because it was time.
