An Account of Unexplained Fire
The archives were usually empty. Most Golden Bros visited only when they needed something—a forgotten record, an old expedition log, or some dusty piece of history required for an assignment. Once they found what they were looking for, they left.
PDU-034 was different. It could spend entire afternoons wandering between the shelves, reading journals written by explorers long dead and reports nobody else cared about. Every document felt like a fragment of a larger story, every faded page a clue to a mystery that had never been solved.
That was how it found the journal.
The book had been shoved between several damaged expedition reports in a section few people ever visited. Its leather cover was cracked with age, and moisture had stained many of the pages beyond recognition. Whatever name had once been written on the front had long since disappeared.
Carefully, 034 opened it.
Most of the entries were unreadable, but the surviving pages described an expedition into the Emerald Jungle decades earlier. Strange sketches filled the margins—vine-covered temples, broken towers, and symbols repeated so often they seemed almost obsessive. One drawing appeared more than any other: a bowl.
Beneath it, the same words appeared again and again.
As 034 turned the pages, the writer's fascination bordered on obsession. Entire entries revolved around locating the artifact, while others spoke of a hidden city deep within the jungle. Several pages had been torn out entirely. Near the end of the journal, 034 found one of the last surviving entries. The handwriting was hurried and uneven, as though written under immense stress.
"If the fire reached the city, the bowl must never be found."
034 stared at the sentence. There was no explanation, no description of the fire, and no indication of why the bowl mattered. Beneath the warning was only a rough map.
For several moments, it sat in silence. A lost city, a mysterious artifact, and a warning recorded in the middle of what sounded like a catastrophe. Most people would have dismissed it as nonsense. 034 couldn't.
By the time the archives closed that evening, it had already decided to follow the map.
Three days later, 034 stood at the edge of the Emerald Jungle.
A wall of vegetation stretched endlessly before it. Massive trees disappeared into the sky, their branches woven into a canopy so dense that little sunlight reached the forest floor. Warm, humid air clung to its skin while insects buzzed among the leaves and distant animal calls echoed through the wilderness.
Somewhere inside was the lost city. And possibly the Sugar Bowl.
034 adjusted its pack and stepped forward.
The jungle swallowed it almost immediately. Within minutes, the world behind had vanished. Thick vines draped across ancient pathways, roots twisted over the ground like stone serpents, and scattered beams of green sunlight shifted constantly overhead. Progress was slow. Several times it stopped to compare landmarks against the journal's map, and each time the route seemed a little less certain. By evening, it had begun to wonder whether the journal had been wrong.
Then it found the pillar.
Rising from the undergrowth at an angle, nearly consumed by moss and roots, the weathered stone bore carvings worn thin by time. 034 brushed away the vegetation and studied the symbols etched across its surface. Most meant nothing to it.
The same symbol sketched throughout the journal.
Excitement stirred within it. The city had existed. Which meant the rest might be real as well.
As it ventured deeper into the jungle, more evidence emerged. Fragments of stone roads appeared beneath centuries of growth before disappearing again beneath tangled roots. Crumbling walls stood hidden between massive tree trunks, and broken statues watched silently from the undergrowth, their faces eroded beyond recognition. The city had once been enormous.
Yet something felt wrong.
At first it was subtle: a black stain across a wall, a collapsed archway, a section of scorched stone. Then another. And another.
By the third day, the pattern was impossible to ignore.
Entire sections of the ruins had burned.
Not weathered. Not simply collapsed.
Black scorch marks stretched across buildings. Towers stood frozen in twisted ruin, and stone blocks had cracked from extreme heat. In some places, the stone looked almost melted.
034 knelt beside one ruined structure and ran its fingers across the damaged surface. It had seen buildings destroyed by fire before, but this was different. Whatever had happened here had produced temperatures that seemed impossible. Worse, the destruction wasn't random. The closer it followed the map toward the city's center, the more severe the damage became.
As though something terrible had originated there.
Near sunset on the fourth day, the jungle finally opened.
For a moment, it forgot to breathe.
The lost city stretched across an enormous valley hidden beneath the canopy. Broken towers rose above the trees like the bones of giants. Wide avenues crossed the ruins, while temples, palaces, and countless buildings lay buried beneath vines and moss. Even in ruin, the city felt vast, ancient, and important.
At its center stood a single structure larger than all the others.
Though portions had collapsed, it still dominated the skyline. The map pointed directly toward it.
As 034 descended into the valley, an uneasy feeling settled over it. The city was silent. No birds nested among the towers. No animals moved through the streets. Even the insects seemed absent. Only the wind remained, slipping between the ruins with a sound that almost resembled whispering.
By the time 034 reached the temple, darkness had begun creeping across the valley. Black scorch marks covered the outer walls, and large portions of the upper structure had collapsed inward. Yet the entrance remained intact.
Torch in hand, 034 stepped inside.
The temperature dropped immediately.
Ancient pillars lined a vast hallway, and faded murals covered the walls, though time had erased most of their details. Here and there, fragments remained visible: crowds gathered around a shining object, a bowl raised above a city, figures kneeling in reverence, and flames consuming everything around them.
The final mural had been almost completely destroyed.
Only charred stone remained.
034 followed the passage deeper into the temple until it discovered a staircase hidden beneath fallen rubble. The steps descended into darkness.
The moment it saw them, it knew.
This was why it had come.
Slowly, it descended underground.
The chamber below was untouched. Dust covered every surface. No footprints disturbed the floor, and there was no sign that another explorer had ever entered. At the center of the room stood a single stone pedestal.
And atop it rested a golden sugar bowl.
After decades—perhaps centuries—it was still here.
The bowl gleamed softly in the torchlight. Unlike the ruined city above, it showed no signs of age. No corrosion. No damage. Nothing.
As though time itself had ignored it.
A strange unease settled over 034 as it stepped closer. The city above had burned, collapsed, and rotted into silence, yet the bowl remained untouched—as if it did not belong to the same world.
Slowly, it approached the pedestal. Nothing moved. No mechanisms triggered. No hidden warnings revealed themselves. The silence held.
Carefully, it lifted the lid.
Inside lay fine golden sugar, crystalline and undisturbed. Scattered among the grains were tiny flecks of something darker—almost like dust, or like rust, but not quite. 034 frowned, leaning closer. The scent was faint but distinct now: sharp, earthy, wrong against the sweetness… Horseradish.
Then it noticed the engraving on the underside of the lid.
Simple. Ancient. Deeply worn, yet unmistakable in its shape.
A chill passed through it.
It searched the chamber for matching symbols, for anything that might explain it. There was nothing. The eye existed only inside the bowl, as if it had never been meant to be seen.
For several minutes, it remained still. The journal, the burned city, the warnings, the murals—all of it pressed together into something that refused to resolve into meaning.
Then the torchlight shifted.
More precisely, the stone beneath it.
Every surface in the chamber was covered in a fine layer of dust, except for one small area around the base of the pedestal. It was subtly cleaner, as if something had disturbed it recently.
The thought lingered, unpleasant and persistent. The chamber suddenly felt larger than it had moments before, the darkness beyond the torchlight no longer empty, but holding its shape too carefully.
Still, it secured the bowl inside its case with deliberate care and turned toward the stairs. The silence remained unchanged, but it no longer felt neutral. It felt aware.
Halfway across the chamber, it stopped.
The pedestal stood exactly as before. The chamber remained still. Yet something in the composition of the room no longer felt correct, as if a detail had shifted without anything moving.
It continued to the stairs.
At the top step, it hesitated again and looked back one final time.
The torchlight was fading now, the chamber sinking into deep shadow. The pedestal was still visible—quiet, unmoving, almost patient in its emptiness.
And behind it, deep within the dark, stone gave way without sound.
The pedestal did not shatter so much as unmake itself—collapsing inward as though whatever structure had held it together had finally been released from a long and precise obligation. Dust lifted in a slow, contained breath and settled again almost immediately.
When 034 reached the top of the stairs, nothing more remained to look back at.
The chamber below was simply empty.
What more mysteries does the archive hold and what exploration does it take you on?
Join the Golden Army to found out.
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