When Dara's eyes opened for the second time in a span of a few hours, the hut's patched ceiling greeted him. Sunlight shone through the gaps in the walls, burning his eyes behind the lids. The hut was chilly, but wasn't freezing. It could be because of the fire burning in the fireplace last night, characterized by the dead ash and charcoal lining the base.

He tumbled out of the cot the guide lent him and did his best to fix his hair without a mirror. To ward off the terror of what was bound to happen as soon as he stepped out of this hut, his brain played him the events before Page took off. It was a desperate attempt to fish for more clues, because he was certain his memories wouldn't give him any more than they already did.

That day, Dara had just gotten home to Page receiving the offer to lead a major expedition in the East. He remembered his heart being heavy, not wanting to break the wide smile on Page's face nor the glint in his boyfriend's eyes. They both wanted the project and had waited for its approval for as long as they did. Guilt danced in Dara's gut knowing the bomb he was about to drop on the playing field.

"Listen, Page..." Dara had started, sitting behind the counter and twiddling his fingers where Page couldn't see. Page's smile died anyway, sensing what was about to come out of Dara's mouth. "Two years."

Those two words couldn't have hung in the air as heavily as they did that day. He remembered how Page's face fell, how paleness gripped his tanned skin. Page rounded the counter and gripped Dara's shoulders. It was so tight that Dara could still feel it on his skin when he was thinking deeply. "You can't be serious," Page had said. "Please tell me you're not serious."

But he was. Dara couldn't have been more serious in all his life than that moment back then. "Doc said I might have more if I take meds, but it's progressing fast and—"

"No," Page interjected with a firm shake of his head. His grip had only tightened. "You can't accept this just like that."

He kind of had to, and it was high time Page did as well. Both of them didn't have long with each other, and Dara would have liked to spend it without arguing. But it wasn't the case. Page only insisted, and when Dara told him to let it go, he snapped his fingers in the air. "Thynesenoi," Page breathed. "Didn't the Professor mention something about eternal life inside it?"

"Page—"

"I'm going there," Page decided. That was it. Dara couldn't have swayed Page after that blatant declaration. "Stay put here. We'll find a way through this. I promise."

Dara put a foot down. "You're not going to waste your life searching for something that doesn't exist," he reasoned. He remembered his fists clenching so hard he could have snapped his bones faster than the disease would. "It's fine. Let's just enjoy the time we have. I'd rather have you here than out there. Please."

Page faced him then, eyes welling with tears. Dara couldn't recall if he cried along with Page back then. "What's the use of our job, of knowing the things that we do, if it can't give you the miracle you need?" Page asked, throwing his hands in the air, almost hitting the dangling lights atop their counter.

To which Dara didn't really have an answer. It was the same thing running through his head as he peeled away from the tourist guide's hut and continued on his trek to the famed temple. He could have told Page that their job was to discover the past, not live in it. Miracles existed in the present, not somewhere in the future or the unknown. There certainly was no ancient artifact that could heal all diseases or grant eternal life. Even if there was, it couldn't have been that straightforward. Movies and books had enough logic to tell everyone nothing was too good to be true. There were always prices to pay and sacrifices to be made. Real life wasn't that far off. Magic and belief was for the desperate, and Page was one of the poor souls trapped in their claws.

As the afternoon rolled around and the packets of dried meat in Dara's bag lessened in quantity, the hazy trace of the temple's roof appeared in the horizon. With excited gusts of garlic-stained breath, he stalked past the gnarly trunks, hanging vines, and twisted roots until the soil gave way into limestone tiles. Grass grew in messy tufts between the spaces, overrunning the courtyard with patches of green and yellow.

The Temple of Thynesenoi greeted him in its fallen splendor. Built around the middle of the 4th millennium BC, the Thynesenoi Empire was one of the lost ancient civilizations that were only being discovered now. Without any clearance to be here, Dara felt like an intruder, or worse, a tomb robber.

He stalked towards the only opening towards the temple's inner chambers. The smell of earth, moss, and dew mixed into a scent he couldn't name. His grip around the strap of his bag tightened. He swallowed against the lump building in his throat, craning his neck to the towering ceiling. Chips and cracks peppered the limestone, threatening to make the rocks bury him alive.

None of that. On to the artifact.

The inner chambers boasted a closed space. Pillars, stairs without balustrades, and empty braziers littered the expanse. The floors winding in and out of the single lobby induced nausea at the back of Dara's head, so he turned his attention to the rectangular depression in the middle. A pool, judging from the hardened clumps of algae clinging to the walls and the otherwise gilded tiles of different make than the rest of the temple. The water has long dried up, leaving traces of its existence in the discolored lines on the rocks.

Where was Page? Moreover, was the artifact even here? The text talked about a large diamond with a golden ring around it. Having been discovered in one of the ancient mines, it was the biggest cut of diamond in the whole region, if not the whole continent. It would make sense that some people would start to idolize it and make up stories about it.

Some primary sources excavated from the catacomb library in the valley where the civilization was believed to settled talked about the diamond being a symbol of life and death. One thing couldn't exist without the other, and the diamond was supposed to be the bridge between them. Then that inscription in a priest's tomb—in life and death, there will be reckoning. And if the soul is pure, he shall be granted a life deathless.

Not "deathless life". Something told Dara there was more to that inscription than what most scholars agree on.

Movement whizzed in Dara's periphery. He whipped to the source, coming face to face with a pillar and a corridor leading to somewhere else. Might be a rat. Or a forest predator. Was this place known for tigers? The shadows told him otherwise. His eyes landed on a twisted figure of a person. A person who...

Dara's eyes widened, a scream building up in his throat. The Dead has come alive, and Dara stumbled right into its nest.