Why do the ritual symbols glow with an inner light? What makes the incense smoke form impossible shapes? How do the shadows dance in time with no music? Why do the walls whisper ancient chants at dawn? What causes the ceremonial objects to float when no one is watching?
Follow Cthulhu Architect on BlueSky!
“They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died. ”
― H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
The Temple of the Sons of the Sun stood like a monument to forgotten wisdom, its sandstone walls adorned with hieroglyphs that seemed to shift when viewed from the corner of one’s eye. I had come to document the architecture, but from the moment I crossed the threshold, something felt wrong.
Arxelia Khunum, our guide, moved with practiced ease through the columned halls. “The inner sanctum remains sealed,” she explained, her voice echoing against the vaulted ceiling. “No one has entered since the expedition of 1899.” Her fingers traced a golden solar disk, lingering on the stylized rays that resembled hands reaching outward.
That night, I awoke to chanting. Distant at first, then growing louder---a rhythmic invocation in no language I recognized. The other members of our party slept undisturbed as I followed the sound to the sealed door of the inner sanctum. It stood ajar now, golden light spilling from within.
The circular chamber inside was dominated by a stone altar, above which hung a metal sun, its center a perfect black void. Around it stood thirteen robed figures, their faces obscured by golden masks. They turned as one to regard me, and I realized with mounting horror that Arxelia stood among them.
“We have waited for you,” she said, her voice now layered with others. “The sun has many children, but few are chosen as vessels.” The black center of the hanging sun began to pulse, and something within it---something impossibly vast and ancient---stirred to wakefulness.
I fled, but the temple’s layout had changed. Corridors twisted back on themselves, chambers appeared where none had been before. When dawn finally broke, I found myself alone in the desert, the temple nowhere in sight. Only a small golden disk remained in my pocket, unnaturally warm to the touch, its surface etched with thirteen symbols I now understood represented stars---not our stars, but those of some other, darker cosmos.
The expedition records later claimed I had wandered off in a fever. They never found the temple again, though aerial surveys showed only unbroken desert where it had stood. Sometimes, when the sun hits my window at a particular angle, I see shadows form patterns on my wall---patterns that match the hieroglyphs. And always, always, I hear the chanting start again.
