Chapter One: Echoes from the Past
A single beam of light speared through the window of Sergeant Darius Blake’s makeshift office, the only respite in the ramshackle Quonset hut reeking of sweat and stale fear. Outside, the constant commotion of Bravo Company preparing for another day in the war-torn jungle was a jarring contrast to the quiet within. But for Blake, the external chaos was easier to face than the vortex of thoughts that swirled within.
The tattered military map he stared at wasn’t of the Mekong Delta, but of a nameless patch of jungle where nightmares now bloomed. The inscription, ELORA, was burned into his memory, its letters pulsing against his eyelids whenever sleep threatened to claim him. The lost temple, the vortex… it was all real. More real, more terrifying than any firefight he’d commanded. He, a man who dealt in bullets and battlefield tactics, found himself staring into an abyss far older, and far more monstrous.
A knock on the flimsy door interrupted his spiraling thoughts. It was Corporal Ramirez, face taut with exhaustion, a haunted mirror of Blake’s own. “Sergeant, intel wants a sit-down,” Ramirez said, his usual hint of defiance now replaced by a wary, shared dread.
“They got a fancy name for those…things?” Blake asked, unable to force the word “vortex” past his lips.
Ramirez shrugged, a flicker of frustration momentarily breaking through his mask of weariness. “They’re callin’ ’em anomalies. Don’t ask me why… guess it makes it sound official, less like we’re all goin’ crazy.” He didn’t attempt the sardonic grin that usually accompanied his cynicism. This mission had stripped away their usual bravado.
Intel was a cramped room humming with the frantic energy of desperation. Maps were pinned hastily to corkboards, aerial photos passed from hand to hand, radio chatter crackled with static and snippets of reports. Blake recognized Captain Wells, face drawn and pale under the harsh fluorescent lights, surrounded by the higher brass. These men weren’t used to losing control, but that chilling word – anomalies – had shaken the very foundations of their understanding of this war.
“Sergeant Blake,” the captain began, his voice strained, “we need you to walk us through it. Everything. Where is this temple?” He gestured at the map, but it was a meaningless expanse of green amidst the familiar grid of fire zones and potential VC camps.
Blake found himself describing not just topography, but the change in the air, the unnatural hush that had descended before the tearing open of reality itself. He heard the skepticism in the muttered questions, the disbelieving looks exchanged between the officers. But he saw it flicker in their eyes too – the reflection of the primeval terror they hadn’t yet fully admitted, even to themselves.
The meeting dissolved not with orders, but with a tense silence filled with unspoken questions. For them, it was a problem to solve, an anomaly to contain. For Blake and his squad, it was a looming apocalypse. The whispers of Elora weren’t just a historical curiosity now, but a countdown.
That night, as gunfire erupted to the north, a distraction from the ever-present hum of unease, Blake slipped away. The makeshift chapel wasn’t a place he sought often. He’d long ago traded naïve faith for the steely certainty that it was your brothers beside you, not some unseen power, that might bring you back alive. Tonight was different. He needed ritual, even a hollow one.
Standing before the crude wooden cross, he fumbled with the chain around his neck. A battered dog tag, regulation issue. Beside it hung something older, a small, carved pendant of worn ebony. His grandmother’s, carried by his father in World War II, by her father before that. She’d called it a charm of protection. A fool’s errand, he’d thought then. Tonight, as the name Elora echoed more insistently than the distant gunfire, he ran his calloused thumb over its smooth, strangely warm surface. All he had were relics, but he would cling to them with the same desperate ferocity he’d fight for his men. This war had grown monstrous and vast, and Sergeant Darius Blake, soldier by blood and by training, felt perilously small in its shadow.