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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/asanskaarilegend on 2026-08-08 12:25:45+00:00.

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I somehow found it in me to enter the dome and our British guides left us in there. I told my team to unpack and rest, but I could not sit still, perhaps it was my gut. The air felt artificial and thin in my aging lungs. I stepped back outside onto the walkway to take a true measure of Pendleton’s kingdom.

It was not merely a camp, it was a military occupation. I watched the private security contractors patrolling the perimeter fences. They were heavily armed, moving with the disciplined, lethal coordination of combat veterans. Pendleton had not just hired guards. He had purchased a private army. He wielded more hard power in this desolate basin than the local government.

I walked down a secondary path, moving away from the main one. Near a cluster of smaller, tents, I spotted a group of researchers clearly segregated from the rest of the camp. The Western academics walked a wide berth around them.

They spoke in hushed, sharp tones. I did not need to see the Cyrillic stencilled on their equipment crates to recognize countrymen, atleast… citizens of a country that still spoke my language. They were the Moscow team, and they were somewhat ostracized.

It was not difficult to deduce why. With the ongoing war raging on, Russians had become pariahs on the global stage. Even here, at the edge of the civilized world, modern borders dictated the boundaries of academy. And all I could do, as a refugee and a Turkish citizen, was lament what our home had become, brother fighting brother; savages left in the ruin of a greater union.

Standing at the centre of their isolated circle was a ghost from my past.

Father Grigori.

We were close friends in the eighties, back when our world still made sense. He was a devout Orthodox priest then. He still wore the black cassock and the heavy silver cross of the clergy today, but I knew the brutal truth of what he had become during the collapse of The Union.

Grigori had traded his piety for power. He was an oligarch, a man who had secured massive wealth by blessing the takeovers by the mafia and the corrupt.

He spotted me. A tired, knowing smile spread across his bearded face. He murmured something to his colleagues and walked toward me.

“Kolya” Grigori said, using the nickname that he had no right to. His voice was a baritone that had not changed in thirty years. “I heard a Turkish team was arriving today. I did not expect to see you eading them.”

“Grigori,” I replied, keeping my hands firmly at my sides. “I see the church pays much better these days.”

His eyes flicked down to my scarred jaw. “You look old, my friend. Istanbul has baked the life right out of you. You should have stayed in Moscow.”

“There is nothing left to return to,” I stated flatly. “You and your friends sold it all for pennies. You sold the steel, the land, and the dreams of the youth.”

Grigori tightened his jaw. The friendly, pastoral facade slipped, but what lay beneath was not just ruthlessness. It was a profound, suffocating guilt.

Despite his tailored cassock and his gigantic bank accounts, Grigori still possessed a core of morals. He carried a bleeding conscience for what we, no, he had let happen to The Union.

“We did what we thought we had to do to survive the wolves, Nikolai,” Grigori said softly, the weight of a thousand sins pulling at his eyes. “And I will pay for every single one of those choices in the next life, or when I join Gorbachev in hell. But do not play the moral superior here. You are eating from Pendleton’s trough just like the rest of us. We are all dancing to the his tune today.”

“I am here for the ruins,” I replied coldly. “Not for him.”

“Then you are a fool,” Grigori warned, stepping closer. He lowered his voice so no one could hear. “This site is not a blessing. The things they are pulling out of the earth down there are an absolute abomination.”

“Since when do you care about blasphemy?” I asked.

“Since I looked at the carvings in Sector One,” Grigori replied. His eyes were entirely devoid of their usual calculation, replaced by a genuine unease. “I might be a failed priest, Nikolai, but I still know what holy looks like. And whatever built this place hated God long before we did.”

He turned and walked back to his ostracized countrymen, leaving me alone on the walkway with the roar of the generators and dread settling deep into my bones.

The British academic’s voice came out as I stood. I turned to face him, he was winded from running, perhaps even slightly miffed at being made into an errand boy.

“The briefing is not at sundown,” Thomas corrected himself, checking a beeping silver smart-watch on his wrist. “It is now… we already informed your team… I was sent to find you here.” He spoke, each word punctuated by a heavy gasp, though I did not miss his look of distaste towards the Russians either.

I stayed silent and followed him to the briefing area.

It was a massive, air-conditioned pavilion dominated by a large briefing table and a digital projector screen. The space was packed with hundreds of academics from across the globe, all buzzing with hushed anticipation. It seemed to be more than just the newcomers; whatever had made this meeting be preponed, it was probably monumental.

I directed Zeynep, Elif, and Kaan to some folding chairs near the middle aisle. Emre practically bounced on his heels, pulling out a small notebook and a pen, completely captivated by the energy in the room. I chose to stand near the back canvas wall. Father Grigori sat just two rows ahead of my position, his broad shoulders completely rigid under his black silk cassock.

At the front of the room stood a young, frantic man with a clipboard. He was Pendleton’s primary assistant, and he was vibrating with nervous excitement. He bypassed any formal introductions and launched straight into the preliminary findings.

“Ladies and gentlemen, what we are standing over will permanently rewrite the history of Western religion,” the young man announced, his voice echoing through the cavernous tent. “The isotopic dating of the lower vestibules places the construction a mere ten years after the crucifixion. But that is just the beginning.”

He tapped his clipboard excitedly. “We are seeing heavy Mithraic influence woven directly into the Christian architecture. There are massive, intricate reliefs of the tauroctony, the ritual bull-slaying of Mithras, carved right alongside early Christian crosses. And we are finding minor pagan iconography scattered throughout the perimeter. We have depictions of Sol Invictus and what appears to be the Phrygian goddess Cybele.”

Emre leaned forward in his chair and raised his hand slightly. “Excuse me, what about local pantheons? Are there any depictions of native Mesopotamian deities? Anu? Ishtar?”

The assistant blinked, caught slightly off guard by the interruption. “No. That is one of the most curious aspects of Sector One. There is an absolute lack of any native Iraqi deities. The builders completely ignored the indigenous gods of the region to carve these specific foreign symbols into the stone.”

“Are you saying there is absolutely no sign of Anu?” Emre asked, his pen hovering over his small notebook. “No Ishtar? No Enlil or Marduk?”

“None,” the assistant confirmed, stepping closer to the edge of the projector screen. “Instead of the Mesopotamian pantheon, we have found clear depictions of Western, Mediterranean, and even deep African gods. There is a massive, central altar dedicated to Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Further down the western corridor, our teams documented symbols of Phoenician sea deities.

We have even uncovered what appear to be incredibly detailed bas-reliefs of Nubian and Kushite gods. There are unmistakable carvings of Apedemak, the lion-headed god of war, alongside ancient sub-Saharan animistic totems cut right into the load-bearing pillars.”

Zeynep leaned forward, looking just as puzzled as Emre. “But those are all cultures the Roman Empire interacted with directly. The Romans constantly assimilated foreign gods to keep the peace across their borders. It was standard imperial practice to blend their religion with the locals.”

“Exactly,” the assistant said, his voice dropping a fraction of an octave. “They were masters of assimilation. They brought their gods and adopted the gods of the conquered. But this is not a blending of equals. It is a complete subjugation.”

The young man clicked a button on his presentation remote, pacing nervously in front of the blank screen. “The reliefs do not just show these gods coexisting in a shared pantheon. They show them in absolute servitude. Jupiter is depicted bowing his head, his thunderbolts resting on the ground. Apedemak is kneeling on the stone, offering up his weapons in surrender. Every single one of these pagan gods is physically carved to be looking up at a single, central figure. Christ.”

Elif shivered slightly, rubbing her arms despite the heavy air conditioning inside the tent. “And what about the Mithraic elements you mentioned earlier? You said there was heavy Mithraic influence.”

“There is,” the assistant nodded, his eyes wide. “But it is completely inverted. The tauroctony, the traditional ritual slaying of the cosmic bull by Mithras, is entirely absent. Instead, the great bull is carved resting right beside Christ.”

The assistant tapped the screen, pointin...

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