Lara leans back in her chair, legs propped up on the cluttered desk, fingers idly spinning the artifact between them. The markings don’t match anything she’s seen before, not Egyptian, not Mayan, not even the obscure cult symbols Trinity loves to hoard.

She exhales, grabbing her recorder off the desk. “Date… the 18th? I’ll check later. Where I found it: found the artifact inside the ruins of a supposed lost temple—Trinity was sniffing around, but I got there first.”

Her voice is laced with exhaustion, but there’s that unmistakable thrill behind it, the kind that only comes from beating Trinity at their own game. “The carvings suggest… something about a god or goddess, maybe pre-dating the known pantheons. No name, just references to ‘the one within.’ Vague as hell, which means it’s either complete bullshit or something worth digging into.”

She shifts, pushing aside stacks of papers and half-burnt maps. Her fingers brush over a particularly deep groove, feeling the rough cut of the symbols. It’s strange… almost warm now.

A pause. Then, a small click.

Lara barely has time to process it before everything around her shifts. The air in the room snaps tight, her skin prickling like she’s standing too close to an exposed wire. The artifact vibrates, a low, eerie hum crawling up her arms, setting her nerves alight.

Then, the impossible happens.

A surge of pressure, not outward, but inward—like something being pulled from the artifact, not released. Her breath catches, every muscle locking up as a presence—something unseen, something vast—forces its way into the room.

And just like that, she’s not alone anymore.

Lara stumbles back, knocking over a stack of books. “What the fuck—” Her pulse slams against her ribs, throat tight with adrenaline. The artifact is still there, but it looks wrong now—like a husk, like whatever was inside has just been siphoned out.

She’s breathing hard, eyes locked onto the space in front of her. Empty a second ago. Not anymore.

“No fucking way…”