Welcome to the Mystigian Realm

A Queen Ager Mystery tale....

This story is attributed to the mystery writer Finola, A Starlight Cove Queen-Ager.

Imagine, if you will, a museum shrouded in darkness, where five figures move with practiced precision through the shadows. They aren't here to take, but to return something that never should have left its resting place. Our story begins not with theft, but with an act of desperate salvation...

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The Antarctic expedition of 1939 was scientific in nature—geological samples, surveys, and climate readings. What Dr. Eleanor Harlow and her team discovered at Mawson Coast instead defied all known archaeology and human history: a mummified body preserved in the ice, at least 10,000 years old.

But it wasn't human.

The frozen humanoid body had elongated digits and an unusually large cranial cavity. The remarkable creature was clutching an artifact to its chest. A perfect sphere of obsidian. Approximately five inches in diameter, with what appeared to be a pupil-like aperture in its center. The team called it "The Eye."

Dismissing the warnings of their indigenous guide who refused to even look at the object, they brought both the mummy and The Eye back to civilization. The mummy went to the Department of Anthropological Research. The Eye was displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Natural History.

That's when the dreams began.

Everyone who gazed directly at The Eye for more than a few seconds began experiencing the same vivid nightmare: standing on a vast, barren plain beneath three moons. Something immense and incomprehensible rose from beyond the apricot horizon. Dreamers would wake up drenched in sweat. Nosebleeds and inexplicable mathematical equations scrawled across whatever surfaces were available—walls, mirrors, their own skin, were also noted.

Within six months, seventeen visitors to the museum had committed suicide. Each left the same note: "It's coming through."

Dr. Harlow was the only surviving member of the original expedition. The others had all died under mysterious circumstances. Aneurysms, sudden cardiac arrests, or simply disappeared without a trace. She knew what had to be done.

-—

"Security system's disabled," Javier whispered into his comm unit as he finished bypassing the last alarm. "You've got precisely eight minutes."

Dr. Harlow nodded to the other three members of her team; all relatives of the original expedition members, all suffering from the same progressive neurological condition, all experiencing the dreams with increasing frequency.

"The curator added new biometric locks after the last incident," Miranda said, her hands trembling slightly as she worked the electronic bypass on the display case.

"Can you blame him?" Luis muttered. "After what happened to those kids on the field trip..."

"Don't," Dr. Harlow cut him off. "We're here to end this, not relive it."

The case opened with a soft hiss. Inside, The Eye. It pulsed with an inner darkness. Absorbing the light around it. Harlow approached it wearing specialized gloves and inserted it into a lead-lined container inscribed with symbols from a dozen ancient cultures.

"It's getting colder," Miranda warned, her breath now visible in the previously comfortable room.

"It knows," Harlow said grimly. "It always knows when someone tries to send it back."

The temperature dropped rapidly. The display cases began to frost over. In the distance, they could hear the security guards' radios crackling with static and strange, undulating tones.

"Time to go," Javier urged from the doorway.

As they turned to leave, they found their exit blocked by the museum's night curator, Dr. Whitman. He held a revolver.

"I can't let you take it," he said, his eyes unnaturally wide. "It's shown me... such wonders. Such possibilities."

Harlow stepped forward. "Look at your hands, Richard."

The curator glanced down to see complex equations written in his own blood from where he'd been scratching formulas into his palms.

"That's how it starts," she said gently. "Then headaches. Visions. The compulsion to build something you don't understand. It's not meant for our world, Richard. It's a key. We can't afford to unlock what's on the other side."

His hand wavered. "But the dreams..."

"Aren't dreams. They're glimpses. And that thing on the horizon? It's getting closer every time someone looks into The Eye."

A single tear froze on Whitman's cheek. He lowered the gun.

"How do you know sending it back will stop what's already started?"

Harlow clutched the container tighter. "I don't. But the indigenous people who warned us spoke of this, a sphere of darkness found with a guardian who died protecting our world from what lies beyond. They said if the guardian falls, a new one must take its place."

"A sacrifice," Whitman whispered.

Harlow nodded once. "I won't be coming back from Antarctica."

---

The theft that wasn't a theft made headlines for weeks. They left behind only a cryptic message: "Some doors are meant to stay closed."

As for Dr. Eleanor Harlow, no trace of her was ever found after her expedition to Antarctica. The unusual weather patterns and aurora activity that followed her disappearance eventually subsided. And around the world, millions of people experienced something unusual, a dreamless night of perfect, peaceful sleep.

For in the frozen wasteland at the bottom of the world, a new guardian now keeps watch. Ensuring that what lies beyond stays beyond, at least for another ten thousand years. That is, if we're lucky...

Consider, if you will, the true purpose of museums: to preserve history, or to protect us from it?

In the space between knowledge and safety lies the Mystigian Realm.

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