Circa 28,000 B.C.

Beneath the gold-veined ceiling of the Temple of the Core Vector, the Supreme Council of Priests stood encircled in judgment. There were seven. At their center stood Ryl Khor, high geomancer and keeper of Atlantyx's inner calendar.

Laid across the basalt table was the message, etched into the obsidian via harmonic resonance, from the red skyward guardian known to the people only as Hesep-Ma’at: the silent planet. The message was clear:

“You will return to the Treaty of Mons. You will shut down your stardrive programs. You will disband your solar fleet prototypes. Or Earth will be corrected.”

The Egyptian priests debated only briefly. Some urged caution. Others feared losing the legacy of the Atlantean ascent. In the end, they voted unanimously to reject the ultimatum.

“Let the Architects return if they must,” said the eldest. “We will not crawl backward into the cradle.”

Ryl Khor remained silent.

Far above, Mars aligned.

When the beam came, it arrived in silence. It tore the sky in half, unseen by any creature too simple to fear it. Above Atlantyx, a shaft of starlight widened into fire, then beyond fire, into geometry undone.

Ryl Khor, standing alone on the highest spire, felt time begin to slip sideways. Below him, the temples collapsed inward, folding like paper in reverse.

He did not cry out. He raised his arms to the darkened heavens and whispered:

“Anubis, opener of the way… receive us in truth. Let our bones lie not in dishonor, but in memory. Let Earth remember us.”

And then he was gone.

In 1936, German archaeologists Dr. Friedrich Reuss and Ernst Vollmer excavated a minor tomb west of Dakhla Oasis, uncovering sandstone panels etched with forbidden geometries — depictions of Martian alignments, levitating pyramids, and a gathering of priests surrounding what appeared to be a harmonic signal chamber.

Before their findings could be published, the war time Egyptian government, under pressure from the British government, placed the entire team into indefinite detainment.

At the close of World War II, Reuss and Vollmer were deported to East Germany, and soon afterward, the Soviets took the Germans east.

The men disappeared.

All copies of the First Proceedings of the Institute for Hypercosmic Problems, Zapiski Instituta Problem Giperkosmosa (Записки Института Проблем Гиперкосмоса) were confiscated and destroyed following orders issued by the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Joseph Stalin.

In 1991, only a tin film canister survived — cracked, half-melted — inside a crate misfiled in a shuttered Moscow warehouse. Frame by frame: sand, wind, a stone relief of seven robed men gathered around a large black circular table.