Archive of Our Own ^beta

The faculty lounge had the usual scent of old books and new grudges. Dr. Marcus Anderson had long suspected the place absorbed every argument ever uttered in it, like a sponge soaked in academic bickering. Tonight, though, the atmosphere felt different. Less rivalry, more curiosity. The kind of curiosity that made scholars lean forward like cats spotting light glinting off a blade.

“Show us again,” Professor Klio Stavros insisted, tapping her pen against her mug. The tapping created a rhythm that reminded Marcus of Linear B strokes—short, precise, merciless.

Marcus slid the fragment across the table. Clay, broken on three edges, still stubbornly holding its secrets. The script was unmistakably Mycenaean, but the phrasing? That was the bit that kept him awake at night.

Klio bent forward. “You’re certain about the dating?”

“As certain as one can be when dealing with a dig site invaded by goats twice a week.” Marcus folded his arms. “But the stratigraphy is clean. The kiln signature matches Late Helladic IIIB.” His tone sharpened a bit; he had rehearsed those facts a hundred times. “Whatever this was, it was written well before Homer was an itch in anyone’s imagination.”

Professor Liam Rowan—tall, bespectacled, chronically skeptical—smirked. “Honestly, Marcus, you always hope to find something world-shaking. Last year you tried convincing us a chipped amphora belonged to the first priest of Poseidon.”

“That amphora had markings consistent with a cult vessel!”

“It had a doodle of a fish.”

“It was a stylized trident.”

“You admitted it was a fish two weeks later.”

Marcus threw his hands up, muttering a few words that probably weren’t attested in any ancient script, Linear B or otherwise.

Amber Taylor hid a small smile behind her notebook. She always found their exchanges entertaining—like watching lions swat each other with feather dusters. She stood just slightly behind Marcus, letting him command the room. Being his research assistant meant absorbing the chaos without ever disturbing it.

But tonight, the fragment… that made her uneasy.

Liam tapped the clay with the eraser end of his pencil. “Alright. So what we have here is… what?” He squinted. “A hymn? A dedication?”

“A fragment,” Marcus said. “Likely part of a longer cosmogonic passage.”

Klio looked up. “Cosmogonic? That’s a strong word.”

“Well, read the first line again.”

Liam cleared his throat theatrically and read, slowly, reverently, “𐀁𐀞𐀂 𐀫𐀐𐀲… ‘And when he rose, the stars themselves took breath…’” He lowered the tablet. “Poetic. Odd. But maybe figurative.”

“That’s the thing,” Marcus said, leaning forward, voice dropping for effect. “The next line references movement of constellations in conjunction with this being’s appearance. Not metaphorically. A literal shift in the night sky.”

Liam shrugged. “Early astronomy was hazy. They didn’t even map out—”

Klio cut him off. “The Mycenaeans didn’t write this way about Nyx. Or any protogenoi. They didn’t assign them moving-cogs-of-the-cosmos powers. Their cosmology didn’t work like that.”

Marcus snapped his fingers. “Exactly.”

“Still,” Liam insisted, “this deity—you think it isn’t Nyx, but why not Hemera? Aether? One of the big abstractions?”

Amber spoke softly. “The site was filled with dedications to Olympians.” Her voice carried a gentle clarity that made the three scholars glance toward her. “Altars, libation channels, votive inscriptions. Nothing primordial. Nothing pre-Titans.”

Marcus nodded appreciatively. “My brilliant assistant makes a good point.”

Klio frowned. “So the worshippers at that site weren’t invoking Nyx or Aether or Chaos. They were invoking Zeus, Hera, Athena… the usual family drama ensemble.” She tapped the broken edge. “Marcus, what did the text say right before it cut off?”

Marcus looked down at the fragment, tracing the superficial burn marks with his thumb. “It ends abruptly at 𐀟—‘pe-’. The rest is missing.”

“Pe- something,” Liam muttered. “Pe- who? Pe- what?”

Marcus exhaled. “I don’t know. And that bothers me more than it should.”

Amber’s fingers tightened around her notebook at the mention of “pe-”. Her heart pulsed with a strange rhythm—one she had felt only once before, years ago, when she first met her husband.

He had introduced himself with a laugh, as if names were optional. As if identity were a coat he could shrug on and off. And when she’d asked about his past, he had smiled and changed the subject with perfect, infuriating charm.

She never pushed. Something about him—something she couldn’t articulate—made her feel that the truth, if spoken aloud, might rearrange the air around them.

Marcus was still talking. “The earlier lines imply this deity’s presence—not actions, not blessings—powered the constellations. As though their very light depended on him. That’s unheard of in Mycenaean religious texts.”

Liam laughed. “Maybe they invented a new god. Some local cult. Plenty of obscure deities flickered in and out of history.”

“Not one whose absence would snuff out Ursa Major,” Marcus retorted.

Klio leaned back, eyes narrowing. “Let’s entertain Marcus’s theory—only for the pleasure of tearing it apart later. Suppose there was a figure whose existence, literally or figuratively, animated the heavens. What sort of entity would that be?”

Marcus hesitated. “Something… beyond Olympian. Beyond Titan. A being tied to the mechanics of the sky itself. A cosmic catalyst.”

“That’s mythology, not archaeology,” Liam said.

“Everything is mythology until someone digs it out of the dirt,” Marcus shot back.

Amber felt a strange flutter in her stomach—not fear, but recognition. A memory surfaced: her husband standing in their backyard one night, gazing at the stars with an expression both nostalgic and regretful. As if the constellations were old friends he’d disappointed.

His eyes had seemed… brighter then. Almost luminous.

She blinked the memory away.

Klio’s voice cut through the silence. “Marcus, do the lines specify what happens when this being disappears?”

Marcus looked up sharply. “Yes.”

“And?”

He swallowed. “When he departs, the stars ‘forget their shapes.’ The text claims the constellations unravel.”

Liam scoffed. “That’s just poetic imagery—”

“No. The language isn’t metaphorical. It uses terms seen in administrative astronomy—actual star mapping phrases. Not religious vocabulary.”

Silence settled briefly. The kind that stretches thin and fragile.

Klio finally asked, “What are you suggesting?”

Marcus’s voice lowered. “I’m suggesting the Mycenaeans recorded something… anomalous. Something beyond allegory.”

Amber kept her expression neutral, but her pulse hammered. Her husband’s face surfaced again—his smile, his distance, the uncanny steadiness in his voice when he once whispered, “The night sky wasn’t always this dim.”

Marcus rubbed his temples. “I just wish the rest of the manuscript hadn’t vanished. If I knew what name followed that ‘pe-’, everything might make sense.”

Liam stood, stretching. “Well, until you find the other tablets, we’re stuck with half a mystery. Call it poetic nonsense, cosmic metaphor, or—” he gestured toward Marcus—“your personal white whale.”

He gathered his notes. “I’m heading out. My brain has reached maximum mythological absurdity.”

Klio joined him. “We’ll revisit this tomorrow. Bring coffee. And better evidence.”

As they left, Marcus slumped into his chair and stared at the fragment. “Pe-… pe-…” he whispered. “This is going to haunt me.”

Amber remained quiet. She stepped closer to the tablet, pretending to study the lines once more. Marcus didn’t see the way her jaw tightened, or the way her eyes drifted to the window where the faintest shimmer of early evening stars began to appear.

She thought of her husband again. The strange warmth his body radiated at night. The way he sometimes paused mid-sentence, as if listening to voices she couldn’t hear.

He had told her once, gently, “If you ever hear someone speak my name in a language older than the wind, promise me you’ll forget it.”

She hadn’t understood it then.

But now, staring at 𐀟—pe-, her throat grew dry.

Marcus finally stood. “Amber, go home. We’ve done enough cosmic spelunking for today.”

She nodded, gathering her things.

As she walked toward the exit, she glanced at the fragment one last time.

𐀟.

Pe-.

Her husband had never told her his original name.

But once, in a moment of unguarded honesty, he whispered a syllable in his sleep.

A single, quiet breath of sound.

Pe-.

She never asked him about it.

Some knowledge, like certain stars, was never meant to be touched.

The corridor outside was empty and cool, but Amber carried a quiet dread with her—dread, and the unmistakable sensation that she had just heard the distant creaking of ancient constellations shifting in the dark.

The mystery would deepen from here, the way all good myths do, stretching toward truths both beautiful and dangerous.