The Lost City – Uncovering the Secrets of the Ancients

The Lost City – Uncovering the Secrets of the Ancients

Subtitle: Some legends are carved in stone. Others are waiting to be awakened.

By ZIA ULLAH KHAN

The map was real.

I knew it the moment I unrolled the brittle parchment beneath the flickering light of my tent. Drawn in charcoal and faded ink, it outlined a stretch of jungle deep in the Andes Mountains. No city names. No landmarks. Just one ominous symbol at the center: a sun with an eye in the middle. Beneath it, a single phrase in Quechua:

“Amaru Runa — The People of the Serpent.”

For centuries, scholars dismissed the legend as myth. A city swallowed by the rainforest, protected by ancient guardians, and erased from all historical record. But my great-grandfather believed in it—and he vanished trying to find it.

I intended to finish what he started.

By the third day of the trek, we were already regretting it.

My guide, Mateo, a local who had grown up hearing whispers of the serpent city, said little as we hacked through thick vines and waded across venomous streams. The jungle had a pulse, as if it were breathing around us. Creatures chirped and hissed from the shadows. The deeper we went, the heavier the air became—dense with humidity and secrecy.

Then we saw it.

Half-buried beneath a wall of moss was a stone column. Not natural. Carved. A spiral of serpents winding upward, their eyes made of obsidian. Beneath them, symbols I’d only seen in my great-grandfather’s notes.

Mateo crossed himself. “We shouldn’t be here,” he muttered.

But I couldn’t stop.

We followed the markings for two more days, deeper into the unknown, until we reached a cliffside waterfall. That’s where I found it—hidden behind the rushing curtain of water. A stone archway, nearly swallowed by vines, guarded by a massive stone face with jaguar teeth and serpent eyes.

This wasn’t just a city.

It was a tomb.

A gate.

A warning.

But warnings are often ignored by those hungry for truth.

Inside, the temperature dropped. Our footsteps echoed through ancient corridors as we descended into the belly of the city. Faded murals covered the walls—depicting humans with serpent tails, sun gods with multiple eyes, and strange machines powered by crystal cores.

One mural chilled me to the bone: a city being consumed by light from the sky, and figures walking into stone cocoons while others wept or ran. A mass exodus. Or extinction.

The ancients hadn’t just lived here.

They had escaped something.

In the central chamber, we found it—a massive obsidian dial embedded in the floor, surrounded by glyphs. I set up lights and translated what I could. It spoke of a “Celestial Crossing,” a moment when the stars aligned and awakened the Eye of the Earth—a relic of immense power hidden beneath the city.

Before I could examine further, Mateo screamed.

He was gone.

Just gone.

One moment beside me, the next—a shadow, a whisper, a flash—and nothing.

Panic surged. My lights flickered. The chamber pulsed like a beating heart.

And then I saw it.

A serpent made of smoke and stars, coiled across the ceiling, its head slowly lowering. Not a hallucination. Not a myth. It watched me with glowing eyes full of memory, full of time.

I backed away, clutching the journal like a lifeline. My great-grandfather’s handwriting flickered under my torchlight, and one line stood out:

“To awaken the city is to awaken the past. But the past does not forget.”

I don’t know how I made it out.

I remember running. Tunnels collapsing. Screams that weren’t mine. And then… light.

I woke up on the edge of the jungle with the map clutched to my chest. Mateo was gone. The city was gone. And when I tried to return with help, the waterfall had dried up. The cliff was bare. No stone. No serpent. Just empty rock.

They call me mad now.

The university revoked my funding. Journals mocked me. No evidence. No ruins. Just a half-burnt map and the scars on my arms where something brushed against my skin that night.

But I know what I saw.

I know what I unleashed.

The Lost City is not a place to conquer.

It’s a wound in time, stitched shut by the ancients for our protection.

And now that it’s opened again… the serpents are stirring.

The Eye is watching.