I've been developing an original fantasy novel called Fractures, inspired by mythology from different civilizations around the world.
This is the prologue, and I'm looking for honest feedback from readers who know nothing about the larger story.
I'm particularly interested in a few things:
Did the opening capture your attention?
Was anything confusing or difficult to follow?
Did the pacing feel natural?
Could you visualize what was happening?
Most importantly, would you want to read Chapter One?
I'm not looking for compliments. Constructive criticism is genuinely welcome. The story and direction is my own with some help of AI
Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read it!
# PROLOGUE
## THE FIRST DISCOVERY
*Several years before the Age of Champions*
The first thing Dr. Gabriel Reyes noticed was the silence.
Not the absence of voices. There were plenty of those. Excavation workers argued over equipment, a generator rattled beneath a canvas awning, and somewhere beyond the ridge, a truck struggled against the uneven terrain.
It was the silence coming from beneath the earth that bothered him.
For three days, the team had been clearing a narrow passageway beneath a limestone shelf several kilometers from Göbekli Tepe, in southeastern Türkiye. The opening had been discovered accidentally when a section of compacted soil collapsed during a geological survey.
At first, Gabriel assumed they had found another burial chamber.
Then they uncovered the staircase.
Thirty-seven steps descended into the darkness.
Each appeared to be carved directly from a continuous formation of stone, with no visible joints or tool marks.
And according to the preliminary geological readings, the staircase extended into rock that had remained undisturbed for thousands of years.
"Tell me you've found something," Henrik Falkenberg said.
Gabriel glanced over his shoulder.
Henrik stood at the entrance, brushing dust from the sleeves of a linen shirt that had probably cost more than the excavation team's weekly food budget.
"I've found thirty-seven steps," Gabriel replied.
"Thirty-eight, actually."
Gabriel looked down.
Henrik pointed toward the darkness.
"There's another beneath the sediment."
"Then I've found thirty-eight reasons you should have stayed upstairs."
Henrik smiled. "And miss whatever has you looking so miserable?"
"I'm not miserable."
"You've been staring at that wall for twenty minutes."
"Because it doesn't make sense."
Henrik's expression changed.
For all his wealth and occasional arrogance, there was one thing Gabriel respected about him: Henrik knew when to stop joking.
"What doesn't?"
Gabriel raised his flashlight.
Along the wall ran a series of carvings. Some resembled familiar Neolithic symbols. Others were unmistakably more complex.
A falcon crowned by a sun.
A feathered serpent.
A figure holding what appeared to be a hammer.
And farther down, nearly hidden beneath centuries of mineral deposits, an owl beside a spear.
Henrik stepped closer.
"Those can't all be from the same period."
"They shouldn't even be from the same continents," Gabriel said.
Henrik reached toward the carvings.
"Don't touch them."
His hand stopped.
Gabriel crouched and illuminated a narrow inscription beneath the symbols.
"There's something else."
"What language?"
"That's the problem."
Gabriel traced the shapes with the beam of his flashlight.
"I recognize pieces of several writing systems. But none of them should exist here. Not together. Not at this depth."
Henrik studied the inscription.
"Can you translate it?"
"Not yet."
"An educated guess?"
Gabriel hesitated.
The symbols were unfamiliar, yet their arrangement carried an unsettling sense of intention.
"Something about a threshold," he said finally.
"A doorway?"
"Possibly."
Henrik looked down the staircase.
"Then perhaps we should see what's on the other side."
Gabriel exhaled.
"That sentence has preceded a remarkable number of archaeological disasters."
"And discoveries."
"Usually both."
They descended.
At the bottom of the staircase stood a circular stone chamber.
Gabriel stopped so abruptly that Henrik nearly collided with him.
The room was enormous.
Their flashlights barely reached the far walls, where towering pillars rose toward a ceiling lost in darkness.
But it wasn't the size of the chamber that held Gabriel motionless.
It was the structure at its center.
Two immense stone uprights supported a horizontal lintel, forming a doorway nearly ten meters tall.
There was no wall around it.
No passage behind it.
Only empty space.
Henrik walked slowly toward the structure.
"Gabriel..."
"I see it."
"How old?"
Gabriel didn't answer.
He was studying the floor.
Hundreds of concentric circles had been carved into the stone, radiating outward from the doorway.
Each circle contained symbols.
And every symbol appeared to face inward.
Toward the empty space between the pillars.
Henrik stepped onto the outermost ring.
A low vibration passed through the chamber.
Both men froze.
"Did you feel that?" Henrik whispered.
Gabriel turned toward the staircase.
"Everyone out."
Henrik looked at him.
"Gabriel?"
"Now."
The vibration deepened.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
Then, between the pillars, a single point of light appeared.
It hovered in the air, no larger than a candle flame.
Gabriel stared.
The light stretched vertically.
A thin silver line formed from the floor to the lintel, shimmering as though the air itself had been cut open.
Henrik stumbled backward.
"What is that?"
Gabriel had spent his entire life searching for evidence of civilizations lost to history.
He had uncovered temples, tombs, and cities swallowed by centuries.
But nothing in his education, his research, or his imagination had prepared him for what stood before them.
The silver line widened.
Beyond it was not the chamber wall.
It was a landscape.
A vast plain beneath a violet sky.
Mountains floated above the horizon, their enormous shadows stretching across fields of luminous grass.
Something moved in the distance.
Something impossibly large.
Henrik whispered, "That's not possible."
Gabriel couldn't look away.
"No," he said.
"It isn't."
\---
"Doctor Reyes!"
The shout came from the staircase.
Gabriel turned as Leyla Demir, one of the excavation team's younger field technicians, hurried into the chamber.
She was twenty-six, Turkish, and had spent most of the excavation proving she could work twice as hard as the men who insisted on carrying her equipment.
Behind her came two workers and the expedition's safety officer.
"The equipment outside is going crazy," Leyla said. "The ground sensors are reading movement, but nothing is shifting. We lost the satellite connection, and the generator keeps cutting out."
She stopped.
Her eyes found the doorway.
For several seconds, she said nothing.
Then she whispered something in Turkish.
Gabriel didn't need a translation.
"Everyone back upstairs," he ordered.
Nobody moved.
The opening between the pillars had widened to nearly three meters.
A faint breeze drifted through it, carrying the scent of rain and something sweeter, like flowers Gabriel had never encountered.
One of the workers approached.
Gabriel caught his arm.
"Don't."
The man pulled back without argument.
Henrik was already reaching into his pocket for his phone.
"You're not seriously going to photograph that," Gabriel said.
"Would you prefer I draw it?"
"Henrik."
"I know."
But Henrik took the photograph anyway.
The screen flickered.
For an instant, the image showed the empty stone doorway.
Then the phone shut off.
Henrik stared at it.
"That's unfortunate."
A sharp metallic crack echoed through the chamber.
The safety officer's flashlight burst.
Glass scattered across the floor.
Someone screamed.
The light within the doorway pulsed, illuminating the carvings along the walls.
Gabriel noticed something extraordinary.
The symbols weren't glowing.
Their shadows were moving.
Each carved figure cast a silhouette in a different direction, as though illuminated by a light source that existed somewhere beyond the stone.
"Back!" Gabriel shouted.
The team retreated toward the staircase.
All except Leyla.
She stood motionless, staring through the opening.
"Leyla!"
She blinked.
"There's someone there."
Gabriel followed her gaze.
The plain beyond the doorway appeared empty.
"What?"
"A woman."
Henrik moved beside Gabriel.
"I don't see anyone."
"She's standing beside the water."
"There isn't any water," Gabriel said.
Leyla frowned.
"There is now."
Gabriel looked again.
The landscape had changed.
A river now wound through the grass, reflecting a sky filled with unfamiliar stars.
He felt a cold sensation spread through his stomach.
The doorway wasn't showing them a fixed location.
Or perhaps it wasn't showing each of them the same thing.
Leyla took another step.
Gabriel seized her wrist.
"You're not going in there."
She turned toward him, frightened.
"I know."
"Then come with me."
"I can hear her."
Gabriel tightened his grip.
"Hear who?"
Leyla swallowed.
"She's asking why I'm afraid."
A tremor rolled through the floor.
One of the stone pillars groaned.
Dust cascaded from the ceiling, and a slab of limestone broke loose above the staircase.
"Move!" the safety officer yelled.
The slab struck the ground with a thunderous crash.
The workers scrambled away.
A second section of ceiling collapsed.
Gabriel shoved Leyla toward Henrik.
"Get her out!"
Henrik caught her by the shoulders.
Then Gabriel heard another scream.
A young survey assistant named Cem had fallen near the outer ring. A fragment of stone pinned his leg beneath it.
The others had reached the staircase.
Gabriel ran toward him.
"Don't move!"
Cem was pale, his breathing ragged.
"My leg."
"I know. Look at me."
Gabriel knelt beside the stone.
It was too heavy.
He tried lifting it anyway.
Pain shot through his back.
The slab didn't move.
"Henrik!" he shouted. "I need help!"
Henrik turned.
But before he could reach them, another tremor shook the chamber.
The doorway blazed.
The air filled with a deep, resonant sound.
Not a voice.
Not music.
Something between the two.
Gabriel shielded his eyes.
When he looked again, Leyla was beside him.
"What are you doing?" he demanded.
"Helping."
"Get out of here!"
She knelt beside Cem.
"Can you feel your foot?"
He nodded weakly.
"Good. Keep talking to me."
She examined the slab, then glanced toward the doorway.
For an instant, her expression changed.
As though someone had spoken directly into her ear.
"No," she whispered.
Gabriel looked at her.
"What?"
Leyla didn't answer.
She placed both hands against the stone.
"On three," she said.
Gabriel stared.
"Leyla, you can't lift that."
"Neither can you."
"That's not the point."
"One."
"Leyla."
"Two."
The doorway pulsed again.
"Three!"
They pushed.
The stone shifted barely an inch.
Cem screamed.
Then the floor beneath them fractured.
Gabriel lost his footing.
Leyla lunged toward Cem, catching his jacket and dragging him clear as the stone slab slid into the widening crack.
For a moment, she stood at the edge of the broken floor, holding his weight.
Then the ground gave way beneath her.
Gabriel reached for her.
Their fingers brushed.
He missed.
Leyla fell backward.
Straight through the silver doorway.
And vanished.
\---
The chamber went silent.
The tremors stopped.
The dust hung motionless in the air.
Gabriel stared at the opening.
"Leyla?"
No answer.
He stepped forward.
Henrik grabbed his shoulder.
"Gabriel, wait."
"She's in there."
"We don't know where \*there\* is."
Gabriel pulled free.
"She just saved his life."
He approached the doorway.
The landscape beyond had changed again.
The violet sky was gone.
In its place stood an enormous hall illuminated by hundreds of suspended flames.
Its floor stretched into darkness.
Columns rose toward a ceiling so high Gabriel couldn't see it.
At the far end stood a pair of bronze doors.
"Leyla!" he shouted.
His voice echoed.
Something moved beyond the columns.
Gabriel stepped closer.
The silver light flared.
He recoiled as a wave of pressure struck his chest.
Not enough to injure him.
Enough to stop him.
Henrik caught his arm.
"Gabriel."
"Let go."
"Look at the floor."
Gabriel lowered his eyes.
The concentric circles surrounding the doorway had begun to move.
Not physically.
The stone remained perfectly still.
But the symbols appeared to rotate beneath its surface, passing through one another like reflections in deep water.
Gabriel had the terrible sensation that something was examining him.
He tried to step forward again.
The pressure returned.
Stronger this time.
Henrik pulled him back.
"It won't let you through."
Gabriel stared at the doorway.
"Why?"
Henrik had no answer.
\---
Leyla landed on cold stone.
For several seconds, she couldn't breathe.
She rolled onto her side, coughing.
The chamber was gone.
So were Gabriel, Henrik, and the others.
She lay in the center of a vast circular hall.
Above her, thousands of small lights drifted through the darkness like stars trapped beneath a ceiling.
"Leyla?"
She turned.
A woman stood several paces away.
Her clothing was simple, pale fabric falling to her ankles. Her dark hair was braided behind her shoulders, and a faint golden light seemed to follow her movements.
She looked neither young nor old.
And although Leyla had never seen her before, something about her presence felt strangely familiar.
"Who are you?" Leyla demanded.
The woman regarded her calmly.
"Where am I?"
A faint smile touched the woman's lips.
"You'll soon find out."
Leyla glanced around the enormous hall, searching for an exit.
The woman took a slow step toward her.
"The world will soon change, child. And history, as you know it, will no longer make sense."
Leyla stared at her.
"What does that mean?"
Rather than answer, the woman turned her gaze toward the far end of the hall.
A low rumble echoed through the chamber.
The suspended lights dimmed.
Across the hall, three doorways appeared.
One was made of polished stone.
One of black iron.
The third looked like an opening cut into empty air.
Leyla stepped backward.
"What is this place?"
The woman looked toward the doors.
"That is something you must discover for yourself."
The three doors opened.
\---
Gabriel waited beside the silver opening.
Five minutes passed.
Then ten.
The team had carried Cem to the surface, where a medical vehicle was being prepared to take him to the nearest hospital.
Henrik remained in the chamber.
Neither man spoke.
Gabriel had tried entering twice more.
Both attempts ended with the same invisible force driving him backward.
He had stopped only after Henrik pointed out the blood running from his nose.
"She's alive," Gabriel said.
Henrik looked at him.
"You don't know that."
"No."
Gabriel stared at the doorway.
"But I know she was alive when she went through."
Henrik sat on a fallen piece of stone.
For once, he had nothing clever to say.
Then the light changed.
The silver opening contracted.
The landscape beyond disappeared.
For one terrible instant, Gabriel thought the doorway was closing.
Then a figure stumbled through.
"Leyla!"
Gabriel caught her before she fell.
She was trembling.
Her clothing was torn, and a thin cut ran across her forehead.
But she was alive.
Henrik rushed toward them.
"What happened?"
Leyla stared at the doorway.
Her lips moved without sound.
Gabriel held her shoulders.
"Leyla. Look at me."
Her eyes found his.
"How long?"
"What?"
"How long was I gone?"
Gabriel glanced at Henrik.
"About twelve minutes."
Leyla began to cry.
Gabriel felt his chest tighten.
"What happened in there?"
She shook her head.
"No."
"Leyla."
"No, that's not possible."
Henrik crouched beside her.
"What isn't?"
She looked between them.
"I was there for three days."
Neither man spoke.
Then Gabriel noticed her hands.
A faint golden light shimmered beneath the skin of her palms.
It faded.
Returned.
Faded again.
"Leyla," he whispered.
She followed his gaze.
Her expression shifted from terror to disbelief.
"I thought..."
She stopped.
Gabriel waited.
"I thought it was just a dream."
A small piece of stone lay beside Henrik's boot, left behind by the collapse.
Leyla reached toward it.
The stone trembled.
Henrik stepped backward.
The fragment lifted several inches from the floor.
It hovered between them.
Then dropped.
The impact echoed through the chamber.
Gabriel stared at Leyla.
She looked as frightened as he felt.
"What did you do?" he asked.
"I don't know."
Behind them, the silver doorway flickered.
The woman from Leyla's vision stood briefly within the light.
Gabriel saw only a silhouette.
Henrik turned too late.
Then the figure disappeared.
The doorway closed.
And the chamber was dark once more.
\---
Three weeks later, the first recording appeared online.
It showed an enormous ring of light suspended above a frozen lake in northern Canada.
The video lasted forty-three seconds.
Most people called it a hoax.
Then a second recording surfaced.
This one came from the mountains of Nepal.
A group of climbers stood before a glowing opening in the side of a cliff.
Beyond it stretched an endless ocean beneath a crimson sky.
Two days later, another appeared in the Amazon rainforest.
Then one in the Sahara.
Another beneath the streets of Rome.
And another in the mountains of Japan.
Within a month, governments across the world were issuing statements.
Scientists debated whether the openings were naturally occurring phenomena, unknown technologies, or elaborate fabrications.
Religious authorities offered competing interpretations.
Some called them miracles.
Others warned they were gateways to damnation.
Military forces established exclusion zones around several sites.
Researchers began referring to the phenomena as \*spatial fractures\*.
The shortened name spread quickly.
\*\*Fractures.\*\*
But the real transformation began when people started returning from them.
A woman in India emerged from a Fracture able to extinguish flames with a gesture.
A fisherman in Greece survived three days underwater without breathing.
A young man in Nigeria walked unharmed through a collapsing building and carried six people to safety.
Not everyone returned.
Not everyone who returned possessed anything unusual.
And those who did rarely agreed about what had happened inside.
Some described impossible landscapes.
Others spoke of trials.
A few claimed to have encountered beings who called themselves gods.
The world laughed at those claims.
Until the first public demonstration.
\---
Six months after the discovery, Gabriel stood behind a reinforced observation window inside a research facility in Ankara.
Leyla Demir waited in the chamber beyond.
A dozen scientists monitored her vital signs.
Henrik stood beside Gabriel, arms crossed.
"You know," Henrik said, "six months ago, I was worried this expedition would ruin my reputation."
Gabriel watched Leyla through the glass.
"And now?"
"Now I'm worried it will make me famous."
"That's always been your problem."
Henrik smiled.
"Among others."
A technician activated the intercom.
"Ms. Demir, when you're ready."
Leyla nodded.
In front of her stood a steel table.
On it rested a cracked ceramic vessel.
Gabriel had seen the object before.
It was an ordinary archaeological replica, broken deliberately for the experiment.
Leyla extended her hand.
A faint golden radiance gathered around her fingers.
The air shimmered.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then the fragments of ceramic began moving.
One piece slid toward another.
The broken edges aligned.
A third fragment rose from the table.
Then a fourth.
Within moments, the vessel stood whole.
A scientist gasped.
Another began speaking rapidly into a recorder.
Leyla lowered her hand.
The glow disappeared.
Her knees buckled.
Two medical technicians rushed forward.
Gabriel stepped toward the door.
But Leyla raised a hand.
"I'm fine."
She was smiling.
Exhausted.
But smiling.
Henrik stared through the glass.
"Extraordinary."
Gabriel looked at the restored vessel.
Then at the young woman who had entered an impossible doorway to save a stranger.
He remembered the figure he had glimpsed within the silver light.
The three days Leyla claimed to have experienced.
The force that had prevented him from following.
And the words she had spoken after finally describing her encounter.
\*She said I had been chosen.\*
Gabriel turned toward Henrik.
"Have you considered what happens if they're telling the truth?"
Henrik frowned.
"Who?"
"The people coming back."
"About the gods?"
Gabriel nodded.
Henrik looked through the observation window again.
For a long moment, neither man spoke.
Then Henrik said quietly:
"If the gods are real, Gabriel..."
He watched Leyla being helped into a chair.
"...then humanity has been asking the wrong questions for a very long time."
\---
By the end of the following year, the world had changed.
The first international Fracture research agreements were signed.
Governments established specialized response units.
Private corporations began investing billions into technologies designed to detect, study, and contain Fracture activity.
Universities created entirely new fields of research.
And those who returned with divine abilities acquired a name of their own.
\*\*Champions.\*\*
Some became celebrities.
Others joined militaries, rescue organizations, or private security companies.
Some used their gifts to protect the innocent.
Others discovered that extraordinary power made ordinary crimes remarkably easy.
And a few disappeared from public life entirely, unwilling to become weapons for governments or spectacles for the world.
The gods, once confined to ancient texts and religious traditions, became subjects of international debate.
Their champions carried their names into the modern age.
Athena.
Thor.
Horus.
Enki.
Freyja.
And countless others.
But one question remained unanswered.
Why had the Fractures appeared?
No scientist could explain it.
No government could control them.
And even the champions who claimed to have spoken directly with gods returned with conflicting answers.
\---
Late one evening, Gabriel stood alone in his office, studying a photograph from the original excavation.
The image showed the circular chamber beneath the limestone shelf.
The doorway stood dark and empty.
Around it, the concentric inscriptions covered the floor.
Gabriel had spent months attempting to decipher them.
Most remained incomprehensible.
But one sequence had begun to trouble him.
It appeared repeatedly in records collected from Fracture sites across the world.
Not always in the same language.
Not always carved into stone.
Sometimes it appeared in dreams reported by those who had entered.
Sometimes in fragments of ancient manuscripts that researchers had previously dismissed as religious allegory.
The sequence seemed to refer to something older than the gods themselves.
Gabriel leaned closer to the photograph.
He had translated only a few words with any confidence.
\*The threshold.\*
\*The chosen.\*
And one final phrase.
He read it aloud.
"That which remembers."
His phone vibrated.
A message from Henrik appeared.
\*\*Henrik:\*\* \*I think we've found another site.\*
Gabriel stared at the screen.
A second message followed.
\*\*Henrik:\*\* \*This one is different.\*
Attached was a photograph.
It showed a stone doorway half-buried beneath a collapsed structure.
Unlike the first, its pillars were black.
The surrounding earth appeared scorched.
And carved above the opening was a symbol Gabriel had never seen before.
A circle divided by seven jagged lines.
He enlarged the image.
At the bottom of the photograph, almost hidden beneath the sediment, was another inscription.
Gabriel felt the familiar chill of discovery.
But this time, there was no excitement.
Only unease.
He reached for his notebook.
And began to translate.
\*\*END OF PROLOGUE\*\*
