Hannah Dundee: Mysteries of the Lost World by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Hannah-Dundee-Mysteries-of-the-Lost-World-1273172677

Hannah Dundee: Mysteries of the Lost World ANIM

Ivory Maps of the Beyond

The map was made of bone.

Hannah Dundee knew that before she ever touched it, before the lamplight slid across the pale surface and revealed lines that were not carved but grown, veins of calcium raised like a relief of a world that should not exist. It lay on the table of the trading post like an accusation, surrounded by dust and old cartridges, a dead man’s compass needle still twitching in a jar of oil.

“Don’t,” said Jack Tenrec, who had followed her in without asking. “If it’s bone, it remembers.”

Hannah smiled, slow and unafraid, the way she always did when someone told her not to do something interesting. She was beautiful in the unpolished way of survival—sun-browned skin, eyes sharp as a machete edge, hair tied back with a strip of tire rubber. She had outlived too many maps to fear one more.

“If it remembers,” she said, “then it’s been waiting.”

The jungle beyond the post exhaled, a warm breath that carried rot and blossoms and the distant cough of something with lungs too large for comfort. Hannah’s fingers hovered over the bone. The lines on it pulsed, just a little, like a throat swallowing.

Jack swore softly. “Hannah. I’ve seen men follow memories. They don’t come back with their names.”

She placed her hand flat on the map. The pulse steadied, then stopped, as if satisfied. Images flashed—stone arches in a desert of glass, a river that flowed upward, a city grown from the ribs of something ancient and intelligent. Beyond the jungle, the map promised. Beyond the places men had already ruined.

“What’s on the other side?” Jack asked.

Hannah lifted her hand. “Something that wants to be found.”

The man who sold them the map had no tongue. He communicated with chalk and a slate, drawing symbols that bent the eye. He drew a warning last: a figure with a woman’s shape and too many shadows, lips parted as if whispering secrets that could peel a soul like fruit.

“She’s beautiful,” Jack muttered, peering. “That’s always bad.”

Hannah laughed. “Beauty’s just a question.”

They left at dawn, Hannah in the lead, Jack behind, the jungle reluctantly opening its green mouth to swallow them. Days passed, then weeks. The familiar predators grew scarce, replaced by tracks that suggested weight without mass, claws that sank into stone without cracking it. The nights changed. The stars rearranged themselves, not in patterns but in watching.

On the twelfth night beyond the last known river, they found the obelisk.

It rose from a plain of black sand, tall and narrow, its surface etched with faces that shifted when you weren’t looking. Hannah felt the air thicken around it, felt her own heartbeat slow as if someone had turned a dial.

Jack circled it, rifle ready. “This thing’s older than sin.”

Hannah approached, drawn by a warmth that was not heat. Her reflection in the obsidian surface smiled back at her, though her own mouth remained still.

“You came,” said a voice, soft and intimate, from everywhere and nowhere. “I wondered if you would.”

Hannah’s reflection stepped out of the stone.

It was her, and not her. The same lines of strength and grace, but the eyes were deeper, starless pools that reflected nothing. The smile was knowing, practiced over centuries.

“I am called Nareth,” the reflection said, and her voice was a caress. “I am the keeper of beyond.”

Jack raised his rifle. “Back away from her.”

Nareth’s gaze flicked to him, amused. “You carry iron and fear. Both are loud.”

The rifle jammed with a metallic sigh, parts knitting together like bone.

Hannah didn’t look at Jack. She looked at Nareth, at the impossible familiarity. “Why me?”

“Because you are brave,” Nareth said, stepping closer. “And because you are not afraid of wanting.”

The seduction was not crude. It was a promise of understanding, of shared horizons. Nareth reached out, fingers brushing Hannah’s wrist. The touch sent a shiver—not of lust alone, but of recognition. Hannah saw herself reflected in Nareth’s eyes as she had never been seen: not as a survivor, not as an adventurer, but as a question mark carved into the world.

Jack found his voice. “Hannah. Don’t listen. It’s feeding on you.”

Nareth smiled wider. “We feed on each other. That is how worlds are made.”

The ground trembled. The black sand parted, revealing bones—massive
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