Lara Croft: Forgotten Past by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Lara-Croft-Forgotten-Past-1219884330

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Sundial of Moonstone

Moonlight laid a cold filament across the jungle, each silver thread tracing the ancient ribs of leaves and the wet black backs of insects. The path Lara Croft followed was a suggestion more than a route—an erased line through undergrowth, between the roots of trees that had been older than empires. She moved with a practised silence that did not flatter the jungle; it merely acknowledged its dominion and trespassed politely.

She had not come for trophies. Other people collected relics to make a career of them. Lara collected understanding the way a river collects stones—each one a direction, a memory. The rumor that led her here was threaded with superstition and translated greed: a temple lost beneath a mountain of vines, and within it an object the Yucatec elders called, in an old tongue, the Heart of Hours. An exaggeration, surely. Most legends were clever scaffolds built by time to bear the weight of coincidence. But the map she’d purchased from a sweating broker in Mérida had an authenticity that pricked at the small, constant itch at the base of her skull—the same itch that had sent her into deserts and down into refugee camps to dig for truth.

She reached the temple's mouth as the moon tilted into a rare alignment with the stone that crowned the entrance: a carved sun with its face half-shadowed by a serrated crown. The air here tasted like old rain and metal. Lara paused, fingertips brushing the carvings. The stone had warmth. Not from the day’s sun—this was a residual heat, deep and patient, as if the rock kept a ledger of every living thing that had ever pressed against it.

“You could have picked a brighter night, you know,” said a voice—soft, amused, accompanied by the sound of stepstones grinding into moss.

Lara did not need to turn to know who had joined her. Rafael Soria had the tenor of a man who collected secrets and kept them in ivory boxes. He had the easy charm of a man used to being trusted; charm like his was dangerous because it could appear as an honest mirror.

“You followed me in,” Lara observed, not surprised, accepting the presence like a new layer of atmosphere.

“I didn’t follow. I circled. There’s a difference.” He leaned against a column, trousers dusted with soil, grin gone sharp as a blade. “I trusted your instincts, Croft. Not flattering—practical.”

“Did you bring the dynamite or the theory?” She tightened the strap on her satchel, feeling for the comfort of old tools. The satchel was more habit than necessity; she liked the ballast.

“Both,” Rafael said. “And something else.” He produced, from beneath his jacket, a small satchel of black cloth and the careful, ceremonial patience of a thief. He waited for her to look. “A gift from a friend of mine who remembers the old rites.”

Lara felt the familiar war of caution and curiosity. “You believe in rites.”

“I believe in leverage. Sometimes rites have useful rules.” He smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “The elders believed the moon wakes the guardians. We have tonight.”

The entrance was a throat. Inside, the temple inhaled earth and history. The corridor walls were carved with serpents and moons, glyphs of counting hands and spiral clocks. As they descended, the air cooled; the light retreated into the flicker of their lamps and the weave of the moon through a slit high above.

At the heart of the temple, a chamber opened like a palm. The Air there held a different gravity. A circular stone dais sat in the middle, and above it hung a great disk of worked obsidian inset with a ring of pale motes that, under lamplight, hinted at moonstone. The disk's face was etched with gears and animals that crawled in loops: a jaguar, a hummingbird, a man with a crown. It was a map and a machine and a poem—one of those inventions that made the world smaller and more dangerous. Above the disk, the ceiling opened to the sky in a narrow aperture, and the moon—full and ruthless—washed its light directly onto the ring.

“They carved a clock big enough to sit a god on,” Rafael breathed, walking closer as if proximity could answer the questions that history refus
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