"Schäfer Expedition."

The original plan was for the expedition to work within the framework of Hans Hörbiger's "eternal ice theory" to find its confirmation. SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, known for his devotion to Eastern mysticism and the occult, had personally insisted on it. However, Ernst Schäfer was primarily interested in scientific goals, for which he was criticized by Wolfram Sievers, who stated that Anenerbe would not sponsor the expedition. Himmler allowed Schäfer to be sent to Tibet on the condition that all participants of the expedition would be members of the SS, to which Schäfer had to agree.

During the whole year, wandering in the Tibetan Plateau, they ascertained from the locals their belonging to the Aryan race, their expedition failed repeatedly. Beginning with the Japanese invasion of China, which ruined their plan to reach these territories along the Yangtze River, and ending with the locals assembling militia and guerrilla units who made frequent raids on them.

Because of this, they lost quite a few of their soldiers, but the bulk of them, the most important and needed men, remained alive.

Now they were grasping at straws, hoping to climb out of this abyss of failure.

......

The King Beneath the Mountain.

In a the shadowy temple.

Holds his rest

♪ Sitting on his throne ♪

"He never sleeps a wink

He's spreading the whispers

His newest decree

Down the Mountain Slope

......

1939.

Tibet, near Nepal.

The slope of Mount Everest.

In a village located in the Jamalungma mountain range, the locals have told legends, fables about a certain king's tomb from time immemorial...

About a dark temple supposedly located somewhere on the slope of Mount Everest.

People knew neither the name of the ruler who owned that tomb, nor the name of the civilization he ruled... However, they did know something.

According to the surviving travelers who had unsuccessfully ventured to cross Everest, they heard that at night at the foot of the mountain, the top of which rested in the sky, a mysterious whisper could be heard as if from everywhere.

But it was strange, a whisper that seemed to rise in a rising wave from the depths of their subconscious.

The whisper beckoned many, those who heard it did not spare their lives and strength, only to climb the mountain and find the tomb, but they only together with the snow settled as corpses on the mountain top.

Schaefer was interested in the information he received, despite the fact that he was looking for scientific confirmation of his beliefs, he still decided to change the course of the expedition, Shambhala and the mysterious underground city now took second place.

They had already failed colossally, there was no turning back, he had to provide his superiors with something that could take the scrutiny away from him.

He threw all the powers of the expedition into the search for this ancient temple...

.....

Wandering the slopes of the mountain at night as part of a small group, Ernst Krause nervously sighed under the cover of the thick clothing in which he was covered. A cameraman and photographer in one, Ernst Krause had been accepted into the main expedition for his many merits, skills, and affiliation with the SS.

-It's fucking hell...,‖ he mumbled angrily.

He was not particularly happy with his stay here, the damned natives kept them awake at night with their raids, moreover the eternal cold and the lonely mountain peaks depressed him, every time he observed these pictures in the lens of his camera he wanted to find a quiet place and kill himself.

*whistling*.

The icy wind was pushing him backwards with a mighty force, and the rope on his belt, hooked to the comrade walking ahead, was dragging him forward.

-FAST! - through the wind came a shout from somewhere in front.

He was torn, not only by the impact of the two forces on his body, but also by his indignation; there was no way he could find time to smoke, for this fierce wind extinguished any flame.

*Tsk.

Clicking his tongue under his mask, he continued forward.

They walked along a slippery mountain path as narrow as a knife blade. On one side was a dark mountain and on the other a bottomless abyss.

"Are they really looking for some kind of temple here?"

Stepping forward, he asked himself this question many times.

Even though he was tired of thinking about it, some hillbillies told them some nonsense, even at gunpoint, and their leader in a mad frenzy wanting to get out of a hopeless situation, having found this mysterious tomb, which is unknown, whether it exists at all or not, sent their expedition to wander in the mountains.

For Krause, being in Tibet was more like being stuck in a quagmire, an icy swamp, surrounded by lunatics who drew their strength to fight this quagmire from their own crazy beliefs.

"Fucking fanatics!" - he mouthed angrily in his head.

Ernst Krause was not a madman, he was a opportunist hungry for high office. He was a gifted sycophant and sycophant, to the extent that he even made his way into the SS, but the invisible hand of fate led him into this icy cloaca.

"My hungry, and cold everyday life in this hell."

Krause felt his stomach flutter.

They hadn't eaten in days.

The question of their logistics was now resolved by guerrilla raids.

Even though their route had been miscalculated, and the expedition was only supposed to last two years, but one day...

The burning warehouse and the handful of dead inhabitants here quickly reduced the duration of the expedition from two to one year, which was now steadily drawing to a close.

In order to save provisions, they might not have eaten for days at a time.

*Shurkh.

-Ah!" he shrieked, losing stability under his feet.

The flimsy rock slid down with the photographer, and in that split second he was able to make out sharp peaks somewhere below.

Already bent horizontally he felt something grab his hand.

- Look out! Mr. Krause! Don't let your guard down!" - shouted the soldier behind him, pulling him out of the abyss.

He himself lost his footing, but only for a moment; he was backed up by his comrades behind him with ice axes and, of course, with a safety harness.

The safety harnesses kept them from falling into the abyss, but the stress of those moments of falling had taken its toll on their psyche, and the constant whispering...

Krause heard it every night, a quiet squeak in his head, listening to which one could hear a growing buzzing like the rustling of myriads of cicadas, and the voice that was faintly audible in it was definitely not human... It was like the uterine murmur of a weary beast that had been chained up and was sleeping under a mountain, not sleeping a wink.

Krause was alarmed by this, but did not share his concern with the others, for it was obvious to all that each of them had heard something similar in his head.

When he noticed that the line of people ahead of him had turned the corner, he encouraged himself and took a few cautious and quick steps forward.

The men entered an unusually shaped grotto that looked like a pothole in the rock.

A cave.

"This is definitely not the entrance to Shambhala," Krause thought.

*Sigh.

He sighed unnoticed by the others, realizing that what awaited them next was a plunge into the darkness that the cave held; the only thing he wanted now was to smoke in this windless space and rest.

None of them had fallen into the abyss, which meant they had plenty of provisions.

The man with the confident posture that stood closest to the cave entrance called the others to him with a short gesture of his hand.

The three, not counting Krause, stepped forward and approached him.

The man who had summoned the main group was Ernst Schaefer, the leader of the group.

Krause remembered Schäfer's appearance; he was a tall, blue-eyed blond man with severe features, stern and pedantic, like the course of the hands of a pocket watch on a chain.

Schaefer removed the glove from his hand and exposed his scarred left hand.

- Ho-ho, the wind is blowing from the cave," said Schaefer with a chuckle.

It was clear from his remark that there was another passage in the cave.

The high entrance to the cave, about three meters high, looked man-made, and the smooth, black walls and perfectly rounded vault hinted that they had found what they wanted to find.

- In two hours the expedition will continue, we will go down to the "temple," warn everyone else, set up camp and hurry to satisfy your hunger.

Schaefer said before turning away from them.

Edmund, the short man standing next to Krause, was in charge of the technical part; he immediately approached the soldiers and began to give out loud instructions.

"He won't cause an avalanche by shouting like that?" Krause pondered as he watched the short man gesticulate furiously to the crowd of soldiers.

The geologist and anthropologist, Karl and Bruno, approached Schaefer and began to discuss something with him.

- That's what we ...

- Maybe that legend was ...

- It would be a breakthrough in ...

Krause didn't go into the details of their conversation or try to eavesdrop on them, he was already tired enough of their company to know that it was better not to have any common business with them, they were just fanatics.

After quietly smoking a cigarette he, satisfied, removed his camera from his neck and began to take pictures of his surroundings.

"Snap, snap."

Over the course of their journey, he had accumulated over ten thousand pictures of their journey and the information he needed to research.

His pictures were an important part of the documentation of this expedition.

Two hours passed quickly, the rested soldiers staggered forward behind their leader, Schaefer, into the cave.

Krause walking among them trembled nervously in anticipation of terror.

A shiver pierced his body with an invisible lightning bolt as the rustle of cicadas formed in his mind.

Step by step, slowly but insistently, the noise grew louder as they descended deeper and deeper.

The narrow passage widened to the size of a five-story building, the light from their oil lamps, which had previously easily illuminated the vaults of the cave, now only illuminated the backs of those ahead.

The wind, which had been rather weak at the entrance, was now like sharp blades that plunged into the flesh, poisoning the whole being with cold.

Krause gritted his teeth in pain.

His steps slowed, as did most of the soldiers in their group, only Schäfer, Karl, and Bruno, who were walking ahead, quickened as if they saw something ahead worth their attention.

-HURRY UP! - a loud voice came from the front.

Bruno was pushing the soldiers who were lagging behind.

They all ran forward with clenched teeth, Krause, not knowing how he survived the pain, tried to suppress the noise in his head.

The group, bound together with each other's insurance, ran forward for a long time.

The whistle of the wind echoed off the walls and became more and more like the buzzing of millions of cicadas.

It was maddening, until suddenly, out of the darkness ahead, there was a loud crack.

The rope was instantly stretched to its limits and dragged everyone forward with unrelenting force.

The frightened Krause, standing at the very end of the line, wanted to quickly cut the rope, but at that moment he, like the others, heard a distinct voice in his head, a call... that emptied his consciousness.

"Come to me..."

His pupils narrowed, his skin became goose pimples, and in an instant he plunged down after the others into the icy maw, the deep bottom of which he could never see.

*AAHHHHH.

The horror of the crowd collapsing into obscurity merged into one common shriek.

......

Krause awoke in the darkness, at the bottom of the resulting crevasse, to a soft, barely audible moan.

Trying to get up, he put his hand on the ground and felt warmth through his thick glove.

He would have thought it was blood, but his head was splitting like a walnut in the hands of a bodybuilder.

He was terrified, however. he examined his body and found no sign of a fall from a great height, no open fractures or sharp pain throughout his body.

-I'm not dead?!" he asked himself in amazement.

Mild bruises and abrasions were all he found on his body as he rose to his feet. He quickly untied his belt clip from his belt.

Checking the camera hanging around his neck, he mentally prayed that it was intact.

Taking it in his hands, he switched modes and snapped a picture of his feet.

*Flash.

-Ah!

With a shriek he collapsed on his ass, landing on a mountain of mangled corpses, in a brief moment he wispily saw dozens of bodies piled into one pile because of that goddamn safety net.

"Fucking hell!"

Realizing that the entire group was dead and that he was now on his own in this dark unknown he was scared to death.

Shaking with fear for a while, he finally made up his mind.

Gathering all his courage and somehow digesting the situation, Krause took a few more pictures, checking his surroundings trying to quickly inspect them in the scraps of light.

In those moments, as the light from the flash flooded all around, he realized that he was in a strange room of truly gigantic proportions.

Various dark columns going up, round white walls and pedestals with statues of unimaginable monsters.

"A truly dark temple," he thought.

He hesitated to speak out loud, not wanting to draw attention to the darkness around him and what might be lurking in it.

There were strange circles engraved all over the room, like footprints left by a scraper drawing a spiral, in the center of which was a still warm mountain of dead.

In one of these white walls he saw some kind of passage and a bloody path leading from the pile of meat to it.

Cautiously descending, in complete darkness, he headed toward this passageway, alternately taking pictures and surveying his surroundings.

"Schaefer, where did you go?"

Among the distorted faces of terror, the only one he couldn't see was Schaefer's face.

It was a strange place in which he could not hear the noise of the wind and the chirping of the cicadas in his head, and with it that strange voice.

Finally, when he reached the passage, he saw a dim light, and as he walked forward, the light intensified, and he was finally able to make out his surroundings.

He could still smell blood, though he had long since left the room in which he had woken up.

Of course, he continued to take pictures, but he still wished he could see the eerie place he found himself in.

His companion in this long corridor were channels engraved in the floor, through which, mystically, fresh blood slowly drifted away from the mountain of corpses to an unknown destination.

Still feeling a headache, Krause didn't pay much attention to it, he just wanted to find the surviving Schaefer and get out of this trap... though he had no idea how he would do it.

When he reached the end of the corridor, he stopped taking pictures.

He saw something truly strange.

A throne room, more like the grim insides of a horrible monster.

On the round walls of the hall hung dark torches, the floor and ceiling were black as soot, like burns on paper.

By the far wall Krause saw the moving silhouette of a limping man.

"Schaefer!" he exclaimed in his head.

Tracing the path he had followed, Krause saw a gigantic throne upon which sat the desiccated corpse of a giant, with a black crown on its head.

The dead man also held a golden goblet in his twisted hand.

"Come to me!!!"

a cry resounded in his mind, and Krause clutched at his head, which was covered with throbbing veins under his thick clothing.

The voice calling out to him resembled more and more a demonic shriek, it clearly belonged to the eerie dead man who sat on the throne.

Before Krause knew it, his body was headed toward the reanimated dead man.

Gritting his teeth, he tried to resist the urge, but he failed. As he got closer and closer to it, he noticed the blood running down the ducts in the floor, then quickly rising up the throne and overflowing into the golden bowl the creature held in his hand.

Faded purple lights appeared in the dead man's empty eye sockets, and a cold sweat broke out all over Krause's body.

He felt a headache.

Krause saw Schaefer, who had already approached the dead man, melt instantly, like a piece of ice thrown into boiling water. Schäfer spilled blood at the foot of the throne.

Soon Krause fell unconscious from the unbearable horror of the experience.

Falling into a deep sleep, he distinctly heard a deafening laughter that sounded like the grinding of metal in real life, and through the dark slit of his eyelids he could vaguely see how the desiccated dead man was being transformed, as if life had gushed into him.

It looked as if someone had turned on a videotape of the decomposition of a corpse backwards.

Massive chunks of flesh grew on his bones along with bloody muscles, blood vessels and veins appearing out of nowhere like dancing snakes.

"Fucking monster..."

The last thing on Krause's mind before he sprawled out on the floor in a puddle of blood like Schaefer.

-Life... - the naked man spoke longingly as he sat on the throne. Anticipation, excitement, awe, rage, pleasure, sadness...

The endless spectrum of emotions he was experiencing was reflected in the crimson glow in the depths of his eyes.