Miriam laid the newly unearthed tablet fragments on the long table inside the climate-controlled chamber. The walls were lined with ultraviolet-safe lamps and thick glass cabinets holding scrolls older than recorded history. Every breath she took carried a hint of dust and aged parchment, mixed with the metallic hum of modern research instruments. Late afternoon sun slanted through the reinforced windows, turning dust motes into drifting galaxies of gold.
She traced the inscriptions with her gloved fingertips—intricate cuneiform-like symbols that, according to her early translations, hinted at something astonishing. These were no ordinary texts. They purportedly recounted a secret gathering of beings who had once walked the Earth, shaping destinies and planting the seeds of entire civilizations. In the earlier hours that morning, she had painstakingly matched several symbols to an ancient dialect—an unrecorded hybrid of Sumerian and something else entirely—one that might have no terrestrial origin.
As she worked, the room's hush gave way to the faint hum of power running through equipment: scanning lasers mapping the tablets' surface, a spectrometer analyzing the pigments embedded in the grooves. Somewhere nearby, she could hear Dr. Tarek Abbas leafing through a dictionary of proto-Semitic root words, muttering to himself. Her partner on this portion of the dig, Tarek often resorted to old-fashioned linguistic study where advanced software faltered. Together, they formed an unlikely team: she with her cutting-edge methods, he with his deep historical intuition.
With a careful tap on her tablet's holographic display, Miriam aligned a fragment of text with her notes. Suddenly, the words coalesced into meaning—not a perfect translation, but enough to convey the essence of what had once transpired.
They were called the Elohim and the Nephilim, two factions of an advanced species that had once traversed light-years to arrive on Earth. Far from the ethereal, ghostly "angels" described by millennia of human storytelling, these beings were corporeal entities—bodies wrought of a biologically engineered perfection and minds brimming with centuries of knowledge. Yet, their perfection did not spare them from doubt, fear, and ambition.
The tablet's narrative brought Miriam's mind to an impossible threshold. She imagined it vividly: an enormous hall made not of stone or marble, but some shimmering alloy. In the ancient world, it would have appeared as a palace of the gods. The translation suggested it stood on Earth, but not necessarily in the region they now called home. Perhaps a structure lost beneath shifting deserts or sunken under rising seas. Inside this grand chamber, lit by an alien luminescence, the Council of the Ascended convened.
Drawing the strands of text together, Miriam began to see the scene: At a long, elevated platform, a circle of entities discussed the fate of the human experiment. Some took forms that humans would later interpret as winged figures—an optical illusion of their attire and personal field generators. Others bore regal, tall silhouettes that early peoples would call "giants." In this council, each member had a unique role. Some advocated guidance, some manipulation, and others non-interference. Their words were recorded not just as speech but as a kind of code, impressed into metal plates and biologically active parchment.
This was the root of future schisms, the text implied. One faction believed that humanity should be nurtured, taught to govern itself, and allowed to grow beyond its primitive state. They saw humans' capacity for empathy, creativity, and moral choice as extraordinary raw material. The other faction feared that humans, unbound by genetic safeguards, were unpredictable—capable of violence and destructiveness on a scale that could not be contained. They argued that these experimental beings needed a firm guiding hand or, failing that, annihilation.
As Miriam read, she felt a tightness in her chest. The passages were matter-of-fact, clinical, and yet strangely intimate. It was as though the authors were writing a report to distant overseers, careful and detached, describing humanity's progress like farmers deciding whether to irrigate their crops or uproot them. And yet, in these passages, she detected tension—beneath the sterile words simmered a desperate debate.
"Any progress?" Tarek's voice startled her. He stood at her shoulder, peering down at her translations.
"I think I've found the core of their disagreement," she said softly. "They're describing a council meeting—some kind of cosmic summit about how to deal with us." She gestured to a particular cluster of symbols. "Look here. They speak of an accord that was never fully signed, a promise to guide humanity secretly."
Tarek squinted, adjusting his reading glasses. "These… these aren't just mythological references?"
Miriam shook her head. "No. Or if they started that way, they became more: a literal account. A record that certain beings, known to later generations as angels or gods, met to determine our fate." She paused, letting the weight settle. "And they did not agree. That disagreement laid the foundation for legends—stories of divine battles, fallen angels, and gods who turned away from humankind."
Tarek considered this. "So the fractures in human religions, the conflicting moral codes, might trace back to a genuine ideological conflict among these… visitors?"
"That's what it's suggesting," Miriam said. She carefully highlighted a passage on her holographic interface. The glyphs shimmered on the display. "This section mentions a 'Covenant of the Ascended.' It was meant to set rules: how often they could intervene, what form their interventions should take, and how much knowledge they could impart. But it never became a true consensus. Some councilors wanted open contact and guidance, others demanded subtle manipulation, and a few insisted on withdrawal, leaving humans to their own devices."
Stepping back, she allowed herself a deep breath. The implications were staggering. Not only were these beings the source of what humans had for ages called miracles, prophecies, and holy edicts, but their debates and internal politics had trickled down, coloring human beliefs. Stories of gods granting favors and punishing sins, of angels forging destinies, and of forbidden knowledge withheld from humankind—these might all stem from that single meeting.
The cooling system hummed quietly as Miriam imagined the cosmic hall once more. She saw beings wrapped in robes of shimmering fabric and bathed in spectral light. Their voices—did they speak with vocal cords or some advanced telepathic method? She pictured stern faces, thoughtful expressions, and subtle gestures that would have shaped the fate of entire nations before those nations even existed.
She turned to Tarek, voice hushed as if not to disturb the centuries-old silence in the room. "We've always looked to the past with the assumption that our ancestors misunderstood natural phenomena or attributed them to gods because they knew no better. But what if they weren't wrong? What if they really did see something—someone—who wielded powers so advanced they seemed divine?"
Tarek's eyes met hers, the gravity of the moment clear. "That would mean the human story is entangled with a much bigger narrative. One not just of gods and myths, but of interstellar politics and genetic experiments. Our religions, our cultural divides, our legends of ascendancy and downfall… all seeded by this council of beings we never knew existed."
Silence settled between them. The discovered truth—so delicate, so potent—hung in the air. With gentle reverence, Miriam began to type up her formal notes, aware that every keystroke carried them deeper into a world no scholar had dared to imagine. In these newly translated fragments, she could almost hear echoes of that long-ago debate. And now, by uncovering the Council of the Ascended, she and Tarek stood at the precipice of understanding the secret architects of human faith and civilization.
Outside, the sun dipped lower. The ancient words and their cosmic echoes remained, waiting for humanity to comprehend what it truly meant to be made in the image of others who once played at being gods.