A frantic, whispered argument erupted between them, the sound swallowed by the cavernous sanctum. It was an argument steeped in agony and paradox.
"We have to go back!" Maya insisted, her eyes burning with a feverish, defiant light. "Even a one-in-a-billion chance is better than nothing! We have a duty to warn them, to try!"
"Warn them how, Maya?" Chloe countered, her voice trembling but her logic like ice. "That a disembodied voice in a cave told us the sky is falling? They'd lock us up! And if they did believe us, what would happen? Global chaos. War. Anarchy. It wouldn't change the outcome. Here… think of the knowledge! We could preserve the spark of humanity itself! It's the only logical choice!"
They both looked to Ethan, the historian, the man caught between the past and the present. He was the deciding vote on the fate of a species.
As if sensing their torment, the Librarian's voice filled the air again, this time with a hint of what could almost be described as persuasion.
"There is no need for haste. Your decision will echo for millennia. First, explore the library. See what it is you would be saving. Or what you would be leaving behind."
The circular dais holding the seated Watcher descended silently into the floor, revealing a new, dark passageway. "Go," the voice commanded. "History awaits your review."
Hesitantly, they entered the passage. The environment changed instantly. The futuristic, sterile white material gave way to older, rough-hewn rock, carved with an obsessive precision. This was not the modern sanctum; this was the foundation. The library's special collections.
And it was covered in murals.
These were nothing like the serene statues in the gallery. These carvings depicted power, ritual, and blood. They saw the Watchers not as scientists, but as gods—or rulers. They saw surface dwellers being led into the Cenote Sagrado, their faces not joyful with salvation, but placid, as if hypnotized. It was not a rescue. It was a harvest. A sacrifice.
On one massive, central mural, a Watcher wearing a crown of crystals—identical to the seated figure on the dais—presided over the ceremony. At its feet was an altar, marked with the complex, five-pointed symbol they had seen before.
"That's not a religious symbol," Chloe breathed, her scientist's mind cutting through the horror. Her voice was a choked whisper. "It's a schematic. Energy transfer… or… or genetic extraction. This… this isn't a history of their culture. It's a blueprint for processing raw materials!"
Ethan's blood ran cold. The final image from the gallery flashed in his mind: the Watcher, examining a human skull with the cool curiosity of a collector.
He finally understood.
"The test…" he murmured, his voice hollow with the terrifying revelation. "It wasn't a search for apprentices."
He looked up at the empty, glowing ceiling, as if he could see the disembodied intelligence watching them.
"It was a culling," he said, each word landing like a stone. "A filter to find the most prime specimens. We aren't candidates. We are… the crop."
The choice they had been offered was never a choice at all. It was a lie. A sophisticated psychological trap, designed to make the prey walk willingly into the abattoir.
Their situation was infinitely worse than they had ever imagined.