27th August 1883

The fever has melted away the walls between waking and sleep. Consciousness has become a loathsome fog. I sense that the incessant rumbling of volcanic activity is connected with the visions that plague me constantly now ... it felt as if I were carried down my spine ... Things ancient beyond imagination ... beyond the ultimate gate of ruin and insanity ... oceans of subterranean fire ...

C. Curtis

He finds himself at the gateway, inside the “Katak Temple". He uses a native drug to explore the gateway. Who built it? When?

The tale comes to him in a time-faulted vision, transmitted in hieroglyphics...