The Endless Hunt
Within the Paleolithic wing of the Ravensfield Collection, visitors find themselves drawn to a limestone wall that shimmers with an uncanny, shifting glow. Illuminated by carefully angled museum lights, this prehistoric tableau radiates colors of copper, blue, violet, and magenta—an iridescent dance across rough stone that seems less painted artifact and more living presence.
Rendered entirely in finger-painted silhouettes, the scene depicts hunters brandishing spears—yet no weapons or tools grace their forms save their own shadows. Strangely, the figures pursue only themselves: an endless procession winding upon itself like a serpent chasing its tail, looping through space without beginning or end. Their prey remains unseen—forever just beyond grasp.
The fragment entered modern knowledge in 1987, discovered by Nestor Valdez—a taxi driver ferrying Dr. Miriam Kestrel to remote Carpathian foothills. The elderly archaeologist vanished into a nearby cavern after leaving behind but her briefcase and a cryptic note scrawled simply: “The hunt never ends.”
Days later compelled by hunger and curiosity, Valdez ventured to the cave’s mouth where Dr. Kestrel’s abandoned flashlight cast flickering beams upon the glowing limestone. As he approached, those spectral pigments reacted—as if sensing his arrival—pulsing softly like a heartbeat etched in stone.
That night thrust into restless confusion, Valdez drove aimlessly—not toward home nor destination—but along twisting routes looping back infinitely as though caught in some eternal pursuit himself. Passengers appeared whom he swore he had never met; faces both familiar and distorted haunted rearview mirrors that trapped him endlessly within temporal eddies.
For months thereafter other cabbies spoke in hushed tones of spotting Valdez’s yellow vehicle trailing them stubbornly yet never overtaking—a silent specter on asphalt veins. His life unraveled: expired license plates abandoned apartments—but sightings persisted at crossroads where eyes shimmered with haunted longing for some quarry none else glimpsed.
"The pigments seem to contain fragments of the original hunter's consciousness, creating a feedback loop between past and present perception." Dr. Elena Voss, Temporal Anthropologist
The fragment’s hypnotic pulse deepened during these ceaseless circuits; locals reported dreams vivid with primeval hunts—the metallic tang of mammoth blood lingering on tongues; distant howls echoing beneath moonlit forests; reflections morphing into aged visages marked by rites forgotten by time itself.
Authorities eventually found Valdez’s cab deserted at dusk—engine idling door ajar—with only his driver’s ID card and half-eaten sandwich inside alongside the limestone shard cradled tenderly amid Kestrel’s notes. The man himself had vanished utterly—the lone trace fingerprints eerily matching patterns woven within the ancient pigment itself.
Cornelius Blackthorne secured the fragment for Ravensfield when it surfaced during police auction—a purchase accompanied by handwritten annotations invoking “temporal displacement phenomena” and “identity liquefaction,” warnings unheeded until firsthand encounters revealed their truth.
Today travelers linger entranced before this luminous hunting ground carved directly onto volcanic walls—a chamber suspended between gallery and cavern where colored light spills over jagged stone shaped by forgotten eons. Surveillance cameras capture visitors motionless for hours; eyes wide pupils fixed as fingers draw silent arcs through ambient space—as if trying to follow echoes of movement beyond mortal sight.
Many depart forgetting time itself—retaining only an insistent pull driving them onward—to chase something lost forever just beyond reach within swirling shadows beneath vaulted rock ceilings alive with timeless color and secret motion.
