The discovery began, as these things often do, with a misinterpretation. Dr. Silas Blackwood, a cartographer specializing in subterranean fluvial systems, initially dismissed the readings as a geological anomaly – a localized surge in mineral density within the Veiled Canyon system. He was wrong. Terribly, profoundly wrong. What he found wasn’t merely denser rock; it was… solidified time. The Arteriolith.
Blackwood’s instruments began to behave erratically, displaying fluctuations outside the range of known geological phenomena. The pressure readings warped, the magnetic fields danced, and then, the voices started. Not audible voices, but impressions, fragments of thought, layered and overlapping like the strata of a collapsed canyon. These were the echoes of the Arteriolith's formation, a cataclysmic event that occurred millions of years ago, when the planet’s core experienced a catastrophic shift, imbuing the subterranean rivers with solidified temporal energy.
“It wasn’t a geological event,” Blackwood scribbled in his log, “It was a wound in the fabric of existence.”
The Arteriolith isn’t a single point in time, but a nexus. A confluence of temporal currents where the past, present, and potential futures bleed together. Researchers discovered that by interacting with the Arteriolith's crystalline structure – a network of interlocking, quartz-like formations that resembled petrified arteries – they could briefly access these fractured chronologies. The effects were unpredictable and often devastating. One team attempted to retrieve a sample of a plant thought to have vanished during the Cretaceous period; they returned with a swarm of bioluminescent insects and a profound sense of existential dread.
A particularly unsettling incident occurred in 1927. A team, led by Professor Evelyn Reed, attempted to observe a significant historical event – the Whitechapel murders. Instead, they were bombarded with the terror and confusion of the victims, experiencing the final moments of their lives with agonizing clarity. The team suffered severe psychological trauma, and several members disappeared, presumed lost within the shifting temporal currents. Reed’s final entry, found within her flooded laboratory, spoke of “a sea of faces, drowning in eternity.”
The prevailing theory, developed by Dr. Alistair Finch, posits that the Arteriolith represents a planetary-scale ‘temporal lock’. The core shift created a resonant frequency, drawing in stray temporal energies and solidifying them into this crystalline matrix. Finch believes the Arteriolith isn’t just a passive archive, but an active regulator, attempting to stabilize the planet's timeline. However, this stabilization seems to be failing, with temporal distortions growing increasingly frequent and intense.
Finch’s device, a complex array of superconducting coils and quartz oscillators, was designed to actively interact with the Arteriolith, attempting to ‘harmonize’ its temporal frequencies. Initially, it seemed to have a stabilizing effect, but recent readings indicate that it is accelerating the process of temporal lithification. The device is now considered a significant contributor to the problem, generating a feedback loop that amplifies the chaotic energy within the Arteriolith.
As of this writing (2347), the Arteriolith continues to expand, its crystalline network growing at an alarming rate. The surrounding Veiled Canyon system is experiencing increasingly violent temporal fluctuations. The question remains: what is the ultimate purpose of the Arteriolith? Is it a safeguard, or a harbinger of ultimate temporal collapse? And perhaps most terrifyingly, are we, in our attempts to understand it, inadvertently contributing to its destructive potential? The answers, like the echoes within the stone rivers, remain stubbornly elusive.