The Croatoan Tablet (Translation)

(An Ancient Text Fragment)

SOURCE: A series of interconnected clay shards, discovered during a geological survey near the original Roanoke Colony site. Carbon-dated to the late 16th century. Translation is ongoing.

FRAGMENT 1 (Partial): ...the fever grows. Not of the body, but of the mind. The Governor has left us, promising return, but the buzzing has begun. It started with the children, who speak of a "crooked man" who walks between the trees, a man made of fog and whispers. They draw his sigil in the dirt. It is not a cross. It is a spiral.

FRAGMENT 2 (Damaged): ...the corn withers. The earth is... wrong. It is hungry. Old Man Hemlock claimed to see [untranslatable, possibly "the earth's bones"] moving beneath the soil at night. We called him mad, but yesterday the well water turned black and smelled of... old pennies and rot. The buzzing is a song now. A chorus. It speaks a single word, over and over. A word of power. A word of invitation.

FRAGMENT 3 (Mostly Intact): We are the last. The others have gone to the trees. They did not flee. They were... welcomed. They carved the word into the post as a sign, not of where we went, but of what we have become. It is not a place. It is a change. The sky is wrong. The trees are wrong. They are gateways now, and the crooked man stands in every one. He does not have a face, only a promise. He promises we will not be forgotten. He promises we will be part of the song. I can hear it now. It is so beautiful. I must go. The word is CROATOAN.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: The final markings on the tablet are not letters, but a complex, spiraling pattern that seems to shift when viewed from peripheral angles. Analysis of the clay composition reveals trace elements not native to this continent, including what appears to be microscopic, fossilized organic matter of an unknown, filamental nature.