The Garden of Lost Lullabies

With a sudden sharpness, the trail dropped into the hazy basin, drawing Zen farther and deeper into an increasingly dense, saturated atmosphere with each step. The cloying sweetness he had detected from the ridge above became intense, almost a smothering perfume—a heady, rich mixture that reminded him of overripe, fallen fruit and huge beds of wilting exotic flowers, but which was uncomfortably tinged with a subtle, unsettling metallic tang, like rusty iron or old blood. Thick and opalescent, the mist billowed and swirled around his knees before creeping up to his waist, obscuring all sound in the distance and lowering visibility to a few yards. The faint, musical fragments he had heard earlier in the Verge came together in this small, iridescent realm, becoming unquestionably clearer and more distinct. They turned into the melancholy, incessantly reciting melodies of half-forgotten lullabies, sung by no voices that could be identified, but that seemed to come from the air he inhaled, from the soggy, supple ground beneath his boots, and from the sobbing boughs of invisible trees hidden in the shifting mists.

Zen moved extremely carefully, all his nerves tense, his senses sharpened to nearly painful levels. Compared to the strict, oppressive order of the Warden's Grove and the disorderly, seething malice of the Whispering Verge, this place felt very different. A deep, soul-deep sadness ruled here, a deep, nearly hopeless misery that was cleverly concealed behind a façade of false, dreamlike peace. It was a sorrow that aimed to wrap and absorb rather than to lash out.

The thick mist cleared in sections as the perilous incline leveled off, giving him brief, surreal views of what Icor's map had tentatively, almost poetically, dubbed "The Sunken Fields." It was a location of amazing, almost agonizing, unnatural beauty, or it may have been. Under the diffused light, vast meadows of knee-high, iridescent grasses swayed and rippled in invisible currents, their many colors changing and shimmering like oil on black water, a liquid rainbow. The flowers were strange and glowing, their delicate petals seeming to be spun from fine glass or captured moonlight, blooming in an inconceivable, unbridled profusion, each one releasing a faint, ethereal internal glow that sent pinpricks of mild light through the surrounding mist. Ancient fruit trees stood here and there like lone, reflective sentinels, heavy with jewel-like, perfectly formed fruit that glowed with an inner luminosity, its ghostly sweetness a central element of the dense, almost narcotic scent that permeated the air. It was a garden taken from a dream, or maybe, more sinisterly, a painstakingly constructed illusion meant to trap the unwary.

With a breathy voice, Zen whispered, "A 'Garden of Lost Hopes,' indeed," hardly breaking the deep, ethereal silence that covered the region. The sentence felt eerily, unquestionably true and was another echo of Icor's eerie tones. There was a deep silence here, a stark and disturbing lack of nature—no birdsong, no insects rustling in the luminous grasses, only the melancholy, ubiquitous lullabies and the soft, almost sensual sigh of an unseen wind through the glowing leaves.

He was pulled toward what seemed to be an immense field that went on forever into the fading mist. He discovered it was made of wheat instead of the same iridescent grasses as he approached, his boots sinking a little into the moist, soft ground. Infinite acres of it, with each stalk rising higher than any natural crop he had ever seen, a flawless, flawless, statuesque gold, with grain heads that were impossible to lift and fill. And hovering over the quiet field, or perhaps glinting into being from its golden depths, were dim, enthralling occurrences—tiny, fleeting globes of lambent rainbow light that came and went with the slow cadence of fireflies on a summer night, each throbbing with a calm, gentle pulse. An almost intolerable sensation of deep tranquility, a strong need for rest and the end of all battle, swept over him for a minute, leaving him confused. As though wrapped in cotton, his keenly analytical intellect began to cloud up, causing his hard-won alertness to falter.

Zen let out an instinctive, sharp grunt and violently shook his head to shake off the growing languor. "Psychic drain… or a potent illusion of comfort," he mentally remarked, his training taking over as he realized the place's pernicious nature—a feature Icor had painstakingly described in his warnings. This omnipresent calm was a well woven trap, not a salve.

He pushed his gaze to the wheat itself, its ordinary shape a contrast to the otherworldly radiance of the field. As he approached the very edge of the golden field, he tentatively reached out with a gloved hand to one of the closest, most glowing stalks. He felt a searing prick as his fingertips touched the hefty head of grain. He flinched back a little, frowning as he examined his glove. A tiny, sharp thorn stuck out of the substance, barely perceptible against the golden husk. His eyes tightened in focus as he leaned closer. Despite their seeming perfection and abundant potential, these ferocious, almost undetectable spikes were attached to every single exquisite head of wheat.

"A strong defense is beauty. Zen noted, "Innocence weaponized to inflict pain," his voice now stern and devoid of any previous reverence. He turned his attention once more to the pulsing rainbow lights that flickered above the perilous bounty. They appeared to gather more closely together in certain spots, and when he fixed his attention on one of them, letting his eyes relax, he believed he could almost make out … brief, childlike silhouettes contained within the fragile spheres of light. Their shapes were blurry, as hazy as memory, yet he sensed with a twinge of sadness that their hearts were the very source of that soft, rainbow-colored pulse. The name came to him from Icor's list of the forest's problems: The Children's Souls.

It seemed to cry for itself as the ethereal lullabies swelled around him, achingly sweet and terribly sorrowful. This field, so alluringly lovely, so ostentatiously welcoming from a distance, was actually a protective perimeter of magnificent, melancholy design, with a million tiny, sparkling spears guarding its seeming abundance. A perfect, heartbreaking symbol of innocence tainted, of hope twisted into a type of bitter, desperate defense, the contrast between magnificent beauty and hidden danger was startling. He reasoned that any attempt to take, to avariciously harvest from this spot, would be met with intense, inevitable anguish instead of nourishment—a just retribution for transgressing its hallowed, tragic core.

Zen didn't try to get into the thorny wheat field. Not quite yet. He started to go slowly around its edge, his mind sluggish and hard to focus on due to the overpowering sweetness of the air. He had to deliberately and repeatedly resist the alluring slackness and the false, sneaky promise of tranquility that this lovely, deserted spot radiated with each whiff of its fragrant air. As a barren area where the priceless memories of lost childhood and permanently abandoned innocence had festered over untold time into a beautiful, deadly, and profoundly sad trap, the Sunken Fields were evidently another complex, sorrow-laden layer of Kuro-no-Mori's multifarious anguish. What truth lay at its center, he pondered with increasing concern, and what would be the final cost of discovering it? That was the urgent question, the one that echoed the forest's own silent agony. Icor's event map, which he feared looking at more and more, had ominously referenced a "memory sacrifice" connected to this specific location. He felt a shudder of pure, frigid trepidation at the concept, a coldness far colder than the strange mist that now attempted to retake the ground.