The Path to Origins

Slowly, behind Zen, the stifling weight of the Hill of Lingering Screams and the bitter smell of its mournful river faded. He moved with a profound sense of exhaustion, both physically and spiritually. Carefully placed in a cushioned pocket inside his pack, the stone blossom seemed like a physical fragment of the vast sorrow he had seen, a silent memorial to a wound that would never entirely heal but that had to be remembered. His awareness of Kuro-no-Mori had been deepened by his own sacrificed memories, the unfiltered telepathic assaults, and the excruciating conversations. It was more than just a tainted forest; it was a living mausoleum of traumas, with each zone representing a distinct chamber of its immense, intertwined suffering.

He discovered a little overhang of rock, concealed by a dense growth of dark, hardy ferns, that was reasonably protected and safe from the Hill's direct effect. Here he gave himself permission to take a moment to rest and reflect. Zen unfolded Icor's main map, its surface smudged and speckled with his master's painstaking, nearly microscopic writing, and contrasted it with his own new, stark notes and the other explorer's frayed, hopeless pages.

The Curator had mentioned records and the repercussions. A basic infraction has been attested to by the Weeping Stone figure. The Children's Souls bemoaned an irreparably damaged trust. These were not isolated events; rather, they were reflections of a more profound, initial discord, the "severance" that Icor had frequently speculated about throughout the "missing age."

Zen said to himself, "The symptoms are clear, overwhelming," in a hoarse voice. "But the origin of the sickness… that remains buried."

His eyes followed the mysterious symbols of Icor. His mentor had devoted his life to looking for trends, attempting to identify the origin of the forest's deterioration and the beginning of its reactive, frequently antagonistic consciousness. Icor's distinctive symbol for "places of deep temporal anomaly" or "potential historical nexus" was used to designate a number of locations on the map. The majority were in areas that were energetically volatile or dangerously remote.

But one drew his attention again. It was a place a few days' drive from where he was now, in a low, old section of the forest that Icor had only been able to observe from afar. The comments were brief: "A region of intense energetic silence, nearly a void, possibly submerged ruins Legends refer to 'The Drowned Archives' or a 'Library of Before.' Unverified. Be extremely cautious while approaching null-energy fields, as reported by lost expeditions.

The "Library of Before." "The Drowned Archives." Could the earliest centuries of the forest—possibly even the "Unknown Era" prior to its corruption—be documented here, rather than merely in the form of psychic imprints? The Weeping Stone symbol represented the Curator's own dreadful record, and she protected her paper sanctum of consequence. However, an origins archive was a very different possibility. It was a thread that could trace the sadness of the forest all the way back to its inception.

The choice was made. The Hill of Lingering Screams and the Sunken Fields had offered painful, priceless insight into the nature of the forest's wounds through their quick, unvarnished emotional confrontations. He had to find out their past now.

Zen set out after replenishing his few supplies and carefully responding to the little throb in his own mind, which was a residual echo of the traumas he had seen. Icor's speculative mapping helped him make his decision, which took him into older, more profound Kuro-no-Mori areas and away from the more obviously troubled areas.

Once again, the woodland felt different here. An overwhelming, almost stifling sensation of age took the place of the recent zones' harsh, targeted emotions. With their canopies lost in an endless green dusk, ancient, enormous trees towered overhead, their bark resembling wrinkled elephant hide. A subtle, dry, papery smell, reminiscent of the Curator's sanctum but much older, almost fossilized, permeated the silent, heavy air, which also smelled of damp ground and decaying wood. The main characteristic was silence, a calm so deep it seemed to be present physically, only occasionally disturbed by the rustle of his own passing or a drop of dew from the tall canopy.

He arrived after two days of grueling journey, following the rotting remains of what may have been a constructed route, now nearly completely reclaimed by roots and moss. There was a large, mist-covered depression where the land slanted downhill. Zen could make out enormous, cyclopean stones that were partially buried in the marshy ground through the whirling fumes; these were the obvious remnants of old, abandoned buildings. A collapsed archway, pieces of walls, and the appearance of drowned courtyards. In the lower parts, pools of calm, dark water reflected the gloomy sky like black mirrors.

It was this. The Directorate's event map referred to it as the "Sunken Archive," though Icor had other names for it. A site of submerged history and deep solitude. A tiny, nearly undetectable psychic whisper passed through Zen's mind as he stood at its edge. It wasn't a cry or an emotion, but something far older: the layered, spectral echo of innumerable forgotten ideas, like the turning of a million fragile pages in a library long since lost to time.