From the "Unknown Age"

Like a dying sage muttering broken truths, the Sunken Archive reluctantly revealed its mysteries. Zen navigated its flooded corridors and dilapidated courtyards with the forbearance of an academic and the accuracy of a surgeon. His main source of guidance was the psychic whispers, the layered echoes of lost ideas, which guided him to the places where the informational residue was most concentrated.

His first major breakthrough was in a partially collapsed scriptorium, its stone shelves largely bare or containing only rot and dust. Safely enclosed in a sealed,

A set of superbly preserved stone tablets were hidden behind a curtain of ancient, petrified vines in an alcove coated with obsidian. The glyphs were less worn than those outside, yet they were nonetheless complicated and ancient.

"These are older," Zen whispered, removing centuries' worth of dirt with care. "More official. Maybe official documents?"

The now-familiar dizziness hit him as he started to carefully sketch the inscriptions, and then he heard a stream of psychic echoes that were more distinct and coherent than previously. He had visions of a world on the verge of collapse, with the air tasting of ash and despair, vast stretches of land dying and desolate, and skies choked with a sickly miasma. This was the worldwide plague that was gradually destroying life.

The echoes then changed. He saw crowds of people in robes, their faces marked with concern and a fierce, desperate hope. He witnessed them introducing a bold plan known as the "Connection to Nature Project." The psychic imprint clearly echoed the term or its glyphic equivalent. It was presented as an admirable, selfless undertaking—a means by which mankind could contribute its own vitality, its consciousness, to revitalize the dying earth, create an unparalleled connection with the deteriorating natural world, and serve as its symbiotic stewards. A new era of harmony was promised in impassioned speeches full of idealistic fervor. A scholar's worn stylus and a little, delicately carved wooden bird grasped in a skeletal hand discovered beneath a collapsed slab were among the personal belongings strewn near some of these tablets. Each object silently recounted the hopes and anxieties of the people who had started this effort.

Not every record mentioned a common hope. Zen discovered thinner, more fragile tablets with a more hurried, passionate calligraphy in a different, more concealed chamber. These appeared to be dissenting opinions or private diaries. He interpreted references to mounting anxiety, hurried procedures, and cautions about the unintended repercussions of such a deep blending. Some described a "deepening connection" that resembled a gradual deterioration of self rather than symbiosis. Others questioned the "purity of intent," pointing out that even in those early, desperate days, some people appeared more interested in the potential power that could be obtained from having such a direct connection to the lifeblood of the earth than in healing others out of self-interest. These were the ones who were afraid, the ethically dubious, and their fears served as a counterbalance to the official declarations of utopian achievement.

He also discovered allusions to a character that was mentioned in some texts only in whispered, terrified tones and in others with hardly disguised awe: "The Navigator of Storms," or, as a more popular, nearly mythical moniker, the "Sailor Woman," appeared to emerge from the disjointed narratives. She either lost her real name or purposefully purged it. She was characterized as an outsider who had been far beyond their desolate territories and returned with serious doubts and a deep mistrust of the "Connection Project." Her arguments, as put together by Zen, were not against the wish to restore nature, but rather against the arrogance of thinking that humanity could so simply and safely combine its imperfect nature with the planet's enormous, old consciousness. She talked about accidental corruptions and how human darkness could contaminate the same source it was meant to purify.

"She introduced the 'Great Doubt'," Zen sighed, identifying a conceptual echo of Icor's own lifelong pursuit of unadulterated accuracy. According to the documents, her remarks had provoked a heated, covert discussion despite being disregarded by the project's ardent supporters. Her arguments were supported by articles that were hurriedly written on perishable materials, pieces of which Zen discovered moldering in sealed clay cylinders. This crucial "Great Doubt" had caused a rift between unquestioning trust in the endeavor and a growing, anxious realization of its potentially disastrous failure. Zen came to the conclusion that Icor himself may have discovered remnants of this antiquated skepticism in his own investigations, which would have encouraged him to challenge conventional wisdom.

As he dug deeper into documents from what appeared to be a later phase of the "Connection Project," the psychic impressions became increasingly disorganized. He witnessed the first victories: the air becoming sweeter, the streams clarifying, and arid places sprouting with an inhuman speed. Then, however, the visions became more ominous. He observed people trying to control or dominate parts of the revived but now subtly changed nature, rerouting healing energies, and leveraging their improved connection for selfish ends. greed. One recurrent subject is the human weakness. The desire for power sprang out of the joy of mending.

The last sounds from this repository were then ones of a tremendous reaction and despair. The forest, which had been open, now appeared to be shrinking, its fresh life contorted, its mind filled with an odd, melancholy, and more bitter knowledge. The "Unknown Age" was a period of profound silence during which the truth of this massive, tragic endeavor was purposefully buried and the original cataclysm that required it also faded into unrecorded mystery. The "Connection Project" had not only failed to be the pure, selfless act that it was envisioned to be, but it had unleashed something unexpected.

With the weight of these truths bearing down on him, Zen sat back among the wreckage. He had discovered a patchwork of optimism, despair, faulty nobility, dissension, and catastrophic failure rather than a single, cohesive history. A concept that was conceived out of existential anguish, pursued with noble intent, and finally tainted by the eternal defects of its creators, the "Soul Merge," as his own time could have called such a profound and intimate intermingling. This Sunken Archive, the sad aftermath of the Unknown Age, is where the forest's current state, its ultimatum, and its deep, complex scars all originated.