John Willow’s Travel Guide to the Unknown

Good morning, good evening… and good Hazeltide.

Yes, that last one is new to you, I expect. It was to me as well—until a small creature the size of my boot offered me a flower and said it with such reverence I found myself repeating it back without thought. Hazeltide, it seems, is both a season and a sentiment. A wish for gentle footing. A blessing against drowning. You’ll want to remember it.

Now then.

You’ve opened this little volume titled John Willow’s Travel Guide to the Unknown, and I suppose it’s best I admit: I am the same John Willow.

I was once a man of simpler ambitions. A hunter, by trade and temperament. Raised in the northern city of Alphshad—a snow-hemmed, bell-chimed place with onion rooftops and arguments over soup recipes. My youth was marked by skill with rifle and crossbow, by tracking beasts through the thickets beyond our town’s edge, and—yes, I’ll admit it—a certain arrogance that all corners of the world could be catalogued, studied, and pinned down like butterflies in a book.

That belief, I can assure you now, has long since been dissolved in swampwater and moonlight.

I left Alphshad in the hot spring of 1859, in pursuit of what the old Sahash scribes referred to as a mirage beast, or what we simply called the Dream Dragon. I expected a week in the outer woods. A fortnight, at most.

I returned… sometime in the late 1980s.
For me, only ten seasons passed. But the world outside had aged over a century.

I have not aged quite so rapidly. At the time of this writing, I appear to be somewhere near my mid-sixties. In truth, I am far older. I’ve stopped counting, and the Divide—yes, we’ll speak much of it—does not operate by our rules of time or reason.

So what is this book, then?

It is a warning, yes.
A map, certainly.
But more than anything… it is a love letter to the most dangerous, tender, horrifyingly beautiful place I have ever walked.

The Divide is not a forest. It is not a country, or a continent. It is a realm unto itself—a second skin to our world, stitched with wet thread and crumbling time. Its paths change. Its people are not what you expect. Its magic is thick and wild and sweetly cruel.

And you… dear reader…
You have just stepped into it.

Now.
Let us begin with a region I came to know better than my own bones.
A place always wet, always glowing, always in love—sometimes violently so.

Let us begin with the Bleakreed Hollow....
*the page is rewritten at the bottom*

Good Hazeltide again, dear reader.

Before we press muddy boots into the Hollow proper, I must insist upon something quite dire:

Throw logic out the cabin.

I say this not with jest, but with the earnestness of a man who once tried to sketch a map of the Divide and nearly fainted from the nosebleed that followed.

The Divide is not a forest in the traditional sense. It is not a continent. It is not a realm.
It is a dream, and more importantly—it is her dream.

Yes, I refer to the Divide as a she. No, I do not know why. But when something sings to you while you sleep, and then spits you out in a lake made of polished mirrors, you tend to assign it pronouns out of respect.

There are many worlds within the Divide—stacked like folded cloth, interwoven like lovers’ limbs.
You may stand in a desert and see a frozen wasteland ten paces ahead. You may walk across a salt flat only to find a chapel made of bone, floating above the air like a soap bubble.
No mountain transitions. No rising elevation. Just—change.

Geographic logic does not apply here.

I once stepped into a field of sunflowers only to emerge from the mouth of a stone lion that had not been carved yet. If the Divide desires a statue of a man who has never been born, then by all means… she damn well pleases.

Ahem.

Now that we’ve shaken hands with madness, let us narrow our gaze.

Among the many worlds stitched within the Divide, there is one region I know too well.
A place not mapped in books, but whispered of in rivers.
It is called The Bleakreed Hollow.

It is not named for its gloom, though gloom there is. Nor for its reeds, though they grow higher than some chapel towers.
It is named for what it feels like—an aching low hum. A breath held under muddy water. A lullaby sung with bruised lips.

The Hollow is a swamp, endless for miles—larger than several mortal countries laid end to end. Its waters twist into black ribbons, its trees hang low with lanterns, and the very air hums with want.

It is always cast in twilight—never day, never quite night.
The sky here stays bruised, as if the sun and moon argued over who would visit, and both decided to not bother.

Adjacent to the Hollow is a realm known as Volcanios—a region of lava springs, geysers, and great fire beasts who rarely speak, but when they do, the trees catch fire in response.

One might assume that lava and water do not mix. In the Divide, they do more than mix—they coexist, quietly. The heat from Volcanios keeps the Hollow’s waters strangely warm. Even when the fog rolls in, you can feel the heat in your lungs like a fever dreaming.

I once sat beside a patch where open lava licked the edges of a lily-covered pond. Neither hissed. Neither boiled. They simply existed—like a couple who’s decided not to fight anymore.

But do not mistake beauty for safety.

The Hollow is one of the most dangerous regions a mortal can enter.
Not because of the terrain, but because of the people.
The creatures.
The feelings it awakens in you—especially if you've ever loved, or longed to be loved.

I will do my best to guide you through what I know.
But remember: I was a hunter when I entered.
And a ruined man when I left.

Let us now enter the first of the three realms that make up this sodden kingdom.

Let us speak of The Velcain Deluge.