It was finally time for answers. Time to understand what was really happening inside this unstable Fragment and, more importantly, how they were supposed to get out alive.
The atmosphere inside the cave shifted the moment they gathered around Naty's lantern. Its glow cast moving shadows across the rough stone walls, making the place feel both more intimate and more unsettling. You could feel it in the air: every word from now on would matter.
Ophelia was the first to break the silence, without softness, without hesitation, perfectly true to herself.
— « Kenzo, tell us everything that happened to you after you arrived here. »
Her tone was not openly aggressive… but it was direct, sharp, like a blade laid calmly on the table. It was closer to an order than a question. Kenzo was a little surprised that she addressed him so naturally, but he answered anyway. He had no real reason to hide what he had gone through.
Well… almost none.
He drew a quiet breath and began.
— « If you take that Gargantuan Tree as north… then I appeared over there. Chained up. It looked like some kind of delivery point where people were meant to be fed to Void Creatures. So I think there were probably others brought here too, not just Awakened. »
That piece of information made Ophelia raise her eyebrows, which in itself meant something. She looked genuinely surprised, almost unsettled… or irritated that she had not already known it.
Kenzo went on.
— « After that, I ran south. Some kind of fog started appearing, so I had to take shelter at the top of one of the giant trees. First the one that had been cut in half. At the top, I found a skeleton wearing the same kind of armor as Naty. That's where I got this spear. In another tree, farther away, there was another skeleton wearing the same armor. »
He lifted the broken weapon slightly.
— « I'll let you explain more about that later, but I'll finish first. »
Beside him, Naty briefly lowered her eyes toward her own armor, fingers brushing over the reinforced leaf plates that formed it. It was an instinctive gesture, as if she were feeling the echo of some ancient past she did not yet understand.
Kenzo continued without pausing, letting the images replay themselves in his mind.
Everyone stayed focused. Even Lucian, exhausted as he was by the night and everything that had happened, did not look away.
— « And I also noticed that the fog only appears and starts moving when the sky turns gray. Its height gets lower the farther away it is. Until eventually it doesn't rise at all anymore, like here. »
That remark made Ophelia react. She frowned, clearly trying to make sense of it, but stopped herself from interrupting.
— « I spent two days at the top of that tree, watching a few Void Creatures. Then one night I saw a red light, and during the day I saw smoke. So I decided to head toward it. While I was trying to move south from the second giant tree to the east… I ran into a Deviant Void Creature, something called a Young Shoot of the Cursed Tree. It was a Condemned Unconscious. »
At the mention of that stage and rank, Ophelia and Naty exchanged a brief glance. Lucian, meanwhile, widened his eyes in obvious shock. Kenzo himself kept recounting it simply, as though surviving a Condemned creature were not an absurd thing at all.
— « After I beat it, I got this armor. It's called the Armor of the Forest Guardians, and it talks about guardians who stayed true to their vows… even after the chaos that must have fallen over this forest. »
Kenzo summoned his Orb and read the artifact description aloud. His voice echoed through the cave, giving the words an almost sacred weight.
— « When the sacred fire died, they remained. When the hope of the forest left the living world, they remained. When the madman brought chaos down, they remained. When their vows were known only to themselves, they remained. Here lies the only remnant of their existence. »
A heavy silence followed.
Even the wind outside seemed to have stopped breathing for a moment. Lucian, Naty, and Ophelia were all fixed on every word, as if those lines contained some buried secret from another age.
Kenzo finished simply.
— « That's all I know. I met Lucian less than ten minutes before I heard you scream. »
He turned toward Ophelia. She was staring at him intensely, as though trying to peel him open and see what he was keeping hidden.
Then Ophelia spoke, her tone dry but clearly intrigued.
— « You went through all that in such a short time… but forgive me if I doubt you managed to kill a Condemned Unconscious with an ordinary weapon. There's obviously something else you're not telling us. »
She was not smiling. She was not even accusing him, not exactly. She was observing. Measuring. Drawing conclusions.
Naty, unlike her, raised a hand gently, diffusing the tension before it could grow.
— « This isn't the time to doubt anyone. As long as he helps us, I don't care whether he's hiding something or not. »
Ophelia clenched her jaw, visibly annoyed, but said nothing. She looked away, which was as close as she came to temporarily accepting Naty's words.
Then she pointed at Lucian.
— « Your turn. »
The blond boy panicked slightly. He opened his mouth, closed it again, inhaled, then forced himself to speak despite the nerves trembling through his voice. He told them what he had already told Kenzo, but this time with the details he had left out earlier in his panic. Then he described his artifacts one by one.
First came Madame, the white spider.
Lucian recited the text attached to her:
[Messenger of the Mist: it walks where the world hesitates. Before the mist extends its veil, the spiders come first, weaving the omen of its passing. It is the one who comes before and the one who remains, the shadow before oblivion and the echo after silence.]
At those words, Kenzo felt a chill run down his spine. The thought that those spiders might be tied to the mist itself filled him with a strange sensation, as though this Fragment had been built around a mystery older and darker than any of them had imagined.
Then Lucian spoke of his robe, elegant enough to belong to a noble:
[Robe of the Priests of Life:
Guardians of the pulsing force.
Those who wove it came to warn the Tree, gentle and mythical.
But their voices fell silent when the Heralds emerged, tragic.
And their luminous threads vanished, devoured by the Void, fathomless and cyclical.]
Then came the sword, obtained just like Kenzo's armor, from a Young Shoot:
[Sword of the Forest Knights:
Once fierce and blessed flame.
They were the first to fall, the first to yield to shadow and madness.
When their blades fell, the earth understood that the dark hour had been chosen.
For from their downfall rose the bitter breath of the beginning of the end.]
Kenzo listened carefully. Every description seemed to echo his own, like fragments of the same tragic past. Something had happened in this forest. Something vast. Perhaps a war. Perhaps the fall of a people. Perhaps something even worse.
The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to come together in his mind…
but no clear picture had emerged yet.
What he did know was that the girls would have to tell their side of the story next.
And maybe then, some answers would finally begin to surface.
The lantern lit their faces, tense and focused. Outside, somewhere in the darkness, the mist was still crawling.
And now…
… it was the girls' turn to tell their story in full.