The eastern woods were nothing like Yumi had remembered; twisted trees clawing high into the sky with their own bark splitting black veins, while the air hummed with silence too quiet - like the land exhaled never inhaled again.
"We're close," Yumi whispered. The shard in her pack had grown warmer.
Ren walked besides her, blade drawn, eyes sharp. "Still no signs of life. Not even birds."
Then they came out into a clearing. The clearing was really just a hollow center huge tree, larger than any man, wound gnarled, whose roots curled like fingers about a stone slab inscribed with glyphs.
The moment Yumi touched the stone, everything changed for the forest.
A low hum rose from the ground, and around them danced gray images. These are ghosts of people-not complete, just indicatives of sorrow. Eyes are wide with forgotten stories.
One figure stepped forward. Her golden eyes matched Yumi's vision in the shard.
"Emotion is memory," the woman said. "And this place has forgotten itself."
Ren moved closer. "Who are you?"
"I am a remnant," she replied. "A guardian of what was lost. This forest was once alive with feeling. But when the Null King fell, his echoes did not. They seeped here. And memory unraveled.
" Yumi's hand trembled. "Can we fix it?" The remnant tilted her head. "Only by remembering what was taken. Follow the roots. They lead to the First Hollow."
The vision faded. The glyphs on the stone now glowed.
[QUEST UPDATED: Enter the First Hollow]
The sun was going down, and Ren lit his lantern. The forest murmured. Beneath their feet, the earth was pulsating like a heart asleep.
They had come into a place where feeling had been extinguished, and they would now learn whether it could be rekindled.