They moved through the jungle like ghosts.
There was no path, no trail—only the soft parting of overgrown foliage that shifted with each step, curling and uncurling like curious fingers. Vines retracted as Elysia passed, bowing away from her glow with something resembling reverence. Aouli, by contrast, triggered scattered confusion. The plants shuddered under his light, uncertain whether to respond with hunger or hospitality.
The forest was alive in ways that defied Earth's logic. Bark throbbed with slow pulses of energy. Leaves shimmered like they were photosensitive to emotion. The air itself buzzed—not just with insects, but with encoded frequencies, synthetic pheromones, and microscopic static that lingered on the skin of Aouli's being.
"This place was once guided," Elysia said softly, pausing beside a tree with silvery fruit dangling like ornaments. "They wanted nature to grow more efficiently. Faster. Stronger. Better yields. Fewer pests. Less unpredictability."
Aouli reached toward the tree but stopped short. The fruit swayed toward him—not from wind, but seemingly in reaction to his intent.
"What happened?"
"The algorithms failed," she replied. "Or succeeded too well. Nature responded. Adapted to the demands placed upon it. But intelligence bred instability."
Aouli watched as the tree gently extruded a vine, which snaked downward and coiled softly around a clump of mushrooms. The mushrooms trembled, then began to shift color—bright red, then green, then a dull metallic gray. Moments later, they emitted a low, painful keening noise. Aouli flinched.
"Did it… scream?"
"Yes," Elysia said. "That's how this species disperses its spores now. Sonic bloom. Pain as propulsion."
He took a step back, unsure what to feel. Everything in this forest was beautiful—and deeply wrong. Life here obeyed no single logic. It was hyper-responsive, reflexively defensive. It reminded him of an immune system gone berserk, attacking everything foreign, including itself.
He turned, and behind him, a set of golden-petaled flowers rotated in unison to face him. Their petals shimmered as if coated in oil, and in the center of each was what looked eerily like an eye—round, wet, and blinking. Slowly.
Elysia kept walking.
"Tellurin is neither alive nor dead," she said. "It is cycling. Desperate to resolve its contradictions. Systems designed to stabilize it have only deepened the crisis."
Aouli moved quickly to catch up, trying to suppress the overwhelming wave of sorrow that built in his chest. It wasn't just the forest—it was the planet. He could feel it now, the echo of its confusion. It rippled through his form like radio static and thunder rolled into one.
He doubled over, gasping, though he had no lungs. The sensation was internal—a psychic suffocation, like drowning in the feelings of a world that had lost its sense of self.
Elysia turned sharply.
"Aouli!"
He collapsed to one knee, clutching his chest. The ground beneath him flickered, and for a moment, he saw double—this forest, and another, older version layered on top. One untouched, wild, sacred. The vision cracked, replaced by the engineered overlay. Then again—wild. Pure.
Back and forth, until the two could no longer reconcile.
"I can feel it," he whispered. "It's… it's trying to remember what it was. But it doesn't know how."
Elysia's voice was firmer now, a stabilizing chord.
"Then do not let it become you."
She knelt and placed her hand against his back—his form flickered, steadied. Slowly, the noise faded. His senses realigned. The jungle returned to one layer, still unsettling, but bearable.
He straightened, shaky, but clear-eyed.
"You were open," she said. "Too open. This planet doesn't just suffer—it projects its suffering. It has been encoded into every leaf, every root."
"I didn't think I—"
"You felt," Elysia said. "That is both your strength and your threat."
They continued.
The terrain shifted as they approached a series of ridges, the trees thinning slightly, revealing structures in the distance—half-swallowed buildings wrapped in vines, towers split by tree roots thicker than columns. Somewhere deep inside, machinery still hummed.
Aouli stepped onto a stretch of open ground. The soil felt firmer here, but strangely warm—unnaturally warm. He knelt again and pressed his palm against it.
It pulsed.
Once.
And then again.
Heartbeat.
He pulled back sharply. The earth was alive, not just biologically—but in synthetic rhythm.
They walked further until they reached a clearing at the jungle's edge. Beyond it, a lake shimmered, mirror-like and impossibly still. But its surface writhed when Aouli approached, and strange glyphs briefly flared across it—ancient symbols in no language he recognized.
"Memory reservoir," Elysia said, reading his expression. "There are many. The terraformers designed Tellurin's landscape to record its own evolution. The data is here, buried everywhere."
"Can we access it?"
"We will. But not yet."
A low rumble echoed across the sky. Thunder without clouds. Energy, displaced. Somewhere, a stabilizer field was failing.
"Tellurin is not unique in its collapse," Elysia added. "Many worlds engineered themselves into corners they could not escape. But each one failed in a different way. That's why you're here."
"To learn the patterns?"
"To feel the price."
As they turned toward the ruins, Aouli glanced back at the jungle.
The screaming mushrooms had gone silent.
But the petals still watched him.