The evening in Veynar didn’t bring the peaceful silence Sol had expected from a city built into a forest of giant trees. Instead, the air was heavy with the thrum of the Great Heartwood’s pulse and the distant, rhythmic chanting of the Shamanic circle trying to stabilize the city’s defense wards.
Sol stood on the balcony of the Feline Spire, his bare feet resting on the cool, mossy wood. The guest house was a masterpiece of primitive luxury... furs of beasts that looked like they could eat a man whole, bioluminescent lanterns that cast a soft, erald glow, and a view that stretched across the silver-leafed canopy of the Orrath Forest.
From there, he could only see the vast jungle... a living ocean of silver, green and various other colors mixed together, its canopy shifting like waves under the wind. It shimred in pale light, beautiful yet subdued, as if the forest itself mourned.
The cries of distant beasts echoed faintly, softened by the trees until they beca part of the forest’s rhythm.
Beneath the branches, the tribe moved in quiet patterns, the usual bustle of the tribe was muted...voices hushed, drums stilled, the noise of daily life softened by the trees, occasionally there would be gut wrenching wails of cry breaking this quiet rhythm.
Even the fires burned low in the courtyards, their smoke drifting upward in thin, sorrowful trails.
The warriors had returned, so limping, others carried, and the tribe moved with the weight of loss. Yet the jungle remained vast and indifferent, its silver leaves whispering in the wind, a reminder that life continued even as grief settled over the people.
It was a world both radiant and somber... a place where beauty and sorrow lived side by side, and where the forest seed to watch, silent and eternal.
...
The environnt outside was too heavy, so Sol closed the window and returned inside, falling carelessly on the makeshift but soft bed.
His eyes open wide, as the silence finally creeped in, breaking his emotional defense. His eyes watering and a lump seed to be stuck in his throat.
He tried hard to control his emotions, but they being, emotions weren’t sothing that could be controlled so easily.
He was reminded harshly again, how fragile life was in this savage world. He didn’t know it touched him so deeply, even though he wasn’t exactly innocent, he had taken one such life with his own hands, but maybe it was the sacrifice of Korg, that tragic smile or maybe just the somber atmosphere.
He closed his eyes and laid there for quite so ti.
After an unknown amount of ti, he finally sat up, breathing deeply.
*Inhale. Exhale*
He looked around this strange unfamiliar room and couldn’t help missing Lyra and the girls. No matter what, since he had woken up in this world, they had always been by his side, not letting him feel loneliness in this strange new world.
Without them, he didn’t know how he’d have survived this dangerous world. He was extrely grateful for their love and care and couldn’t wait to return to them. He didn’t know what they were doing, but they were extrely worried for sure.
Rembering the reason for ending up in this strange place, he closed his eyes, withdrawing his consciousness from the physical sensations and tried to find Orphos, that strange artifact again, because that’s one that brought him here and the only thing that can remotely help him get out of here.
As for getting out of here himself and searching for his tribe? Well, he did think that too, but just from this weird power called essence in the air, he knew for sure that he wasn’t anywhere near the tribe, and he did discreetly ask Kira, who told him that this place is literally teeming with other races, and almost everyone has so kind of weird power. So, it was clear that he definitely wasn’t anywhere near the tribe, as he hadn’t heard about people there having strange powers.
He searched around and didn’t find it in the hollow cavity in his chest, or any other place in physical body, so he changed the tactic he plunged deeper, centering his awareness on the vast, silent expanse of his ntal world and boom! He really found it in the center of that inner void.
It hung in the darkness, shining with a soft, rhythmic pulse that made it seem less like an object and more like a living, breathing entity. He didn’t reach out to touch it imdiately; instead, he hovered in the silence of his mind, looking at it with a mix of awe and intoxicating curiosity, as It was his first ti truly seeing the artifact
The soul-bound form of Orphos was a staggering contradiction of primordial perfection and violent fracture. It appeared as a relic that was not rely forged, but rather a captured mont of creation’s first breath, suspended in the amber of his soul.
The material itself defied any logic. It was composed of a substance resembling translucent liquid obsidian... a darkness deeper than the most moonless night, yet teeming with swirling, microscopic galaxies that shifted and pulsed in perfect synchronization with the beating of his own heart.
Its surface possessed the impossible smoothness of molten glass, and as Sol watched, he realized the reflections dancing across its face weren’t of his mind, but of "stars, paths, and endless doors" existing within the artifact’s own internal space.
In its settled shape, Orphos was a four-pointed compass, its needles representing the fundantal directions of existence. The points were elongated and needle-sharp, radiating a soft, ethereal light that commanded his absolute attention. Despite the jagged nature of its "broken" appearance, the geotry was so impossibly perfect that it carried a divine symtry, making Sol feel a fleeting sense of insignificance before its majesty.
Floating just beneath the obsidian surface like embers in a dark fire was the artifact’s ancient aura. Flickering symbols... fragnts of the jagged fang, the hollow ring, the broken crown, and the spiral pillar it had transitioned through... pulsed with a ghostly light. They were not carved into the material but seem to exist as drifting remnants of the laws the artifact commanded.
Yet, the most striking and terrifying feature was undoubtedly the Fissure... a distinct crack running down the center that split the compass nearly in two. Far from a sign of weakness, the crack served as a window into the infinite. From its depths, a constant stream of light and shadow poured out, manifesting as a thin, white-violet smoke that clung to the edges of the needles.
Sol found himself drawn to that central fissure. To look directly into the crack was to feel the raw "branding of the soul," an overwhelming sensation that he was staring directly into the very edge of reality. It was beautiful, majestic, and fundantally broken.
After an unknown amount of ti, he finally got out its trance and rembered why he was here.
he reached out within the silence of his mind, his consciousness finally making contact with the Fissure at the center of the majestic, cracked compass. The mont his ntal touch brushed the surface, the world seed to scream with the weight of eons.
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