I slowly sat up onto the branch the silence stretched, no animal sound could ever be heard.
I took a deep breath and muttered:
"Do you know anything about this... thing? And how I can leave this place too."
Avatha didn't seem very knowledgeable despite her probably old age, so I didn't expect much.
She spoke: "Not really. But, most ghosts and cursed things work on a principle. To keep you in this place, they needed to put the bars for the cage, the bars being anything that can be an instrument for the curse."
"Oh..." I stilled, staring at the distance as if it was interesting. 'Shit, that was actually helpful.'
"Wait... are those scribbles on the bloody trees the so called instruments?"
She didn't hesitate to reply: "No. It's more likely to be those mannequins in the center."
If that's so then what are these scribbles?
I wonder.
I sighed and finally landed down from the tree, the smell of flesh was becoming harder to ignore and the trees were even less alive in front of me.
I resumed my walk with swift and quiet steps, as much as I could of course.
And as I moved swiftly forward I could see more trees with scarlet-blood dripping from their dead branches.
I drew in a deep breath and continued deeper
As I moved even closer to the center I began to hear whispers from a certain direction, distorted and impossible to understand.
Eerie dark and ominous, it almost as if they were whispers of agony or warnings.
The whisper rolled through the trees like wind... also annoying.
I became cautious of course, hurrying from a tree to another, while the whispers got louder but also harder to determine their direction.
As I reached another tree I looked through the corner and saw something that made my hair stand on end.
A dark cloud made of shadows moving across the trees as if made of mist.
When I looked closer I could see on the edge of the darkest deeper parts of the darkness, hands made of shadow clinging to the ground and pulling.
The scene made it seem as if those hands pull the darkness forward.
The worst part? The darkness is moving towards me, and I could see the trees getting swallowed by the cloud of moving black.
For the first time I felt a piercing feeling in my chest.
Is that fear? I did not know, but it's telling me to run.
I turned my head to look in the direction of the distant "center", then after taking a deep breath to steady myself I ran.
Suddenly the darkness that was moving slowly now rushed towards me like a gust of wind, or maybe a flood.
Even with my special legs my speed was just barely good enough to stay away from it.
When I turned it turned with me like it was nothing, like the darkness has no mass.
From tree to tree and from the ground and up to a branch, each jump or turn was swallowed by darkness and my footprint vanished into it.
The whispers turned to almost screams and at these moment I wondered if I'm hearing it normally or if I'm only hearing it because of my divine ears.
Even the darkness that moved felt invisible and all consuming all at once, as if I'm only seeing it because of my eyes.
I turned my head to the Center of this forest, the center of this weird cage and ran faster.
I could see a weird glow, one that I can only see with my divine eyes but so very small and weak in comparison to the one in the colony.
I continued forward as fast as I could, sweat getting in my eyes and I could feel my neck dripping with it, the air howled in my ears close to a whistle.
Then suddenly the deafening whispers stopped, or rather retreated.
I slowly stopped and turned my head the darkness still and motionless, then it moved away like I was simply out of reach.
I took a deep breath then another, the fear suddenly disappeared and I could feel my knees wobble.
After a few seconds I looked around again, that's when I saw it and smelled it.
The trees here were dead all dripping blood, and many of them bear marks of some kind, but these ones seem to repeat.
I looked closer at the trees then back to the ground, there I saw hair not just a small amount but the ground all of it was covered by hair instead of grass.
I swallowed staring at the distance as if hoping to see an edge to the hair-covered ground but found nothing.
When I looked back I saw the hair diminishing at the edge where the moving darkness did not dare step on.
I sighed and turned back towards the center the hair covered the ground, drenched in blood.
I ignored the piercing pain, or maybe fear and moved forward with a steady speed.
The stench of rotten flesh was almost unbearable and the sky seemed gray right now, the trees were dead and bleeding.
All of this was just an annoyingly scary scenery, even though I don't know fear fear seemed to be growing back from almost nothing.
I still don't understand what exactly happened to me in limbo, or what the divine artifacts are, or who to trust, but for now I'll just keep going forward.