The chamber was quiet when Aria returned to it. Lirien had left without explanation, his footsteps swallowed by the echo of the hall, and Sira had excused herself soon after, her voice soft with a promise that she would return later.
For the first time since arriving in this strange world, Aria was truly alone.
The walls of the room pressed in on her, smooth stone patterned with curling vines carved ages ago. Candles burned low, their wax bending in odd shapes as if time itself had forgotten to straighten them. She drew a shaky breath and pulled the diary back into her lap.
Her fingers hovered over the fragile parchment before turning to the next page.
The Diary
The Amoths are a people unlike any other I have seen. Their days begin with song, voices layered one upon another until the very leaves seem to sway in rhythm. They greet the dawn not with silence but with laughter, and when they work, they work together, as if each hand were a note in a greater melody. Their walls are grown from the trees themselves, coaxed to bend and curve into shapes both beautiful and strong. Children chase the smoke of their fires, painting their faces with clay pulled from riverbeds. They do not fear the beasts of the forest, for the forest bends to them.
And yet, even in their joy, I see fissures—small, but there. There are those who watch me too closely, who smile but keep their hands tight at their sides. There are those who mutter when Yougen sits at my fire. He is their restless child, they say. A boy too eager to reach for things that were not meant to be touched.
Still, I find myself drawn to him. His spirit burns, as though some secret in the earth itself has chosen him. He asks me of stars, of places beyond the horizon, of secrets whispered by roots. I give what answers I can, though I am but a wanderer myself. His laughter is a light in these woods. If he is restless, then so am I.
Aria's eyes lingered on the name: Yougen. The boy mentioned again. The same one she had asked Xyren about. She rubbed her palm against the page, almost as though she could press herself closer to the truth.
She turned the parchment, the ink darkening. The hand seemed quicker here, more hurried, as if the writer's pulse beat faster with every stroke.
Tonight I was shown the crystals. They call them "veins of the root," fragments of the life that runs beneath Skyria itself. To the Amoths, they are sacred. They sing when held near the ear, faint and trembling, like a heartbeat pressed against stone. The elders believe the crystals are remnants of the first tree, shattered and buried deep when the world was young. They light their halls with them, heal with them, and bury them in the soil to feed the ground.
I was not meant to touch them. But Yougen—curious Yougen—stole one from the elders' keeping and placed it in my hands. His eyes shone with pride, as though he had gifted me the stars themselves. I should have refused. I should have told him no. Instead, I kept it.
Now, when night falls and all others sleep, I sit alone with the crystal. I hold it near the fire. I strike it against stone. I whisper to it as though it could answer. And last night, it did.
It glowed. Faint at first, a shimmer like dew under moonlight. But as my thoughts lingered, it pulsed. I felt it in my veins, a hum, low and deep, as though something living had reached out to greet me.
The Amoths would call it sacred. They would say I have trespassed, that no outsider should stir the breath of the roots. Yet I cannot stop. My hand trembles even now as I write. For the first time since I can remember, I feel close to something vast, something that does not merely welcome me but claims me.
I will try again tomorrow. I must know what more it can do.
The ink cut off abruptly, as if the hand had faltered, or perhaps the page itself had refused to bear more.
Aria shut the diary with a snap, her pulse racing. The candle beside her flickered wildly, shadows of roots and veins sprawling across the walls of her chamber like the very crystal's glow the writer had described.
She pressed the book to her chest and tried to breathe, but the silence pressed heavier than before. She knew, instinctively, that this was not just a tale. These words bled into the foundations of the place she stood in now.
The fire guttered, and her eyes drifted closed, the diary still clutched tightly in her arms. Sleep claimed her, but her dreams were lit by a pulse beneath stone.