For a long time, they did not move from the cliff's base. They simply lay on a bed of soft moss, their bodies screaming in protest. Xeno stared at the canopy, his chest heaving, every muscle trembling with a deep, spent fatigue. His hands were a mess of torn skin and dark, dried blood.
Beside him, Othniel was utterly still, his eyes closed, his face pale and gaunt. The sight of the colossal raptor was burned behind their eyelids—a shadow of a different kind of predator, one that ruled from the sky. Its silent, circling judgment had seeped into their souls, a reminder that no height was safe.
"The sky here has its own predator," Othniel finally rasped, not opening his eyes. "We are strangers in its domain. We must learn to be nothing before it remembers we are here."
The sound was the first thing to truly change. As their breathing slowed, the sheer wall of noise from the forest pressed in. After the barren, wind-scoured silence of the Scarred Zone and the focused, breathless struggle of the climb, this roaring, teeming life was a physical assault. A thousand sounds layered at once: a constant, high-pitched drone, the restless whisper of leaves, the steady drip of water. It was a chaos that felt deafening.
When they finally rose, the world felt alien under Xeno's feet. The earth was soft and giving, springing back like a living thing. The air was thick and wet, heavy with the cloying sweetness of overripe fruit and the rich scent of decaying moss. He drew a deep breath and coughed—it was too much, too alive.
The Green Silence was not silent at all. It was a roaring, indifferent alive-ness.
They had entered the foothills, where colossal trees, choked in thick vines, rose like pillars holding up a second, green sky. The canopy sealed the sun away, leaving the world below in a perpetual, shifting twilight. Here, the shadows were not sharp and still, but fluid, deep, and breathing.
"This is not our world, lad," Othniel murmured, his voice low and wary. He laid a hand against the bark of a nearby trunk, where glowing violet fungi pulsed with a slow, steady rhythm. "Too much life. Too many eyes. And something above watches, too."
Xeno felt the truth of it in his bones. His senses, trained on the wide, open lines of the red plains, were utterly overwhelmed. Every gnarled root looked like a snare. Every burst of color might be a warning. Every rustle in the canopy could mean a hunter—feathered or otherwise.
Othniel moved with a quiet urgency. They shed what little weight they had left: the heavy climbing spikes, the last scraps of rope, their dust-stained cloth wraps. What had been their salvation on the wall would be a death sentence here.
"Shadows leave no trace," Othniel said, the words a grim law. "We must disappear."
From his pack, he withdrew a small bone knife and a pouch of charcoal paste. He smeared it over his own face and hands, darkening his skin, breaking his silhouette until he seemed to bleed into the dappled shadows.
Xeno followed. The paste was cool and thick. When he looked into a dark pool, the reflection was not a boy of stone, but a void. For the first time, his mass was not a glaring liability; it was absorbed by the forest's deep gloom.
Othniel gave a slow, weary nod. "Good. Now we walk. And we listen."
The walk was a new form of torment. Every step was a deliberate calculation. Othniel glided, a ghost of the hunter he was. Xeno struggled. His size was a constant betrayal. Roots snagged his heels; every thump of his landing echoed in his ears. The shame burned alongside his physical pain.
After what felt like an age, Othniel stopped near a small stream. "Enough. We rest here. The lesson can wait."
They drank, the cold water a blessing on their raw throats. They ate a little of the Wanderer's Bulb, its blandness a small comfort. For a few precious moments, they simply existed, the memory of the raptor's shadow a cold stone in their guts, but the immediate need for survival momentarily sated.
It was only then, in the relative quiet, that Othniel began the lesson.
"Listen, lad," he whispered. "The forest speaks. Hear its language."
Xeno strained. The sounds were still a maddening wall of noise.
"I hear everything, Father. It's just... chaos."
"Separate the threads," Othniel instructed, his voice patient. "The high sound is the insect veil—it hides the small things. The deep sound is the rhythm of the trees. When the veil breaks—something hunts. When the rhythm breaks—a beast passes."
It was a code. Xeno closed his eyes, trying to untangle the symphony of life and death. He failed, his frustration growing.
At a patch of black mud, Othniel crouched, his body tensing. He pointed to hoofprints and a long drag mark. "A Silent Hoof, chased and wounded. We avoid this trail." They veered wide, the forest's dangers now written in the mud.
When Xeno was drawn to the eerie beauty of glowing, metallic flowers, Othniel's hand clamped his wrist. "Beautiful lies, lad. Do not touch what calls to you."
As dusk bled into night, Othniel chose a camp: a shallow clearing half-ringed by rocks. "Your body carried us up the wall," he said, handing Xeno the bone knife. "Now it must learn to become nothing. Dig. Use what you are."
The work was a relief. The earth yielded to his strength. For a time, there was only the soft scratch of the knife, a small, controlled sound in the roaring dark.
Then the sound came. Low. Guttural. A moan that vibrated up from the deep earth. It was part of the forest's rhythm, not a break in it. Something vast, alive, and close.
Othniel's voice was a breath in the dark. "The dark has its own hunger. Dig faster."