when one looks back to their childhood, one remembers the vivid springs of laughter, climbing trees and reaching out for the stars, and making flower crowns in fields of flowers. but when [name] looked back at her youth, it was void of those colorfu...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
chapter 61. victory was the only option
[ she...is a ______ ]
▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃
the deeper they went, the quieter the world became.
at first, it was only silence, a heavy, watchful silence that pressed between the rustle of their steps.. then came the sound of running water. not fast, not lively, but slow, the sluggish trickle of something ancient moving beneath the surface of the earth.
brook glanced around, hollow eyes catching the faint gleam of the river that wound like a vein through the pale woods. "ah... so this is lethewood," he whispered, the words escaping him like a prayer and a warning at once.
franky grunted, shoulders hunched against the cold that seemed to rise from the ground itself. "yeah... i don't like this place, robin."
"neither do i," she murmured, her gaze drawn upward.
the trees had grown denser as they walked, no longer sparse, but clustered close, their branches knitting together like black veins in the sky. the asphodel trees were strange things: tall and glass-like, their trunks translucent, shimmering faintly with an inner light that pulsed like the memory of something once alive. inside their crystalline bark, shadows moved, faint shapes that twisted, shuddered, then stilled again.
brook stopped walking. the flame in his eyesockets flickered. "...those shapes. they look almost like..."
"faces," robin finished softly.
"yeah," franky muttered, voice tight. "faces frozen in the trees."
robin knelt beside one of them, brushing her hand over the trunk's cold surface. her reflection stared back at her through the thin layer of quartz-like bark, but behind it, faint and distorted...was another.
a hollowed-out visage, screaming soundlessly.
brook bent down, tapping his cane against the ground. the sound that came back was dull, lifeless. "even the soil here... it feels empty."
"that's because it is," robin replied. "he said this whole forest was made from the remnants of what used to be people. ash, sorrow, and memory."
a strange wind moved through the trees then, soft, carrying whispers. not voices exactly, but the suggestion of them: words half-remembered, sighs half-formed, a thousand regrets bleeding into the air.
brook straightened, his bones rattling faintly. "ah... this atmosphere chills even me."
"it's not the cold," franky said, forcing a grin that didn't reach his eyes. "it's the way this place feels... like it's looking at us."
