ELDARYA

Didn't it disappear?

The yellow envelope is gently tossed onto the coffee table. The first to grab it was Nevra. He pulled out the papers and took a quick glance at what was written. His eyes scanned the text rapidly.

His eyebrows were slightly furrowed. His lips also had a subtle tension. Everything was understated and discreet, as with everything Nevra does.

Erika, who was sitting on the floor, moves to sit next to him on the white sofa, which now had a slightly yellowed hue due to the lighting. She leaned a bit to her left, looking at the papers over Nevra's shoulder.

Ezarel remained lounging on the sofa in front of them, waiting for them to finish their silent reading.

Erika didn’t understand much of the content on the papers. A few words were familiar, but most were unknown to her. There were some strange words, tables with quantities of chemical elements, and finally, a report on some experiments conducted with the portal.

Since the rest wasn’t easily understandable for Erika, she turned to the reports. To complement her reading, she asked Nevra to hand her the next pages. He did so.

She observed some technical drawings describing the construction of the structure surrounding the small portal she had seen earlier in the recordings from O.B.E.A.

The first report described the apple experiment in more detail. Nothing supplementary was very useful to her at that moment. The report also included other experiments with solid materials: a tennis ball, a metal disk, among other things.

The second report, still pertaining to the first experiment, tested other objects. There was a sort of arm simulating a human arm, but with a yellowish color (visible due to a photo attached to the report). The report described what this arm was made of. It also contained a bone made of some rigid material, which Erika didn’t focus on.

The third report featured a false human arm again. This time, it was made from pieces of living beings: a type of pork meat wrapped around a real bone. There were other drawings (this time colored) showing the layers of the material used in the arm. They followed the layers of a human arm, including the dermis, epidermis, and hypodermis—bones, fat, and meat.

All three had almost the same results: things were sliced. The human arm with real meat and the disk were more promising but were also cut, though in larger slices.

Nevra interrupted Erika’s reading, saying:

— Ground zero — and then tossed the paper and envelope onto the table. Lance picked up the paper that had been tossed and began to read it in silence. Huang Chu remained standing, arms crossed. Karenn, sitting on the floor, watched Lance read, waiting for a comment.

— Not exactly — Ezarel said — We’ve made some progress.

— I thought the maana had disappeared — Chrome, who had been silent until then, spoke. He looked different. He had a somber, slightly sad expression. Completely unlike usual. His head must have been in turmoil.

— Have you read it? — Nevra asked, surprised. Chrome hadn’t picked up the paper.

— I read it in the car, on the way here — he explained. Nevra nodded. He felt slightly offended that Chrome had read it before him, but he said nothing. It felt petty and childish, and he recognized that.

— The maana hasn’t disappeared? — Erika asked, stunned. She hadn’t read anything about this.

— We all thought it had disappeared — Huang Chu told Chrome. She turned to Erika — But it hasn’t.

Erika stared at the floor in silence, absorbing the information. The maana hadn’t disappeared. The maana hadn’t disappeared.

What could this information mean? What she had believed for years had proven false. Her thoughts flew to Eldarya. What if Eldarya hadn’t disappeared? But she had seen that world disappear with her own eyes... Although she had also seen the maana disappear with her own eyes, and today, that was proven false. Was it possible that Eldarya was on the other side of that portal?

Was it possible that Eldarya still existed?