Leon stared at the words for a while too long.
Noah sat beside him, reading along with him.
The two remained silent for a long while.
Turning the page over, Leon found that the diary notes had ended, and the rest were notes about the Shore, and its regions.
---
The Forgotten Shore:
If you're reading this, you ended up here too.
I'm sorry.
The Forgotten Shore is — as far as I can tell — an undocumented region of the Dream Realm. Nobody in the castle had heard of it before arriving. Nobody in the outer settlement either. Whatever mapping has been done of the Dream Realm, this place wasn't included.
I've spent years trying to understand why.
My best guess is that no one has lived to tell the tale. But why hasn't anyone from the already known regions discovered it yet? Perhaps I'll find the answer when I reach its borders?
Here is what I know about the geography.
---
The Labyrinth:
The majority of the Shore is the Labyrinth. Crimson coral, as far as you can travel in any direction. It grows in walls and formations that create a maze without any center — or rather, a maze with several centers, none of which are the right one.
The coral is the result of the curse. The original landscape was something else entirely — I found references to open fields and rivers in the oldest texts. What you see now grew after the darkness came.
The Labyrinth floods every night.
Nightmare creatures here are primarily Carapace variants — scavengers, centurions, and something larger that I encountered once near the crater's edge and chose not to pursue. The creatures are territorial but not coordinated. They don't hunt together. Use that.
---
The Dark Sea:
It isn't a sea.
I know it looks like one. I know it behaves like one in most respects. But the darkness that fills the labyrinth every night isn't water. It has some sort of intelligence to it. Things live in it that I've never been able to identify because looking at them too long makes thinking difficult.
Do not touch it if you can avoid it. Do not swim in it under any circumstances.
It retreats at dawn. It returns at dusk. You have the hours between to work with.
Where it comes from and where it goes — I have a theory. I'll get to that.
---
The Bone Ridge:
North-east of the labyrinth's center, the coral gives way to something different. The skeleton of something enormous — a leviathan, I think, though nothing alive today comes close to that scale — lies across the landscape like a fallen mountain range.
The bones are navigable from above. The interior of the spine forms a natural shelter from both the sea and the creatures. It's the closest thing to safe shelter I found in the early months.
---
The Ashen Barrows:
West of the Bone Ridge, the coral dies.
I don't mean it becomes sparse. I mean it simply stops. One step you're in the labyrinth, the next, the ground is grey ash and dead coral, stretching to a horizon that always looks further away than it is.
Nothing lives in the Ashen Barrows. Or rather — nothing lingered when I was there. I had the persistent sense of being watched by something that had decided I wasn't worth approaching yet. I moved quickly and didn't test it.
At the center of the Ashen Barrows is a hill. On that hill grows a tree with red leaves and black bark. I don't know what that tree is exactly, but I have a feeling it's not a tree.
Update: There's actually some kind of evolved Carapace variant guarding the tree. It doesn't ever leave the tree.
---
The Crater:
The Shore surrounds a crater of impossible scale.
I stood at its edge for a long time trying to find the other side. I couldn't. The roots of the great tree in the Ashen Barrows are visible from the crater's rim, which gives you some sense of how deep it goes.
This is where the darkness comes from. Every night, the dark sea rises from the crater and floods outward across the Shore. Every dawn, it drains back. I think.
What's at the bottom, I don't know. I tried to find out twice. Both times, something in the depths noticed me before I could see anything useful, and I chose to leave.
At the western edge of the crater, there is a wall. Behind the wall — a castle.
---
The Castle:
People live there.
Sleepers who arrived before you, and stayed. There is a settlement outside the walls and a larger population within. There is a bright lord. There are rules and politics.
There is no gateway.
I want to be clear about that before you waste months hoping. There is no gateway in the castle. There is no easy way home. The only structure I've found that might serve as an exit is the Crimson Spire, and reaching it requires resources and allies that most people on the Shore will never accumulate.
Go to the castle anyway. It's safer than the alternative.
---
The Hollow Mountains:
DO NOT GO HERE
I spent months travelling south, and finally found something.
South of the crater, there are mountains. What I initially thought were peaks are something else.
Please, never go here. The creatures here are probably corrupted, or even worse I don't know.
Update: They are atleast cursed and unholy creatures. Even the fog will kill you.
Don't go here.
---
The Dessert:
I went to the border once.
Once was enough.
I won't describe it in detail because the description won't help you. What I'll tell you is this: the Desert is not simply dangerous. It is categorically different from the Shore in ways I couldn't fully articulate even after years of observation.
The creatures there are not variants of what you've seen elsewhere. The rules are different. My essence manipulation, which had kept me alive everywhere else, was useless.
Do not go to the Desert. It is just as worse as the Hollow Mountains.
---
The Western Region:
There is something to the west. Beyond the crimson spire's far edge, past territory I was never able to cross safely.
Illusion-type nightmare creatures inhabit the approach. Not dangerous in the conventional sense — they don't attack directly. They make navigation impossible. I found a partial map of the region in one of the old texts underground, but even with the map I couldn't make reliable progress.
Whatever is there, I couldn't reach it. The Spire is too dangerous for me to venture alone.
I've included what I know in the map section. Make of it what you can.
Maybe... I can go back to the castle now. But there is still north to explore. There has to be a gateway there!
---
Unfortunately I found the laboratory before I could go north. Hopefully someone can find this diary, and try going north.
Yes. Hopefully.
---
The History of the Forgotten Shore:
This took me years to piece together. I'll save you the time.
Something fell from the sky — a star from the night sky.
Forgotten Shore was initially a beautiful land bathed in sunlight. Lush forests, glistening rivers, and fields of flowers surrounded human cities built of stone. The beautiful land rested under the sky that was full of stars. Suddenly, one of them fell to the ground, causing a wave of destruction to wash over the human cities.
When people approached the center of the crater left behind by the falling star, a naked human figure was standing at the bottom of the crater, wreathed in light. The inhabitants of the stone cities were surrounding the radiant figure, dressed in archaic garments and armor.
The figure seemed beautiful and pure, as though untouched by the imperfections of the mundane world. On the figure's face, three eyes were burning with pure, incandescent light. Two were just like that of a human, with the third one situated above the other ones, right in the middle of the creature's forehead.
For some unknown reason, the humans attacked the figure. The figure's chest was pierced by the spear of the tallest human among the inhabitants. What flowed from the terrible wound, however, was not blood, but an endless flood of pure darkness. The darkness devoured the humans gathered around the fatally wounded creature and spread. Soon, it devoured the crater left by the fallen star and then, devoured the entire world. It was a curse, the all consuming dark sea.
I've thought about this a lot over the years.
I don't know what the figure was. An angel, maybe.
The statue in the chamber below this text is the closest thing to a record of her face that survived.
I don't think they built it as an apology.
As the darkness spread across the world, it reached the skies. The stars were either devoured by it or fell down, turning the sky into a terrible, lightless abyss, the starless void.
The sun never rose above the cursed land again, leaving humans trembling in the cold. Soon, horrifying creatures came from the darkness to devour them. The best and the brightest of the ancient civilization took arms to defend their cities, and for a while, they were able to resist the tide of monsters.
Seven heroes came together from different parts of the dark land and under their protection and guidance, the people living in the darkness migrated from their half-destroyed cities to the shore of the vast crater. There, they built a new home for themselves, surrounded by a mighty wall that no monster could scale or breach.
Then they finished the mighty wall and the city was prospering amidst the darkness. The seven heroes stood at some distance from it, surrounding an inconceivably tall tower. It loomed above them, connecting heaven and earth like the axis of the world. Despite its cyclopean height, the tower was still unfinished. It was the Crimson Spire, only it was not crimson yet, as there were no growths of cursed coral covering its walls.
Soon the tower was complete, and on top of it, a new sun was burning bright, bathing the land and the celebrating people in the light once again. The darkness was gone.
---
As Leon read through the history written, he consumed all the information with a hunger he had never felt before.
He even explained most of it to Noah, who simply nodded along. The only thing Noah reacted to, was the Western region of the Forgotten Shore.
After that, Leon saw a map. It didn't really look hand-drawn, and had text and color over it.
At the center of it, was the map of the Forgotten Shore itself. In the middle, was the Crimson Spire. Marked and labelled.
To the east, a small city labelled as the 'Dark City', with a white tower in the middle. The Bright Castle.
The city was perched at the edge of a giant cyclopean crater. On the other side of the crater, exactly opposite to the city, was the Soul Devouring Tree.
To the east of the tree, was the Ashen Barrow, and then the Labyrinth stretching across.
East of the Labyrinth however, was a desert. A skull was shown on the desert.
"The Nightmare Desert." Noah said.
To the south of the crater, was a long horizontal line of mountains. Another skull marked near the mountains.
To the west of the crimson spire, there were a lot of trees. It looked like a gigantic jungle. There was big hole in the middle of the jungle — smaller than the crater of the Forgotten Shore, but still huge.
Leon sighed.
"She mapped the whole Shore."
"Yes," Noah said.
"For years." He was quiet for a moment. "All of it, alone."
Noah took in a deep breath.
"She was strong."
"Was she ever... in the novel?"
Noah was quiet.
After waiting for an answer, Leon frowned.
He looked at the other Memory she had given him.
Memory: [Ordinary Glass Bottle]
Memory Rank: Awakened
Memory Type: Tool
Memory Description: [A perfectly ordinary glass bottle]
Current Contents: [Corrupted Nightmare Creature Blood]
Enchantments:
Preserved State: [Anything stored within the bottle remains in the exact condition it was placed. Time does not affect the contents. Decay does not occur. Whatever goes in comes out unchanged, regardless of how long it waits.]
He summoned the bottle, and a transparent spherical bottle, the size of a tennis ball was formed in his hands.
Leon looked at the crimson liquid inside it with a somber expression.
"Song Seishan. You know her?"
Noah nodded.
"She's important much later. And till we leave the Shore."
Letting the bottle disappear, Leon leaned back on the coral and slowly closed his eyes.
He slowly drifted into sleep.
***
Leon woke up in his Soul Sea.
'Why am I always here when I'm sleeping or unconscious.'
He sighed as he looked at his nodes. A new pattern, representing Sera had appeared.
Walking closer, he stared at it for a while.
Sera had travelled the Shore for years. Discovered secrets no one had, mapped the entire death zone all alone. Yet she was never even discovered in the canon.
She had died alone, forgotten by everyone.
'Atleast I could meet her here...'
How many other stories like hers were untold? How many more people just died in a random corner of the Dream Realm, with no one to remember them by?
Leon clenched his fists.
Why must everyone suffer like this?
He suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning his head, he saw Aurelia.
"Are you alright?" She asked.
'Even now, she cares for me?'
Leon nodded.
"Just thinking. She did all that, for nothing in the end. She won't be remembered as a hero. Just some adventurer who died in a cave."
Aurelia stared at him for a moment.
"She knew."
"What?"
"She wrote it all down. She made sure someone would find it. She wasn't trying to be remembered — she was trying to be useful." She paused. "That's not nothing."
Leon stared back at the nodes.
"I guess not."
After taking a deep breath, Leon summoned the runes for the final Memory he had obtained from his adventure.
Memory: [Halo of Cinders]
Memory Rank: Ascended
Memory Type: Weapon
Memory Description:
[They had run out of options.
The darkness was everywhere and they were just frightened, brilliant, desperate people who had spent years watching everything they built get consumed one piece at a time.
So they tried to build something that could wound darkness itself.
They did not know if it was possible. They argued constantly — about the mechanism, about the cost, about whether a weapon that attacked the soul rather than the flesh could even be wielded by something that still possessed one.
In the end, they built it anyway.
It was not finished when the facility fell.
The weapon was left in its case, bound already to its purpose if not yet to a hand. The researchers did not survive to see whether it worked.
The halo did not forget why it was made.]
Enchantments:
Formless: [The weapon has no fixed shape. When summoned, it takes whatever form the wielder envisions.]
Soul Shear: [When the weapon makes direct contact with flesh, it bypasses physical resistance entirely and strikes the soul beneath. The effect requires essence flowing through the weapon at the moment of contact.]
Amplification: [The weapon amplifies the wielder's fear threefold when active.]
Waning Edge: [The weapon grows weaker against an enemy the longer the fight continues. Against new enemies, the effect resets completely.]
Repelling Light: [The weapon can release a continuous light. True darkness cannot pass through or occupy the same space as this light. The effect is not large.]
Leon was busy digesting everything the weapon could do. He summoned the weapon. A ring of pale metal, faintly luminous, materialized in his hand.
He briefly explained the weapon to Noah and Aurelia.
Noah chuckled.
"So it amplifies fear, but zero times three is still zero."
"As for essence, I can use her crown." Leon said.
Aurelia nodded.
"Right. You should still learn to manipulate essence on your own."
"That won't be a problem." Noah said.
Leon slowly shifted his attention, as Noah began explaining the path of ascension due to the Spell, to Aurelia — something he had already learnt in the Academy, till one reaches Ascended at least.
"Lyka," he said quietly.
The wolf appeared in front of him.
She sat at his feet and looked up at him.
He crouched down and rested his hand on the top of her head.
The runes appeared immediately.
[Do you wish to convert the Echo into a Trace?]
Leon stared at the runes for a moment, before finally saying,
"Yes."
An imperceptible change happened to the Soul Sea, as though a gust of wind appeared out of nowhere. Then, a pressure came from somewhere above.
Raising his head, Leon saw two blue beams descending from the depths of the Resonance Core. One of them landed on Lyka, while the other went right to the node showing Lykareth's soul — the resonance fragment he had obtained from killing her.
[Your Echo has been destroyed.]
'Fu—'
[A Trace has been permanently imprinted into your soul: Lykareth the Unseen]
Blue sparks scattered and reformed around Lyka. Lyka opened her eyes again.
"Huh."
He continued observing Lyka, as she observed him back.
"Her eyes changed." Aurelia's voice came from behind him.
Leon glanced back. She hadn't moved from where she stood, but she was watching the wolf now instead of the nodes.
"They did," Leon said.
Lyka's eyes had been empty and lifeless before. But now, they looked full of subtle emotions, as if the Trace had a life to it.
"Look." Noah said, pointing toward the nodes under his Soul Sea.
Leon checked the node pattern and noticed the Lykareth fragment was simply gone — consumed in the conversion.
"I see."
The cost of creating a Trace was to sacrifice one Resonance Fragment. Namely, the one that corresponded to the nightmare creature he killed.
But what a trace exactly did? He was unsure of.
He summoned the runes again.
Trace: [Lykareth]
Trace Type: Devil
Trace Class: Awakened
Trace Description:
[Born in ruins where even sound feared to linger, Lykareth did not hunt with speed or strength. It hunted with absence.
It learned the shape of breath, the rhythm of thought, the pause before panic. Yet it was outsmarted by the very pray it decided to hunt one unfortunate day.]
It wasn't really different from before? What exactly had changed?
Leon summoned the Vile Thieving Bird Spawn this time, and touched it.
[Do you wish to convert the Echo into a Trace?]
The Spell sounded again. Leon stared at it for a while. He wanted to convert the Vile Thieving Bird's Spawn into a Trace, but decided to hold off until later.
Without knowing what a Trace actually did, it was dangerous to simply convert it. He had learnt that the hard way after all.
***
Inside a small room, a blond girl with pale white skin suddenly jolted up from her sleep. She breathed heavily, as cold sweat poured down from her head.
Cassia had just received a vision.
She rushed outside of her room, and hurried over to Sunny's room and banged on his door.
Sunny woke up groggily, and opened the door.
"Cas? What's wrong?"
"Vision. A vision. Get Nephis here. Quick!"
Cassie urged him.
Sunny's expression immediately turned serious as he got up and left the room.
Cassie sat on Sunny's bed as he clutched her head.
A while later, Sunny returned to his room along with Nephis.
"Cassie? What is it?"
Nephis asked.
Cassie tried to force herself calm as she began speaking.
"I had a vision."
She began explaining her vision in detail.
A young man with pale white hair, wearing an eye-patch made of silky webs, was travelling across the labyrinth, with his dark scythe.
His expression looked serious as he approached the top of one of the coral walls. Climbing it, he looked into the distance, noticing a large wall.
The young man smiled as a large black bird then flew toward him. He simply looked back and jumped as the bird caught him mid-air.
After Cassie finished explaining the vision, Nephis and Sunny stared at Cassie with expressions of disbelief.
"Leon?"
Sunny asked.
Cassie lowered her head.
"It has to be him, right?"
As Nephis and Sunny stared at Cassie, the sun rose above the Forgotten Shore.