Scholar's Log, Entry 8,408
Date: Cycle 249,200 PD. Avalora Date: ??, Day 1.
Subject: Arrival. The Silence.
I am here. I am on Avalora. The transition was... violent. But the calculations held. The harmonic anchor worked. I am alive.
But the silence... The Magi's notes did not, could not, prepare me for this. It is not an absence of sound. It is an absence of everything. The song of life, the hum of magic in the earth, the feel of the stars, the presence of other souls—it is all gone. It is a crushing, deafening void. I can hear the wind in the trees and the skittering of insects, but these are crude, lonely sounds. They are not life. They are just... noise.
Physical sensations are overwhelming. Cold is not a concept; it is a pain. The dampness of the ground seeps into my robes, a physical violation—my shoulder throbs from the impact of the landing. I am acutely, horrifyingly aware of my own body. My heart beats too loudly in the emptiness. My own breathing is a harsh, ragged intrusion.
I am a new variable in an unknown equation. I have my pack. The logbook is intact. The tools are present. The nutrient wafers are accounted for. My mind... my mind is intact, though it reels from the shock. Logic. Focus on the logic. The primary objective has shifted from discovery to survival. I must treat this as a hostile environment. I have found temporary shelter in a shallow cave. I am... safe. I will observe. I will record. I will endure this silence, even if it feels like it is trying to crush me.
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She could not tell how long she had been kneeling there. Removed from the steady, cosmic rhythm she had always known, time itself felt shattered. Only the solitude, the wet coolness of the woodland floor soaking through her robes, and the sharp, stabbing agony in her shoulder were present.
It wasn't "quiet." It was an abyss.
In Elysiuma, silence had been a choice—a momentary pause in the world's grand song. This was a void, an active, crushing pressure. She felt as though a thousand voices had suddenly been silenced, leaving a void that strained her senses. It seemed as though the cosmos itself had abandoned her, leaving her blind, deaf, and completely alone. In the emptiness, her own heartbeat sounded like a furious, obscene drum. The sound of her raspy breaths was startling.
She let out a cry of utter horror as she flinched abruptly at a sound. To her left, there was a rustle in the foliage and a harsh snap.
She jerked her head up. Her ribs were pounded by her heart. She would have sensed the creature's approach and understood its purpose and nature long before it got close in her previous reality. It was only a sound here. A savage, frightful, unknown sound. She was overcome by animalistic fear, a feeling so vile that she had only ever read about.
Pushing against the hard bark of the oak tree she had landed next to, she clambered backward. She swallowed back another cry as the action shot a scream of white-hot, pure agony from her shoulder. She was hurt. She was vulnerable. And something was coming.
Out of the ferns came a small, four-legged creature with a black, mask-like pattern on its face and a bushy tail. It stopped and smelt the air where she had landed, its bead-like black eyes displaying curiosity rather than fear. Then it turned and walked away, chittering, and vanished into the night.
Leaning hard against the tree, Valeriana was left trembling and breathing sharply in short gasps. It was a new, nauseating rush of adrenaline. Cold perspiration appeared on her forehead. The thing that had frightened her, really, mortally frightened her, would not have merited a second look in Silverwood.
A bone-deep cold followed the panic as it subsided. Additionally, the scholar's mind, which had been stunned and paralyzed, began to stir.
Logic.
The word was an anchor. Panic was an inefficient response. She was alive. She was injured. She was exposed. These were the new variables.
Her primary objective had shifted from discovery to survival.
She tried to push herself to a fully standing position. The pain in her shoulder was no longer a dull throb; it was a hot, jagged thing, and the arm felt weak and useless. Climbing was impossible. The very thought of hauling her own body weight up a tree, as she had idly considered in her planning, was now a grim joke. She needed shelter. Ground-level. Defensible.
Her keen elf eyes, one of her few remaining advantages, peered through the darkness as she examined the woods. The moonlight peeking through the canopy revealed the area despite the deep jungle. Trees, thickets, and a deep shadow against a hillside were all visible to her. A rock formation. A possible overhang.
Using the oak for support, she pushed herself to her feet. Her elven body, nurtured by magic for centuries, was still strong. It screamed at the unfiltered pain, but it held. It did not collapse. She could stand. She could walk.
Each step was a careful, measured agony. Her damaged arm was pressed tightly against her chest as she gripped her pack strap with her good hand. She almost slipped twice due to the slippery, wet leaves on the ground. She always jumped at the savage noises of the forest, like the hoot of a faraway owl or the crack of a twig beneath her own boot. Her nerves were bare and exposed.
She crossed the narrow clearing to the hillside in ten excruciating minutes. Little more than a deep, hollowed-out scar in the rock, likely sculpted by ancient water, the cave was shallow. Although it was dark and had a mossy and damp earthy smell, it was dry and—above all—out of the wind.
Her heart was still racing as she cautiously approached it. Using her good hand, a rudimentary, physical instrument, she picked up a loose rock the size of a fist and threw it into the darkness. It landed with a skitter and a dull thud. No growl. No shriek. No sound of a large, disturbed creature.
It was deserted.
Valeriana practically fell in, sliding her back against the cool, smooth stone wall as she dived under the low overhang. She remained there for a while, allowing the shock and tiredness to finally pass over her while inhaling the scent of stone and earth. For now, she was safe.
She was painfully mortal, chilly, and wounded. However, she was still alive.
Still trembling, her hand fumbled for her pack's clasp. She took out a graphite marking stick and her logbook. Despite the cold making her hand clumsy, she pushed her fingers to hold onto the stick. She was a scholar. Her mission had not changed, only its parameters. She would observe. She would record. She would endure.
She opened to a new page, and under the pale, lonely moonlight that reached just inside the mouth of her new, dark home, Valeriana began to write.
Valeriana's hand, still trembling, gripped the graphite stick so tightly that her knuckles whitened. Writing the entry was an act of defiance, a way for her to impose order on the chaos of this new world. Amid the deafening emptiness, there was a small, piercing sound of graphite scratching on the vellum page.
After finishing, she carefully closed the logbook and returned it to her pack, her movements painful and stiff. The throb in her shoulder had changed from a sudden, intense pain to a deep, heavy, and sickening ache. She needed to assess the damage.