Four strange symbols sharpened into focus on the book's cover, searing themselves into Raymond's vision. At the same moment, a voice echoed in his ears—ancient, dignified, little more than a whisper: "Attention, please..."
The thick volume lying on the ground slowly opened itself before him. Pages that had never yielded to his attempts now parted effortlessly, and the first leaf revealed itself to his gaze.
It held no words. Only lines—chaotic, tangled, crowding the page in wild profusion. But each line bore a different color, and not a single shade repeated.
The chip's warning still screamed in his mind, but Raymond found he couldn't move. His gaze was locked on the book, trapped as if by chains.
His hand remained frozen mid-reach, still stretched toward the pages he'd meant to turn. But in his awareness, he'd lost all control of his body.
The breeze—hot moments ago—vanished.
The faint scent that had lingered in his nostrils disappeared.
The grass before him stopped swaying.
Time itself seemed to halt. Everything froze.
Only the lines on the page remained in motion.
They lifted from the paper, one by one, colors bleeding into the air. They writhed and twisted, rising slowly, gathering together, until they formed a sphere woven from threads of light.
The sphere expanded in his vision, swelling until it filled everything. Colors spun, each thread thickening, becoming distinct, overwhelming.
His thoughts scattered. Memories surfaced—jumbled, disordered, fragments of a life that made no sense.
How long passed, he couldn't say. Then, faintly, a voice broke through: ancient, commanding. "Mental fortitude test passed. Congratulations..."
The words released him.
Control returned.
The faint scent washed back. The warm breeze brushed his skin. Grass swayed at his feet.
The book lay on the ground before him, its cover dark and featureless, just as it had always been. Unopened. Unchanged.
His arm still hung in the air, frozen mid-reach. And every muscle in his body screamed.
He gasped, pulling the cramped limb back, massaging life into it. His mind reeled.
"One," he commanded silently. "Play back all recordings from the last few minutes."
"Task initiated. Beginning retrieval..."
"Host mental state abnormal. Unable to retrieve."
"Audiovisual data corrupted. No recording found. Reinitializing task..."
"Temporal discrepancy detected. Recalibrating..."
"Recalibration complete. Time differential: sixty hours."
Raymond's eyes widened. The blood drained from his face.
Sixty hours. He'd been trapped in that state for sixty hours.
His thoughts churned. He shook his head, trying to clear the fog, waiting for the pain in his arm to fade. Then he reached down and picked up the book.
It felt warm in his hands. Solid. Almost alive.
He tried the cover again. This time, it opened without resistance. The first page lay exposed.
Still no words. But the lines—the chaotic, colorful lines—shifted as he watched. They twisted, intertwined, merged, until they formed a single symbol. Strange. Alien. Unreadable.
The ancient voice returned, resonant in his mind: "Memorize."
Raymond sat up straight and stared at the distant tree. At its base, the leaf-creatures had returned, holding hands, circling the trunk, singing their eerie nursery rhyme. He shook his head slowly.
If trees could talk and leaves could sing, what other wonders—what other horrors—did this world hold? He supposed he'd have to learn to accept them.
But understanding? That would take time.
He turned back to the book. "Record everything," he commanded the chip silently. "Analyze. Store."
"Task initiated. Beginning recording..."
He focused. Let his gaze and memory work in tandem. The ancient voice in his head guided him, demanded his full attention.
One symbol per page. The first page held one. The second, two.
The book was thin—only nine pages in total. But the symbols only appeared after he'd memorized the ones before. If he skipped ahead, the pages showed nothing. Blank. Empty. Even the colored lines refused to manifest.
And the chip? Useless. It couldn't record any of it. Every scan returned blank—empty pages, empty cover, nothing but dead parchment. The four symbols on the front? Invisible to the chip's sensors. The only thing it registered was faint radiation emanating from the book while he studied it. Low-level. Constant. Affecting his body in ways it couldn't quantify.
Time slipped away. Without the chip to help, Raymond relied on old-fashioned memory. One symbol. Two. Three.
The symbols, once memorized, burned themselves into his mind—permanent, inescapable. After he'd locked down the first three, the third page finally revealed a fourth.
Judging by the layout, that page should hold three symbols total. But until he memorized the fourth, the others stayed hidden.
And memorizing took time. Hours, it felt like. The chip confirmed it later: nearly ten hours for just three symbols.
Reluctantly, Raymond closed the book. He shut his eyes, reviewed what he'd learned. The symbols were there, solid in his memory, unmovable.
When he opened his eyes again, dawn had broken.
He looked toward the tree. The leaf-creatures were gone from its base. The trunk itself... swayed.
"Time's up, little one," the ancient voice rumbled. "I'm leaving. You may stay two more days at most."
Raymond frowned, watching. The face on the trunk faded, sinking back into bark.
The ground trembled.
Roots burst from the soil—thick as his waist, thin as his fingers, all writhing, all lifting. The massive tree rose on its own foundations, taproots heaving it skyward. What had been anchored for centuries now stood on a hundred wooden legs.
Earthquake. Raymond staggered, struggling to keep his feet.
La-la-la... la-la-la...
From the canopy, the leaf-creatures sang their nursery rhyme, their tiny voices carrying through the morning air. The tree took a step. Then another. Faster. Moving on those tangled roots like some impossible creature from myth.
Raymond watched, mouth hanging open, as the tree strode into the forest. The singing faded. The roots disappeared between the trunks.
Gone.
He stood alone in the clearing, staring at the empty space where a sentient tree had lived for—how long? Centuries? Millennia?
And now it had just... walked away.
He swallowed hard.
So. That happened.