Dawn breaks over Faram's Respite in shades of amber and gray. You emerge from the small dwelling where you spent the night—not sleeping, for hollow beings need no sleep, but in a state of dormancy that passed for rest. The new sword, a simple double-edged longsword of steel, that Moira gave you hangs at your side, its weight both unfamiliar and instinctively right against your hip. The rusted blade you carried since the beach has been left behind, propped against the wall of the dwelling like a relic of a self already being shed.
Urso awaits in the square, massive form silhouetted against the rising sun. The mutated bear-creature's multiple eyes blink in asynchronous patterns as you approach, and the continuous humming that emanates from its chest changes pitch—higher, almost welcoming. When you draw near, it lowers its misshapen head briefly, an acknowledgment that seems almost respectful.
Moira's task echoes in your hollow mind: Find the other Soulless in the Gorlath Forest, the one who has taken corrupted souls, and slay it. Simple words for what will surely be anything but a simple undertaking, for reasons you do not understand.
The hollow husks of Faram's Respite have already begun their daily pantomime of life, shambling through meaningless routines with weapons still clutched in lifeless grips. They part before you and Urso as you cross the square, their empty gazes tracking your progress without recognition or concern.
Moira herself is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she has returned to whatever realm such beings as herself inhabit when not walking among the hollow. Perhaps she watches even now from some hidden vantage point. It matters little—her task has been given, and you have chosen to accept it, if only because no alternative presents itself in this broken world.
“I will wait by the Bridge of Redscale when you are done,” she had said before disappearing. The name is unknown to you, but at least you have something.
The journey west begins in silence. Urso leads, following a path visible only to its many eyes, and you follow the beast through the rolling hills that surround Faram's Respite. The land gradually changes as you travel—the silver-gray grasses giving way to patches of darker vegetation that grows in spiral patterns across the earth. The twisted trees become more numerous, their bark the pale blue-gray of drowned corpses, their branches reaching skyward with an almost supplicating quality.
By midday, you've covered significant ground. The horizon ahead has transformed, the distant tree line of Gorlath Forest now dominating the vista before you. Even from this distance, the forest's unnatural quality is apparent. The trees grow too densely, their silhouettes too jagged and angular to be products of natural growth. The entire forest seems to pulse with a subtle rhythm, expanding and contracting like the breathing of some vast organism.
Urso's humming grows louder as you approach, vibrating through the ground beneath your feet. The beast's agitation becomes increasingly evident—its multiple eyes swivel independently, scanning the landscape with heightened alertness. Twice it stops abruptly, massive head swinging from side to side as if detecting some threat beyond your perception, before cautiously proceeding.
The third time this happens, you discover what has the creature so unsettled. The ground ahead shifts, earth bulging upward before splitting open to reveal a mass of writhing, pale tendrils. These shoot toward you with alarming speed, their tips glistening with some viscous fluid that sizzles where it drips onto the soil.
Urso roars, the sound so powerful it momentarily disrupts your vision. The beast charges forward, meeting the tendrils with savage fury. Its enlarged foreleg sweeps through them, severing several at once. The wounded appendages spray cloudy liquid that hisses and bubbles on contact with Urso's fur, but the creature appears undeterred by the pain.
You draw your new sword, the blade singing as it cuts through the air. The weapon feels alive in your grip, responsive in ways your rusted blade never was. When the first tendril reaches for you, you slice through it with a precision that surprises even yourself. The severed piece writhes on the ground, gradually stilling as the cloudy fluid within drains away.
More tendrils erupt from the earth, encircling you and Urso in a writhing forest of pale appendages. Back to back with the mutated bear, you fight with growing coordination. Each swing of your sword feels more natural than the last, as though the hollow form you inhabit is remembering skills long forgotten.
The battle ends suddenly when Urso lunges at the central mass from which the tendrils emerge. Its powerful jaws close around what might be the creature's core, crushing it with a sickening sound like wet clay being compressed. The remaining tendrils convulse once, then go limp, collapsing to the earth where they begin to dissolve into the same cloudy fluid they had contained.
Urso turns to you, muzzle dripping with the creature's essence. It makes a sound different from its usual humming—three short bursts that might almost be interpreted as satisfaction. The multiple eyes blink in sequence, and the beast inclines its head slightly before turning to continue westward.
By late afternoon, you reach the edge of Gorlath Forest. The transition from open land to woodland is jarring in its abruptness. One moment you walk across open terrain, the next you stand before a wall of vegetation so dense it seems impenetrable. The trees here grow impossibly close together, their trunks twisted around one another like lovers or combatants frozen in eternal embrace. Their bark is not the expected brown but a deep, mottled purple that glistens wetly in the slanting light. No leaves grow on their branches, only thin, hair-like filaments that wave gently despite the absence of wind.
Urso stops at the forest's edge, multiple eyes fixed on the dark spaces between the trees. The humming emanating from its chest drops to a lower register, somber and warning. The beast paces back and forth along the boundary, unwilling or unable to proceed further.
You understand now what Moira meant—the forest's nature rejects Urso. Something about the mutated creature is fundamentally incompatible with whatever Gorlath has become. The beast turns to you, its misshapen head dipping in what might be apology or farewell. One enormous paw reaches out, resting briefly on your shoulder with surprising gentleness before withdrawing.
The message is clear: from here, you continue alone.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
The space between two twisted trunks offers the only visible entry point, a threshold barely wide enough for your hollow form to slip through. As you pass between them, a sensation like cold fingers trails across your back—the forest acknowledging your presence, permitting your entrance while denying Urso's.
Within Gorlath, light behaves differently. Though the sun still shines above, its rays penetrate the canopy in discrete beams that illuminate patches of the forest floor in sharp, geometric patterns. Between these pools of brightness lies shadow deeper than should be possible in daylight hours. The air feels thick, resistant to movement, and carries a scent like overripe fruit on the verge of fermentation.
The path, if path it can be called, forces you to weave between tightly packed trees whose arrangement seems almost deliberately maze-like. Their hair-like filaments brush against you as you pass, leaving behind a residue that glistens on your hollow flesh. When you try to wipe it away, it simply smears, eventually absorbing into your desiccated form without apparent effect.
Time loses meaning within Gorlath. The light neither brightens nor dims as you progress deeper, maintaining the same eerie quality regardless of how long you walk. Distance, too, becomes unreliable. Landmarks you pass seem to reappear from unexpected directions, and twice you find yourself returning to places you thought left behind, though you've maintained what feels like a constant forward direction.
The sword at your side pulses occasionally, the amber stone in its pommel flaring with momentary brightness before subsiding. These pulses grow more frequent as you penetrate deeper into the forest, suggesting the weapon responds to something unseen. Perhaps the corrupted Soulless you've been sent to find, perhaps something else entirely.
Sound behaves as strangely as light in this place. Your footsteps sometimes echo as if in a vast cavern, other times are swallowed completely by the forest floor. Occasionally, noises reach you from unseen sources. Cracking branches, rustling movement, once even what might have been distant laughter cut short. Whether these are real or manifestations of the forest's will attempting to disorient you remains unclear.
A clearing appears suddenly before you, perfectly circular and unexpected after the densely packed trees. At its center grows a single massive mushroom, its cap the diameter of a wagon wheel, its coloration a sickly gradient from bone-white at its base to veined purple at its cap. Unlike the fungi you might have seen in more natural settings, this specimen pulses with visible rhythm, expanding and contracting like a heart beating in slow motion.
As you step into the clearing, the mushroom's rhythm accelerates. Its cap splits along invisible seams, peeling back to reveal structures that approximate a face. Not a human face, but an arrangement of hollows and ridges that suggest eyes and a mouth. From this opening emerges a fine mist, glittering with suspended particles that catch the strange light filtering through the canopy.
The mushroom entity uproots itself with a sound like wet suction, revealing appendages beneath that were hidden in the soil. Limbs that bend in too many places, terminating in writhing tendrils that reach for you with terrible purpose. It propels itself toward you with surprising speed, no longer tethered to the earth but mobile and predatory.
Your sword is already in hand, the amber stone in its pommel blazing with steady light now. The blade cuts through the approaching tendrils with satisfying efficiency, each stroke releasing cloudy fluid that sizzles when it strikes the forest floor. The mushroom entity emits a high-pitched keening in response, not from its mouth-like opening but from its entire form, vibrating at a frequency that sets your hollow bones to humming in sympathy.
More tendrils erupt from its underside, these tipped with barbed structures that gleam wetly in the strange light. They whip toward you with cunning strategy, attacking from multiple angles simultaneously. You pivot and dodge, the sword an extension of your will more than your arm, finding its targets with precision that seems beyond your conscious control.
One tendril manages to wrap around your ankle, its barbs puncturing your desiccated flesh. Cold fire spreads from the wound. Not pain as a living being might experience it, but a wrongness that threatens your hollow integrity. With a decisive stroke, you sever the tendril, then plunge your sword directly into the center of the mushroom entity's cap.
The blade sinks deep, meeting brief resistance before breaking through into whatever serves as the creature's core. The amber stone in the pommel flares blindingly bright, and a pulse of energy travels down the blade into the mushroom entity. It convulses violently, tendrils thrashing in chaotic patterns before suddenly going rigid.
When you withdraw your sword, the mushroom entity collapses in on itself, its structure disintegrating into the same cloudy fluid that had filled its tendrils. Within moments, all that remains is a spreading pool of viscous liquid being gradually absorbed by the forest floor. Unlike the hollow husks you've encountered before, no soul fragment emerges. This thing, whatever it was, contained nothing you could absorb.
The sword's glow subsides as the last of the entity dissolves. When you examine the blade, you find it unmarked by the conflict, its edge as keen as when first drawn. Whatever substance composed the mushroom creature has left no residue, as though the weapon somehow repels contamination.
You continue deeper into Gorlath, guided now by the occasional pulses from your sword's pommel stone. The forest grows stranger still. Trees appear to shift position when not directly observed, patches of ground that sink slightly beneath your weight before rising again after you pass, sudden clearings that contain perfect circle patterns of smaller mushrooms, their caps rhythmically opening and closing like hungry mouths.
As twilight finally begins to assert itself, dimming the geometric light patterns to softer, more diffuse illumination, you detect something new in the distance—the flickering orange glow of firelight. It remains consistent as you approach, unlike the forest's other illusions that shift and change with perspective.
You emerge from between two particularly twisted trees to find another clearing, smaller than the one where you encountered the mushroom entity. At its center burns a small campfire, the flames behaving normally despite the forest's otherworldly nature. Beside it sits a figure wrapped in an oversized cloak that covers its entire body, hood drawn forward to conceal its features. The cloak shifts occasionally as if the figure beneath is shivering, trying to ward off a cold only it can feel.
The sword at your side pulses once, strongly, the amber stone flaring briefly before settling into a steady, subtle glow. This, then, must be your quarry: The other Soulless that Moira sent you to find and destroy, the one who has taken corrupted souls. It means nothing to you, yet somehow you feel as if it means everything.
You step fully into the clearing, hand on your sword's hilt. The cloaked figure makes no move to rise or defend itself, giving no indication it has even noticed your approach until you stand at the edge of the firelight's reach.
"Another one?" it says finally, voice rasping like dry leaves scattered by wind. The hood turns slightly in your direction, though not enough to reveal what lies beneath. "Not quite. Go away."
The figure hunches further into its cloak, drawing the fabric tighter around its concealed form as if trying to make itself smaller, less noticeable. The fire crackles between you, sending sparks spiraling upward to vanish among the forest's strange canopy.
Your hand remains on the sword's hilt, the weapon thrumming with quiet energy against your palm. This is the moment Moira prepared you for—the confrontation with this being who has consumed corrupted souls. Yet nothing about the huddled figure suggests the malevolence or power you expected to find.
The firelight flickers across the clearing, casting long shadows that seem to move with purpose of their own. Night descends fully upon Gorlath Forest, and with it comes a silence deeper than any you've encountered since awakening on that distant beach.
What you do: How do you want to proceed with the fellow Soulseeker?
