Leaving Veridia felt different from leaving Lumière. There wasn't the same desperate fear of fleeing a certain fate, but rather a solemn determination to seek it out. The Guardians stayed behind, anchored to their city, their eyes filled with a mixture of hope for us and resignation to their own immobility. They wished us luck, their voices turning to whispers as we moved away from the petrified walls.
We stopped at the edge where the Veil began again, the same apparent wall of twisting vegetation and dancing shadows we had crossed to reach Veridia. But now, we knew it wasn't a wall. It was a threshold. And we knew how to cross it.
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes for a moment, concentrating. I searched for the vibration, the irregular pulse of the Veil I'd learned to feel. It was stronger here, denser than at the entrance near Lumière. The "currents" of energy seemed to tangle and untangle around me, a chaotic tapestry of sensations. This time, finding the entry point, the place where the Veil's "fabric" was thinnest, required more effort, like trying to tune into a radio station in the middle of a thunderstorm. I felt a pang of tension in my temples from the concentration.
"Do you have it, []?" Gustave asked, his voice tinged with concern.
"Yes," I replied, opening my eyes and pointing to a spot in the darkness. "Here. It's denser here. But it's... the right place."
One by one, we passed back through the invisible veil. The sensation was the same: the instant chill, the ripple in the air. But on the other side, the atmosphere was noticeably different. The whirring of glass wasn't a distant chorus here; it was a constant, enveloping roar that seemed to come from every direction at once. The light from the pale sky was almost nonexistent, and Maelle's flashlights and ours seemed to struggle against the darkness, their beams weak and distorted.
The landscape was more surreal than before. The trees weren't just twisted; their shapes seemed to subtly change when I wasn't looking directly at them. Crystal formations were omnipresent, covering the ground like a glittering, fragile tapestry, hanging from branches like strange fruit, and even forming structures that seemed to mimic buildings or statues before my mind realized they were just random accumulations of crystal. The air itself seemed to vibrate with a raw, disorienting energy.
"By the Veil..." Maelle murmured, her eyes wide. "This is... a lot."
"The Painter's influence runs deep in these parts," Sciel said, trying to keep his voice steady over the roar of the glass. He consulted his tome, though he seemed to struggle to focus his eyes on its pages in the strange light. "The texts warn that reality here is... fluid. Illusions are constant."
"We have to follow my sense of rhythm," I said, concentration already tensing my muscles. "But it's harder here. The Veil... it tries to confuse me. The rhythm changes, hides, forks for no apparent reason."
We began to move forward, my steps hesitant at first as I tried to discern the main current of rhythm amid the chaos. It was like listening to multiple orchestras playing different pieces at the same time and trying to follow the melody of just one. I had to stop often, close my eyes, breathe, concentrate until my mind ached, so I wouldn't lose track. My companions moved with me, their trust in me palpable, but also their tension from the uncertainty.
Lune, with her keen senses, tried to help in her own way, pointing out subtle changes in the vegetation or the direction of air currents that sometimes seemed to coincide with what I was feeling. "The energy seems to be going that way," she would sometimes say, confirming or testing my perception.
Maelle and Sciel focused on the immediate surroundings, seeking secure footholds on the crystal-covered ground or dodging low, twisting branches. Gustave stayed close to me, a reassuring presence, his hand on my shoulder at times, reminding me I wasn't alone. "Step by step," his gaze said. "Just keep up. We trust you."
The difficulty of navigation was extreme. The Veil's rhythm sometimes dissipated completely, leaving me feeling blind, empty, and panicked. At those times, we had to either come to a complete stop, wait, or try to get Sciel to use his knowledge to interpret the strange manifestations around us for clues. At times, the Veil seemed to actively resist our progress, creating illusions of walls or chasms where none existed, or causing the path I felt to turn sharply for no reason. It was a battle not only against the environment, but against the Veil itself trying to trap us in its madness.
On one occasion, while trying to follow a rhythm that seemed to ripple upward, the ground beneath my feet seemed to turn to liquid. My companions cried out in surprise. I panicked, my sense of rhythm momentarily failing. But we didn't fall. It was an illusion. My intuition, though confused, told me the 'fall' wasn't real. I had to force myself to continue feeling the underlying rhythm, ignoring the terrifying feeling of emptiness beneath my feet.
The mental effort was exhausting. I felt like my mind was a muscle I'd never used before, and now it was working at its maximum. After what seemed like an eternity of navigating in the surreal darkness, the rhythm of the Veil we were following began to take on a different quality. It became louder, yes, but also more singular. Less chaotic, more focused, as if we were following a more powerful mainstream, or getting closer to its source.
The landscape around us also seemed to react to this stronger current. The crystalline formations grew taller, denser, glowing with a more intense internal light. The roar of the Veil became a higher hum, almost a sustained note that echoed in the air. And then, through the gloom and the crystals, we glimpsed something.
A structure. Not the remains of a city or an altar, but something different. It seemed to be... floating amidst the dense Veil, surrounded by an aura of intense light and the loudest roar of crystals. It was irregular in shape, organic and geometric at once, as if it had grown from the Veil itself.
We stopped, both amazed and apprehensive. The current of rhythm had brought us here. This structure... could it be the Source? Or at least, something intrinsically connected to it.
The journey through this deepest stretch of the Veiled Ways had been a test of mental endurance and mutual trust. We had relied on an invisible sense to navigate an unreal world. And it had led us somewhere.
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