She wasn’t sure what she expected.
Although still a new occupant in this strange world, the Speaker recognized its gaping, gnarled scar as if it were her own. A fire, and a gruesome one at that. As she and her Soul-Keeper travelled, if one could call it 'travel', she bore witness to the devastation. The constellations above were foreign, but the air was warm enough to suggest a passing season. The Strand—as the land was named—was strange, yes, but not as unfamiliar as she expected. Its energy clung to her desperately in only the way an old grief would, stitched and twisted into the soil like a scar beneath the skin. It reminded her, although distantly, of the Path. She read what signs she could from the wind. But the wind was secretive. Elusive, like an echo. Why had the fire come? Was it the will of the Goddess-Mother? A reckoning? A punishment upon the Faithless? Perhaps it could explain Her disappearance from Mythris, but presence in the Path?

The familiarity stretched beyond just age, however. The atmosphere was always too clipped or quiet, like the soil alone carried the weight of a burden long begotten to memory. But none of the individuals in their travels had presented details, and she hadn’t asked. Her Goddess would reveal the truth in time.

Luscinia had torn herself away from the company of her Soul-Keeper Cathartes for the afternoon. For no other reason than to merely explore the area on her own. No reason was offered, and none was required. They always found their way back, even if parted by a thousand worlds.

He was also... talkative.

As she traversed from the confines of the woods, she took note of how the land dipped and narrowed into strange corridors of blackened rock, and already, something felt wrong. Visibly wrong. Tangibly wrong. The air had no scent. The trees stood motionless, limbs stiff, taught, and silent. Not a breath of wind. Not a sound. Even her own pawsteps seemed reluctant to make noise, swallowed whole by the oppressive stillness that blanketed the area. A gaping void stretched before her, and where shadow met light, smatterings of organic matter revealed itself.

Bones scattered in the earth caught her eye — some fractured and deformed, some picked clean. Not fresh, but not old enough to forget, either. A bone-place defiled, desecrated.

In a sudden breath, Luscinia abruptly paused near the mouth of the blackness, one paw hovering mid-step.

She didn’t speak. Only a soft grunt emitted from her lips.

Words were unnecessary anyway. No one was here. Not the songs of sky-cries. Not the wind, nor time. Reminiscent of an echo-hollow, certainly. The echo-hollows in the Path could not compare to the dread of this one, assuming it was, in fact, the dream world she likened it to. The echo-hollows of the Path offered cold, but comfort. This? This felt inhabited by something old and waiting.

A green mist had pooled in the gullies ahead. Dark and slow-moving, thick as gray-loom. It clung low to the ground at first, but even from here, she could see it creeping up the ridges, like something alive, stubbornly clawing its way up the ragged, outstretched trenches that carved its way up the sides of the rock wall.

Cautiously, she stepped forward.

The mist touched her legs first — cold, damp — then higher. Her breath caught. Not from trepidation, but from the sudden, immediate sting: mucus began to pool from her nose, her throat prickled raw, and her pale eyes welled reflexively.

The Speaker sniffed, then winced.

The smell was… iron-rich. A fresh glow-flare strike on a tree. Rain slick on stone. She rubbed her face with a paw, though it proved futile, so all she could muster was a squint through the haze.

Then she heard it.

A voice — or something shaped like one. It didn’t speak to her, not like the Rav'kai. It lacked words, and yet it was unmistakably a language uttered exclusively for her. It tore at something inside her chest like a vine, firm and delicate, utterly insistent. She couldn’t describe it, not clearly. Only that it knew she was here. And it wanted her to keep going.

Her ears flicked back.

This is definitely not an echo-hollow, that much was certain. But if not the Goddess' doing, then whose? What could possibly be doing this?

Despite her uncertainty, her body willed her forward.

Luscinia coughed sharply, resisting the urge to brush at her streaming eyes again. The deeper she went, the thicker it got. Every breath came with a sting. Every blink burned, and yet the mist was hospitable, gentle. The voice remained, not loud but present, as if it knew she had time to listen even if it took a millennia to decipher its code. And despite every warning in her body, despite the way her lungs protested, Luscinia stepped forward again, deeper into the mist.

"Hello?"

A croak that echoed throughout the chambers. A prayer, cast out into something she could not see.

She knew she was uninvited.

But she did not feel unwelcome.