"Before the world was broken into three forests, one root ruled over everything."
The ancient voice was still echoing in the memory space when the white light around the four slowly faded.
The Mirror Vault’s hall had disappeared.
The black glass walls, white pillars, and thousands of suspended crystals were no longer visible around them.
There was not even a clear ground beneath their feet, yet none of them fell.
They were standing like invisible spirits in the heart of a massive memory.
Lian raised his hand.
His fingers were not transparent, and his body had its usual appearance, but when he tried to gather Mana in his palm, no reaction occurred.
His Skills were still present. He could feel them.
But this space would not allow interaction with the memory.
Not he, not Seris, not Seraphina or Liana. They were only observers of something that had happened thousands of years ago.
’Interesting, this is the first time I’m seeing something like this. Does it only relate to the crystals, or do skills or arrays also play a role in forming such a thing?’
What they were experiencing was like a cinema with very high reality simulation, so much so that it had no flaws, and this made him even more curious about the civilization behind building such a thing.
In his world too, such technology exists. His surprise comes from the fact that such a civilization with such technology once existed in this small world.
’What happened that caused such a civilization to fall? I guess I’ll find out soon.’
A vast world was spread before them.
The sky was different from what they had seen in Glassthorn Forest.
There was no mist or broken light among the clouds. A golden sun shone in a blue sky, and its light fell without distortion on green lands and wide rivers.
There was no trace of Glassthorn Forest, nor the giant trees and unnatural monsters of the Forest of Giants.
And there were no burning roots and hot air of Emberroot.
All those areas were parts of a unified land.
But none of those scenes caught Lian’s attention as much as what was in the world’s center.
A massive tree had risen from the ground. Even the word "massive" could not describe its size.
Its trunk was like a pillar connecting the earth and sky. The mountains around it, compared to its exposed roots, were only small protrusions.
Its branches extended hundreds of kilometers in the sky.
The tree’s canopy kept a large part of the world under its shade, and its leaves, the size of buildings, had a quiet glow of green and gold Mana.
Its roots did not only remain around the trunk. They extended across the entire land.
Some passed under cities, some split mountains.
And some continued into the depths of the seas.
[The Primordial Root]
Seraphina stared at the tree for a few moments.
Even her usually controlled face could not completely hide her surprise.
"Is this the Forgotten Tree?"
The Mirror Curator appeared beside them.
Its white, faceless body was more transparent in this space than before. The lines inside its body moved in a slow rhythm, as if it too had become part of the memory.
"What is today called the Forgotten Tree is only the remains of what you see."
Lian remained an observer in silence. Mirror Anchor had reacted in his mind.
Since receiving this Boon, a cold, fixed point had existed in the depth of his consciousness.
Now that point became brighter with every change in the memory, allowing him to understand something beyond the images’ appearance.
He was not only seeing the tree. He also felt the order of Mana movement.
Massive energy flows entered the trunk from the Primordial Root’s canopy. Then they divided into three main paths and were distributed through the roots to the entire world.
The first flow was heavy and dense. It penetrated the ground, bones, muscles, and the physical structure of creatures.
The second flow was more delicate.
Like millions of strands of light, it moved among the minds of living creatures, and upon death, it would return part of their memories to the Primordial Root.
The third flow was warm and full of life.
It circulated Mana, kept the earth alive, and allowed new generations to grow.
Three functions.
Body.
Memory.
And heart.
The entire world was connected to the tree through these three flows.
"So the three forests were not separate from the beginning." Lian said under his breath. This was a truth that had not even been recorded in the ancient documents of the Lacerian tribe.
The Mirror Curator turned its faceless head toward him.
"The three forests are the three remaining parts of a single entity."
The scene slowly changed.
Without the Primordial Root disappearing, the land around it moved forward; as if time were moving thousands of years before their eyes.
A large city formed around the tree’s roots.
First a few small buildings, then towers and bridges, and finally a massive civilization.
People moved in the air on paths of light without using flying devices.
In large squares, crystals displayed images of past events.
Children gathered around them and watched historical scenes, while guards and researchers added new information to the archives.
The city’s inhabitants looked like humans from a distance, but when the memory came closer, the differences became clear.
Veins were visible inside their skin, their eyes shone like mirrors when using Mana.
And some of them had marks similar to the Mirror Vault symbol on their foreheads or palms.
Another panel appeared.
[Mirrath Civilization]
"The Mirrath were not the world’s greatest army." The Mirror Curator said.
An image of a few Mirrath soldiers was seen, but most of the city’s people carried no weapons.
Archivists, researchers, builders, and memory keepers were active throughout the city.
"They were not the rulers of the world either."
The memory showed a hall where representatives of several races had gathered.
The Mirrath were not seated in the highest position. They were only in the center of the hall, next to an archive of white glass.
"However, they were the keepers of something that the rulers feared."
"Memories?" Liana looked at the surrounding images. Considering how good they were at recording memories, this was a logical guess.
"Truth."
The scene changed to an ancient war recorded inside a crystal.
A commander tried to change his defeat report, but the Mirrath archivist kept the real version of the event inside the glass.
A king declared his enemy attacked first, while a stored memory showed otherwise.
A clan tried to remove one of its members’ names from history, but that person’s face and actions remained in the archive.
The Curator continued.
"The Mirrath knew that civilizations, before being destroyed, first change the truth."
The archive towers lit up, and thousands of memories moved like stars inside the glass.
"That is why they did not entrust memories to writing. They preserved them as they occurred."
"So everything we see here is real?" Liana asked.
"The memory is not complete, but it is not a lie." The Curator answered.
Lian kept his gaze on the images. The answer was precise. A memory might only preserve one person’s perspective.
Parts of the event might not have been recorded, and the person who owned the memory might not have understood some things.
But the Mirror Vault had not deliberately fabricated anything. What it showed had truly been seen or experienced by someone.
The images of the Mirrath city gradually darkened, and the golden light of the Primordial Root weakened.
At first, the change was so small that only Lian noticed it. One of the deep roots underground turned black for a moment.
A thin vein, like a hair strand compared to the tree’s greatness, but Mirror Anchor detected the change in Mana order.
The energy flow had not passed through that point. Something had consumed it.
The memory went deep into the ground, passing through layers of soil and rock, to where the Primordial Root’s roots disappeared into absolute darkness.
There was a crack in the lowest part of the world. Not a natural crack in the rock, but a shapeless space, a darkness into which lights entered but did not return.
A dark strand came out of the crack and attached to one of the roots.
This was a disaster, a disaster that engulfed the world and was the beginning of the end for a world that the civilizations of this world once knew.
A panel appeared.
[The Black Silence]
The contamination first moved slowly, turning a small part of the root black.
Then it spread through the underground network. Wherever it passed, the light went out.
As if that part of the world had never been alive.
But the destruction of light was not the only danger.
Another memory appeared. An archivist in the Mirrath tower was recording a report.
He placed a scene of black creatures attacking a village inside a crystal. A few hours later, when he checked the crystal again, the image had changed.
In the new version, the villagers had attacked first.
The archivist checked his own personal memory in terror. He too was no longer sure what had happened.
At first glance, this was not a threat... but in depth, this was the greatest threat to the entire race... because the truth was changing!
The next scenes appeared faster.
A commander believed his deputy had betrayed him and killed him before the battle began.
Two clans that had been allies for generations suddenly believed the other was responsible for their ancestors’ deaths.
A mother did not recognize her own child.
Soldiers in a city fired on support forces because their memories showed them as enemies.
Even the Mirrath archives began to change. The memory crystals turned black from the inside.
Faces changed, the order of events shifted.
The disaster was changing the shape of truth in a way that resulted only in bloodshed, destruction, and enmity!