I do not think I can write all of this in one journal entry.
Even now, five days after everything that happened beneath the World Tree, my thoughts still feel… disordered.
There are moments I remember too clearly.
And others my mind seems unwilling to touch.
Even writing this now makes my stomach twist.
Perhaps that is why I should write it before memory softens it into something easier.
We were brought deeper into Yggdra.
Far deeper than the districts meant for travelers.
The deeper we walked, the quieter the city became.
Not empty.
Never empty.
Only restrained.
As though sound itself understood where it was allowed to exist.
The fog thickened around us.
The buildings became larger.
Older.
Their elegance no longer felt welcoming.
Only precise.
The Moonfen Sisters guiding us spoke softly among themselves in their own language.
I could not understand a single word.
But I understood enough to realize it was not a language meant for outsiders.
Ryn answered them fluently.
That realization unsettled me more than I expected.
I had known she was capable.
But hearing her speak their noble tongue inside Yggdra itself made her feel suddenly… farther away.
Not emotionally.
Structurally.
Like I was seeing another layer of her existence that had always been there.
Eventually we arrived beneath the World Tree itself.
Or at least I think we did.
The trunk alone was so vast that perspective stopped making sense.
It did not feel like standing beneath a tree.
It felt like standing beneath geography.
The place we entered was called the Veilroot Sanctum.
Ryn told us quietly before we stepped inside.
The sanctum did not look built.
It looked grown.
The walls curved organically from pale roots that disappeared into the floor and ceiling alike.
Everything inside was too smooth.
Too symmetrical.
Too complete.
The white wood walls reflected light softly like polished bone.
Thin curtains of silver-white silk drifted slowly overhead despite the complete absence of wind.
At the center of the sanctum rested a circular pool filled with perfectly still black water.
It reflected nothing.
Not the ceiling.
Not the lanterns.
Not us.
That disturbed me more than I wanted to admit.
The air was cold.
Not winter-cold.
Clean cold.
Like the inside of untouched stone.
There was a scent in the room I could not fully identify.
Flowers.
Old roots.
Something sweet.
Something dangerously perfect.
The kind of scent that made you instinctively lower your voice.
We were eventually guided into a waiting chamber.
The Pale Ante Chamber.
I think it was intentionally designed to make people uncomfortable.
Everything inside it was pale.
White polished wood.
Silver cloth.
Smooth stone.
The room was large.
Yet somehow felt claustrophobic.
There were only a few low seats and a long stone bench.
Nothing else.
No decoration.
No distraction.
Only silence.
Even the tea and small pastries served to us felt unreal there.
Not because they were unpleasant.
But because my body had already become too tense to care about taste.
I remember staring into the black water pool at the center of the room.
It was perfectly still.
So still that my own reflection looked delayed.
Ryn reminded us quietly to remain calm once we entered the audience chamber.
Then she said something strange.
No matter what happened…
Do not behave too submissively toward The First Veil.
We were guests.
Negotiators.
Not servants.
At the time, I did not fully understand why she felt the need to warn us.
Now I think I do.
After what felt like an impossibly long silence, we were finally summoned.
The main chamber was enormous.
Far larger than the sanctum itself should have been.
The roots of the World Tree formed the walls there.
Massive pale roots twisting together like living pillars.
The floor beneath us reflected everything faintly, turning every step into something ghostlike.
At the center of the chamber stood a raised platform formed naturally from intertwined roots.
And seated there—
The First Veil.
I do not know how to describe her correctly.
Every description feels inaccurate the moment I write it down.
She was beautiful.
That word feels insufficient.
No.
Worse than insufficient.
Childish.
Her presence did not feel like beauty in the way humans understand it.
It felt designed.
Perfectly.
Too perfectly.
Her skin looked almost luminous beneath the pale light.
Her long black hair flowed around her like liquid shadow.
A white fox mask covered part of her face.
And her eyes—
I think they were violet.
Or perhaps I only remember them that way because my mind needed them to be something recognizable.
The unsettling part was not her appearance itself.
It was the instability of it.
Whenever I looked away for even a fraction too long, something changed.
The shape of her face.
The sharpness of her features.
A glimpse of something behind her.
A tail.
Ears.
Something elegant and inhuman.
But the moment I tried to focus on it directly, it disappeared again.
As though my mind itself refused to hold the image still.
She had not even spoken yet.
And still I felt exposed.
Not observed.
Read.
Like standing in front of something ancient enough that human behavior had become predictable to it long ago.
The most horrifying part was this:
I do not think she was paying attention to us at all.
Not truly.
The feeling was not that of a predator watching prey.
Nor royalty acknowledging visitors.
It felt closer to standing beneath the sky and realizing the sky does not care whether you exist.
I think that was the moment my body finally began resisting everything around me.
The room.
The silence.
The perfection.
The scent.
The impossible stillness.
Even now, remembering it too clearly makes me nauseous.
I cannot continue writing tonight.
I need time before I return to what happened next.
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