The Eternal Cascade - Chapter One: Slumber Of Shade

Some ancient ones believe, that in a prison faraway, the embodiment of metamorphosis, the essence of reality, the concealer of inter-dimensional rifts, and the long lost Master of Manipulation, is waiting for someone… someone that would come to break his chains, to free him, to reawaken the spirit that once cut so deep. So that all can come to an end…Once and for all.

 “Wake up, idiot! We have a tomb to find.” 

Here speaks  Johanne, a neglected explorer who believes that she is destined to find one of the most powerful sources of energy to have ever roamed this planet. Waking up her foolish assistant, one busy sleeping in a cave due to their last encounter with a grizzly bear. “Ugh! How the hell did I get stuck with such a bonehead like you? Hurry up, we have to find that tomb...” hastily and annoyingly exclaimed Johanne. “Will you stop it? I’m tired of your imaginary quests. I thought I was teaming up with a normal explorer. Not a mentally unstable child with a grown-up’s body," irritatedly muttered Oliver. He was utterly annoyed by how Johanne acted. He never believed in fantasies, used to be a profound genius who would continuously invent things. Until a very unfortunate day. When he lost something he dearly loved, severely indebted. Like a man had just sold his soul to the devil. In times of utmost despair. He started doing things he never thought he would have to. Mopping floors. Serving food. And assisting mad explorers on their bizarre quests. Only to save up pennies worth of nothing. Just to recover his soul. “Oh, don’t bother. You are a complete Jinx. Now if you want this month’s paycheck, you’d better work for it”. “Fine, give me a minute,” Reluctantly agreed Oliver. 

They finally got up and started progressing further into the Callosamian Forest. It’s trees like withering spears grounded in the earth, not letting even a ray of light past their guard. As if guarding a prison that held someone who could not escape at any cost. The sky was lost to time. Stranded in eternal dread. Time repeating itself over and over again. And these two mindless fools were wandering through depths they were never meant to reach. 

“And so we continue, our journey to mystical lands, through the Forest of Lost Souls. Will we be able to complete our destiny? Or will we perish to the treacherous paths and the curses of the lost souls?” Soulfully narrated Johanne. “Here we go again. Can you actually act like a grown-up for once? Do you NOT understand the gravity of our situation? WE ARE STRANDED IN A FOREST THAT WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT, IN SEARCH OF AN IMAGINARY TOMB THAT DOESN’T EVEN EXIST—”. “Shh, Do you hear it?” Interrupted Johanne. “What?”. “The voice, it’s telling us to—”  “Okay, you’ve officially lost all sanity.” Oliver objected. 

Johanne had always been a victim of neglect. This drove her mad—or longing for proof, though she never admitted it. Inside, she felt lonely; she yearned to prove herself. To redeem her worth. To show the world that Johanne was not a mad child that could never mature, that she was one of the greatest explorers to have ever existed, to prove that she was destined for something more than a throne of thorns, where she wouldn’t have to beg for freedom. 

A joyful scream led by Johanne. “YES! I cannot believe it, I am so close to my destiny, I feel it.”. “Destiny does not mean doom, Johanne.”. “Shut it!” 

They proceeded further into the jungle. Until darkness filled their eyes, not a thing to see, their eyes covered in a veil of nothingness, gazing into the endless abyss of the tragic tunes of mortality. Johanne was finding joy in the darkest of times, due to her considering this an accomplishment, while Oliver was getting ready to face his impending doom. 

A loud sound was heard. The smell of smoke. Cracks of lost lightning. And a furious fire, ready to engulf it all, spreading, growing, devouring. Extinguished in a mere moment. 

“Goodbye Johanne…” Oliver thought these were his last words. It seemed as though they were falling down an endless pit. Where they could never return. They’d be lost to time. In an endless loop. A dimension between the living and the dead. Yet fate had plans, plans greater than any other mortal had been honoured with. Their tale was too vital…to end so easily. 

They woke screaming, gazed around, they were in the same place as they were before this “Dream…? But how?” Johanne asked, though Oliver had not a clue about what had just happened… anyhow, they wanted answers. The sky, so still. The ground… alive. The stars whispering… undead lullabies. 

They felt as though their souls had been ripped out, taken to another dimension, and then fed back to their lifeless bodies, as if nothing had ever happened. Nothing. Well, that was something new. Emptiness, something they had never felt before, how could they? They were not the ones mortally imprisoned for millennia. 

“I saw… a mountain,” Johanne mumbled in a low voice. “A mountain? Seriously? Why does everything you say involve childish fantasies? The only mountain I see is a mountain of our bones, along with the other millions who were eaten by the animals here. And those who perished in pursuit…” Oliver regretted ever coming with Johanne in the first place, but Johanne had no intention of giving up. “No, this one was… different. It had wild runes all over it. It seemed… alive. It was… screaming. It was calling us.” said Johanne, in a stormy voice. “Relax! It was just a dream. Things like that don’t happen in real life. We should get going now. This fantasy quest of yours does not make any sense whatsoever. I’m pretty sure that this fairy of yours doesn’t even exist. These are fairy tales. You need to grow up. Head back home.” Brutally honest, but honesty can hurt sometimes. And no matter how much she tried, she could not deny the truth. “Fine, we’re leaving,” She hesitantly agreed.

“Don’t…go!”. “Did you…hear… that?” Asked Oliver, terrified. “I did,” creepily answered Johanne. “You…are my last…Hope,” The mysterious voice spoke once more. It was not fierce. it seemed… tired, drained, hopeless, helpless. 

For the first time, Oliver did not want to return. Not to flee. He yearned to discover. What this was. All his life, he had been an oddly honest realist. 

He didn’t enjoy what others did. Though he yearned to explore. He did not believe in mystique. But he did believe in… hope.

 “Let’s find this tomb. I'm sure even if we don’t find your magical mountain, we’ll at least find a pile of gold worth keeping. Hopefully enough to pay off my debt.” “What?” Johanne hastily asked, “Nothing…” 

They proceeded… yet fearful of the unknown. As that was the fear each mortal was born with. A fear of screeches… and feared the unknown. 

Step by step, they journeyed, in fear—or agony perhaps. Both wandering, maybe, this was where their fates would change. Perhaps… someone would finally believe in them, maybe, for once, they would have a sense of freedom. Not have to prove to earn what they deserved since the very beginning. 

Every step, every inch they moved, the sense of despair strengthened their will. Not knowing how their feeling would soon take shape. Legends called this forest the forest of lost souls. They believed that this forest had mythic power, that awakened the passers' fears. Brought them to life. Made them wander in circles. With no escape. 

“Johanne… I think, I just saw… my… sister… wave at me.”. “Don’t be a fool Oliver, you said yourself that she… passed away.”. “No Johanne I swear… I saw her.  Johanne? What happened? Why are you so quiet? Johanne?!”. 

She began sobbing, unable to take control of herself. She had always feared failure the most. Of her being a disappointment to her family’s legacy. But she had never accomplished anything. 

“Relax, Johanne, I'm with you, don’t worry, I don’t think this is real.” Oliver desperately tried to comfort Johanne. But he didn’t know what else to say. He, too, was scared of his failures. His sister was the most dreadful chapter of his story.

“You fools, the forest is trying to deceive you…none of this is real. Yet you cry and sob like little children after a nightmare. Proceed. You must help the beast.” The mysterious voice passed its verdict once more. A force guarding a barricaded truth. One that felt torn apart by irony. Not horror, not terrific— guiding. 

“I think the voice is right, Johanne, my sister has long perished. There is no way she could be here… let alone… exist.” As Oliver reassured Johanne, they got up, both trembling, not in fear, but in confusion, as if fighting a battle with both the lost souls and… their scattered conscience. Their steps began to feel… looped. As if time itself were going around in circles. Nauseous yet disturbingly still. There was something odd. There was a reason this forest was called the Forest of Lost Souls. As every soul that dared to enter got lost in time.

“Sure, we are stranded in a cursed forest, so what? I’m sure this can’t get any worse.” Oliver was just trying to be optimistic, but misery is not to be mistaken for joy. 

The stones around them started to move. Glowing faintly violet. Like an earthquake with a heart that beats in purple hues. The rocks, the ground, the trees felt disturbed. They moved, trembled, gathering together, taking a new form. 

A giant of stone, no flesh, no bone. It had glowing purple veins. Like magic at its finest. It was almost as terrifying as thunder striking at an ancient scarecrow withered by time. 

Johanne and Oliver were already quite terrified. But the tragedy of it— the cascade doesn’t stop. 

Every moment that passed by sent chills through their spines; life was not at turn. The river flew forth— the flow not bent. As if all their greatest fears… had come true. They were weak and miserable, but the same could not be said for the stone incarnate. 

In a moment… they’d be crushed beneath its bedrock feet, their soul… forever lost. 

Right when it was about to strike, a chain, glowing ambiently with dark blue runes all over it, faster than lightning itself, grabbed onto its blistered granite hands and froze the beast in time. Before anyone could even blink, a shadow tackled the stone giant and disappeared through thin air— gone like it never existed. 

The shadow could not be seen, nor the 40-foot towering stone giant. Johanne and Oliver did not know how… or why, but they knew… they had been indebted by life. 

They were demented, yet… still enough not to flinch at the thought of shadows guarding these fools. “What was that?” Oliver asked quietly as if talking to a lantern out of fuel. Johanne’s bright amber eyes looked duller than ever, and she started tearing up. “It was a foolish quest. Now look where we are! Johanne you moron! Such things don’t exist…”. Oliver took a deep breath and looked Johanne in the eyes. As if gazing into a nebula that had been still for far too long, “No, Johanne, I know the path is rough, but there must be a reason we were chosen for this. Aren’t you the one always talking about destiny? You should know more than anyone not to quit. And don’t you see how the forest is protecting us? Look, Johanne, you are not alone. You have me and the forest at your command. We must keep going. I believe in you.” Though Oliver was trying to comfort her— he too, was holding back tears from the past that he could not shed now. But like everything else in this wretched world, this moment, too, had to come to an end. 

The shadows around them began acting like smoke from a fire not yet drawn. They moved like ink dropped in a fabric too old. As if someone was pulling the tapestry of space and bending it to its will. The shade engulfed them, leaving no trace of what once used to be two young explorers meddling in affairs not on their spectrum. The shadows rose into a cyclone of shade, sworn to protect these travellers from what they most feared— Failure. 

The shadow felt colder than ice. Stronger than bedrock, and more shattered than a vase of glass crushed in all eleven realms. It had the same eerie sense as when they were hallucinating in the middle of the forest. But now, it felt… closer. 

The shadow warped through space, moved through madness, and sliced through air. Soon, close enough, a ray of light, like a spark in a lifeless dimension, was seen, not understood… just… seen. The shadow disappeared as if never there. The stain, lifted from the fabric of time. Never alive, never existing. 

Johanne and Oliver, with closed eyes, felt light coming through. Even though they felt like this was their last moment in existence, their will was tougher than the way. 

So, he found this… interesting. When the shadows cleared and Johanne opened her sparkly eyes, the ground slipped out from under her feet. Her beliefs, her admirations, her fantasies— they were all… true. She was standing at the foot of the very mountain she envisioned. This moment was quite ordinary for the one born without a flame. 

For the first time… it felt as though she had proven herself, she had proven that she wasn’t a mad child in a grown-up’s body— she was a worthy traveller amidst a league of fallen bones. She had redeemed herself. She had defied legacy.

And there in the distance, in the very corner of her eye, she saw a figure. Standing on the highest crack of the mountain forgotten, a figure cloaked in darkness, a figure unheard, a figure whose cloak seemed as if it contained the abyss inside of its shadows. Drifting in the wind, like black ink spilled on a canvas not meant for darkness. And in a mere moment, gone. Like it was never there. Never seen. Reduced only… to a cursed memory.

“Look, Johanne, I’m sorry, you were right, all this is real. Hallucinations, then a stone giant, then the blue magic chains, then the shadow dimensions, it’s all real, it’s absurd, but it’s— real.” Oliver, in a calming voice, comforted Johanne in a rather… unusual way. “So you believe in my 'Childish fantasies'?”. Oliver chuckled, then softly replied, “No… but I believe in you”.

The forest behind seemed still. Disturbingly still. No sound. No light. No movement. And ahead of them? It was a towering mountain, said to be piercing through the skies. A place where no human was ever meant to be. The valley at the mountain’s foot? It was lush. Growing berries of all kinds. Of all colors, one could not help but admire. 

Beneath that mountain, however, were two filthy mortals, setting up a camp where they planned to rest before a long, suffocating, and soul-ripping hike. Yet they looked unhinged by the dangers lying ahead. Their behaviors were hard to decode. They acted as if their impending doom was some kind of accomplishment they had long awaited. However, they should have foreseen these threats the moment they stepped foot in this flesh-wrenching forest. How could they have been so foolish? So human? 

They proceeded to build their settlement. Oliver went hunting. Or whatever you would call collecting wild berries from random bushes scattered across the valley. They planned a feast. A feast not of meat, not of steak, not of curry, not of rice, but one of hand-made berry stew? It was most surprising how these people turned even the toughest hardships into joys they could feast on. 

The sun was near its destination. It was returning to where it came from. Leaving a golden, almost hazel shade in the sky. It was seemingly beautiful. Unlike anything Johanne and Oliver had ever seen before. There, they set a campfire. Oliver would bring logs and berries, and Johanne would light the fire and brew the stew, such teamwork between people who had just met a couple of months ago. These two just never cease to surprise. 

Nightfall was near. They sat near the campfire, enjoying their stew. The forest was still as ever, and the valley was bringing in cold breezes from all across the globe. And a speckle of light in a room filled with darkness was their campfire. Its light reflecting off the grass made the valley shine like it had never before. 

Oliver gazed upon the starry sky, not eye-to-eye with Johanne, but whispering slowly, a moment that would finally take the burden of a broken childhood off his chest. “Do you think this is it? The moment we have been waiting for such a long time. Will this finally be our big breakthrough?” There was a slight moment of silence. Johanne looked up to the stars, as if asking them for answers, a single teardrop escaped her eyes that acted like a prison for all the feelings she held back, and then Johanne whispered back. Striking with passion, yet utmost uncertainty.  “I don’t… know. Everything that’s happened here is really… absurd.”. Oliver smirked, as if smiling at the abyss, “ So what? Hasn’t life always been absurd?”. 

Johanne, for a mere moment, felt accomplished, not for her achievements, not for her bravery, but for the recognition she never received. She slid a finger to her eyes, caught the tear slipping away, and wiped it off. She gently turned her gaze to Oliver. “Can I ask you a question? If you don’t mind, of course,” She politely asked. Oliver met her gaze and calmly whispered, “Sure, why not?”. Johanne, her eyes wider this time, asked in a soft, soothing voice, “You mentioned that your sister… Uh… passed away. Might I ask the cause?”. Oliver felt as though lightning had just struck his heart. He was being offered to discuss the most dreadful chapter of his life. Yet he trusted Johanne enough to show her his wounds. It was dreadful, but necessary to let go.

He gazed back at the stars, hoping they would help him relieve his pain, give him the courage to let his wounds bleed. He revealed, “Brain deterioration.” Oliver raised his eyebrows and blinked. Johanne was surprised by how abruptly he had replied, as if it meant nothing. But she was wrong;

Johanne remained silent. While Oliver began unweaving the stitches that held shut his open wounds. “I used to be a genius inventor. Got the best grades in school. Won quizzes and competitions. Invented gadgets from scrap. Because scrap was all I ever had. Your father makes it seem like there is no poverty in Escarade. But there is. There is, and some people, like my family, live in it! I aspired to be a scientist. To invent something that would help change lives. But now I see that the only life that needed changing was mine. Everything was great. I mean, it’s not like we had money, or a big house, or a car, or anything good. But we were happy with what we had. We had no room for greed. My mother always taught me that the best things can never be bought with money.” A tear slipped away from Oliver’s eyes. “But she was wrong. The best things were bought with money. When I was 16, my sister suddenly started to act… weird. She was very smart. But now? She couldn’t even solve basic mathematics. We didn’t know what was happening. She suddenly started feeling more dizzy. She lost her balance. And then one day, she fainted out of nowhere. We didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t even a single doctor who wouldn’t charge hefty fees. And mind you, my parents were dirt poor. They worked day and night just to pay the doctor’s fees. And worst of all. The doctor broke the news that she had a new type of illness that would deteriorate her brain over time. And half her brain had already fallen victim to it. He said there was a way to save her. But it would require absurd amounts of money. Money. The only thing we did not have. My parents couldn’t possibly afford that. So the only choice I had was to watch my sister die in agony just because we couldn’t afford a simple surgery. No. In no universe would I have done that. The only problem, though? My way of income wasn’t quite… safe. I couldn’t do anything. I had no possible source of income. At least not enough to pay her fee. So… I met up with a bunch of Mobs at a casino. And I started… gambling. I had good fortune. I started winning more than losing. I made more money in a day than my parents made in half a year. But my parents did not approve of this. They said this was risky, unfair, and bad. But I didn’t listen. I kept gambling, kept making bets, and I made a fortune. I soon had enough money to pay for my sister’s surgery. And well… the surgery didn’t exactly go as planned. It didn’t work. It should have. But it didn’t. The doctor said she would need another surgery. My parents refused. But I? I went straight back to the casino. I place bets, hoping to make enough money once more to save my sister’s life. I bet all my savings. And wow. Great surprise. I lost it all. I was in huge debt. I had these gangsters after me. My sister perished. And all of this happened because of me. Only if I had let her die with honor. To accept what was not our fate. My only regret is that I stole away that honor.” Oliver’s tears had run dry. He looked over to Johanne, deep asleep, and took a deep breath. Oliver was tired. He was genuinely tired. And even surprised at how he told Johanne every single bit of his story. There, in the field of madness, he too fell asleep.