The Abyss Beyond the Stars

Chapter 2: The Forest and the Crystal

That afternoon, as I was walking along the edge of a dense forest, my legs began to give in to the exhaustion of the day. Recalling my grandmother's stories about the protection offered by ancient oaks, I chose a majestic one and settled under its vast shadow. As my eyes followed the dance of the sun saying goodbye, its orange and golden flashes seemed to caress everything in their path. But among those flashes, something else caught my attention, a different, more intense glow, coming from the depths of the forest. Leaving behind the path I had followed until now, I ventured into the forest, guided by that mysterious luminescence. Soon, I found myself in front of a stone monument that seemed to have been there for eons. In its center, a crystal of such a deep purple that I would swear I was seeing a fragment of the very firmament. I felt as if that crystal, with its ethereal glow, was calling me, as if it whispered secrets that only I could discover

I have always been someone who was guided more by intuition than by reason. I had heard stories, warnings, about ancient objects lying in lands like these, about the magic they could hide and the dangers they could unleash. But at that moment, in front of that crystal that seemed to contain the entire universe, all those warnings faded away. I couldn't resist; I had to touch it, feel it. And so I did