Memory Reaper's Ascension

Ishiki tried to stand up, eager to continue his investigation, but jarring pain lanced through his newly healed leg the moment weight shifted onto it.

He gasped, catching himself against the rock before he could collapse entirely.

"Don't be careless..."

Alex's voice came from behind, already walking away. "It's not yet fully healed. It will take two more days."

Then he disappeared inside, closing the door, and once again leaving Ishiki alone with nothing but thoughts and paranoia for company.

'Well... that was awkward.'

Ishiki settled back onto the rock, rubbing his leg with rueful expression.

'I thought he would try to take advantage of me.'

The thought carried dark humor. He expected manipulation, maybe coercion and even desperate pleas—anything except this strange courtesy.

This careful distance that suggested Alex was either genuinely decent or playing a longer game than Ishiki could comprehend.

He sighed and shuddered involuntarily.

Because despite Alex's absence, Ishiki felt eyes on him. He was being watched by the trees and they would attack him if not anything else.

Another question arises from that and this one way more complicated than all else. Why... why aren't the trees attacking here, or more specifically, why aren't they crossing the threshold around this clearing.

'Maybe, it's some kind of barrier.' Ishiki limped closer to the threshold, but maintained a safe distance. He wouldn't wanna fall out accidently. That... would be funny and lethal.

As soon as he approached within ten meters, every tree nearest to the clearing turned toward him, looking at him with their wooden eyes and that wicked smile.

'Creepy...'

No matter how much Ishiki examined the boundary from different angles—limping along its perimeter, studying the ground, there was nothing he could find that kept the trees from attacking and the demons as well as the Withered beasts from crossing the threshold.

'This whole place is so... wrong.'

He sighed and walked away from the boundary. While limping back, the other thing he considered was that Alex called this place a village and the fact that there are houses. What was a village doing between such a forest, that... made no sense.

Villages were formed near resources. Water, farmland, trade routes. Things that sustained life rather than consuming it.

Were they eaten by the trees when the Crimson Night first descended? Did they evacuate before catastrophe struck? Or did something worse happen?

And... was anyone else besides him and Alex transported here?

'Ahhh... As usual... so many questions.'

Ishiki tossed them all in a corner in his mind, and first went to take a look at the village in question. Might be that he will find some answers there, if not then...

Then will be later. No need to think about useless things anyways.

He found it increasingly hard to walk on his broken leg, so he stopped by the house where Alex sat inside, in a meditating position.

Ishiki tore a wooden piece as long as his leg from one corner of the house, well he was afraid that the ancient structure might collapse, but it held.

These structures had stood for what looked like centuries—judging by weathering, decay, layers of thick dust and yet remained structurally sound enough to not collapse when he literally tore pieces off.

'Miraculous, really.'

Using the improvised cane for support, Ishiki staggered past the nearest house to the boundary and deeper into the clearing, which it turns out was once an actual village.

The house Ishiki and Alex had occupied was a lone structure apart from the rest of the village, and much closer to the Crimson Canopy.

It was a small settlement. Intimate in scale. With a single two-story building positioned at the geometric center of everything.

Actually, calling it merely a building felt inadequate once Ishiki saw it properly.

Two stone pillars flanked the entrance—weathered but still imposing, carved with symbols and weird patterns. And the structure itself was maintained with care that contrasted sharply with the decay evident everywhere else.

This was clearly a temple.

A temple which was situated at the very center of the clearing which was turned into a village.

'Wait... could it be that none of those horrors cross that boundary because of the temple?'

That thought was very... unrealistic to be honest. But then again, what was realistic in this place?

On Earth, the idea of religious structures providing actual supernatural protection would be dismissed as superstition. But here? In NEXUS? Where trees sang and ate people, where the moon transformed into burning eclipse... he didn't know what to make of it.

Around, the houses were all made so that their entrance would face the temple. And there were only a handful of houses in the whole village. Ishiki could count them on fingers.

"Weren't the people here a little bit too religious? Wonder where did they went."

Following his intuitions' Ishiki walked towards the temple. Each limping step brought him closer to carved stone and weathered wood that had witnessed... Centuries of worship.

He stood in front of the temple gates. And he felt... a weird sensations as he approached the gates, maybe Anxiety. His heart was again pounding faster than usual.

Fear? Anticipation? Warning?

'Okay... no, I am not going to check out this spooky temple.'

He retreated his hand sat on a stone nearby. Then he activated [Ghost Blade]. His awareness detached partially from physical form and spread outward through space, mapping terrain through supernatural perception that transcended normal senses.

[Ghost Blade]'s range extended approximately 500 meters. Enough to perceive most of the houses scattered throughout the clearing and reach the boundaries in multiple directions. So, Ishiki concluded that the clearing had a diameter of about 600 meters.

That was not a lot, and there were 18 houses in total in such small expanse.

The most disturbing discovery wasn't the architecture or arrangement.

It was the absence.

There was not a single soul living here except him and Alex. Not even corpses or bones. It was as if the entire population had simply... vanished.

'Damn... the more i look into it, the more creepy it gets. I have a bad feeling about this. We need to get out of here.'

And that was the biggest question. How? There was no way, the clearing was surrounded by the forest on all sides.

Looking at the temple, Ishiki gulped hard. "If i want to find some place, i will need to climb at its top."

The temple was the tallest building, chances are he might be able to find something from up there, but that... will have to wait until he is fully recovered.

Having cataloged what he could from ground level and having formed incomplete picture of this settlement's layout and confirmed his growing paranoia about its wrongness—Ishiki wasn't satisfied.

So, he went and looked inside the houses, each one of them... and as he did, he got more and more paranoid.