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  merlin_os\MnemonicEngine>Beginning Recollection

  merlin_os\MnemonicEngine>Recollection ID: J053413

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  The lives my children lead are far removed from the world of my childhood. I was born in Domatoba, a village suspended within the embrace of colossal trees. Our homes clung to ancient trunks like stubborn barnacles, bound by ropes, stilts, and hope. Building there was slow, perilous work, but it spared us from the wrath of the floods that devoured the jungle floor each spring.

  At the center of everything stood the Mother Tree—a monument, a relic, a god in arboreal form. Its roots spread wide, forming natural basins that cradled clear rainwater like gifts from the sky. The elders said it was divine, a blessing passed down from forgotten gods. I know now it was something else—a leftover miracle of a world that came before us. Among its roots, the elders once uncovered strange cylinders labeled filters, and from them poured clean water, endless and untainted.

  The gods were everywhere in Domatoba—etched into every rusted plate, whispered in the brittle pages of alien manuals nobody could read. The elders called them sacred texts, but to us children, they were incomprehensible relics. Most lost interest in those faded glyphs, but the elders… they hoarded them, whispered over them, and buried their secrets in a library-temple built into the thickest roots of the Mother Tree.

  I was fourteen the day everything changed. Fourteen summers had earned me the right to a Naming Ceremony—a rite of passage beneath the boughs of the Mother Tree. A name meant purpose, apprenticeship, belonging.

  But the gods had other plans.

  It began with light—a piercing, unnatural glare that carved sharp lines through the canopy, painting the clearing in hues of electric blue. Gasps and cries filled the air. I grabbed my sister’s hand as a red comet tore across the sky, leaving fire and chaos in its wake. Smaller fragments rained down behind it, crashing into the jungle with explosions that made the ground tremble.

  Then came the silence.

  And then, the wind—hot and metallic, carrying the sharp scent of scorched earth and something alien.

  Some villagers fled, stumbling toward their homes. But most of us stood frozen under the boughs of the Mother Tree, eyes wide and mouths silent, waiting for the elders to speak—to explain, to calm.

  But no one spoke.

  Beneath my feet, the roots of the Mother Tree vibrated, faint and steady, like the heartbeat of something ancient and restless. My sister’s eyes, wide and fearful, caught the fading blue light still hanging in the sky.

  Far beyond the village, smoke began to rise.

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  May 9th, 3413

  Seven days have passed since the comet fell. Seven days since the sky screamed and the Mother Tree shuddered.

  The jungle is different now. The dawn chorus of birds has vanished, replaced by an oppressive silence. The air tastes sharp, heavy with ash and something metallic.

  The elders called it Cometstrike—a punishment, a wrathful omen sent by the gods. But blame is a hungry thing, and it always needs a face.

  They chose me.

  At first, it was whispers—stolen glances in the market, hushed conversations behind swaying curtains. But suspicion spreads like mold in damp wood. By the third day, mothers pulled their children away when I passed. By the fifth, I felt it in every stare, every muttered curse.

  The comet, they said, was my fault. The wrath of the gods summoned by my Naming Ceremony.

  I tried to protest, to reason, to plead. But fear is an impermeable thing—it repels reason, rejects logic.

  On the seventh day, they gathered beneath the Mother Tree once more. No lanterns were lit. No songs were sung. Elder Kaelin spoke with a voice like splintering wood:

  "You must leave."

  There were no tears, no farewells. My sister wasn’t allowed to see me off.

  They gave me a sack—dried fruit, a waterskin, a knife that felt more like an ornament than a weapon—and sent me away. Away from the bridges, the filtered pools, the only home I had ever known.

  The jungle swallowed me whole.

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  May 10th, 3413 - The Clearing

  The silence of the jungle is not peaceful; it is predatory. It wraps itself around you like wet cloth, clinging, suffocating.

  For hours, I walked. My bare feet pressed into damp earth, and the knife the elders gave me hung useless at my side.

  Then I smelled it.

  It wasn’t the mossy scent of damp leaves or the musky tang of decay. It was something sharp, cold—like metal rain.

  When I pushed through the last tangle of vines, I froze.

  The clearing was a graveyard.

  Blackened scars marred the earth, trees uprooted and splintered like broken bones. Shards of something silvery and crystalline littered the ground, catching the faint light.

  Bodies lay twisted among the wreckage—Zydril bodies. Their chitinous limbs bent at impossible angles, their glossy armor smeared with dark ichor.

  But they weren’t alone.

  Scattered among them were figures of metal and bone, skeletal constructs with exposed joints and slender limbs sprawled across the ruined clearing. Their weapons, angular and alien, lay abandoned in metallic hands.

  At the far edge of the clearing, a silhouette stirred.

  It stepped forward—a figure draped in tattered robes, its hood pulled low over its face. In one hand, it clutched a long, slender staff, the metal catching faint glimmers of dying light.

  Its movements were… wrong. Too fluid, too deliberate, and yet mechanical.

  I froze, clutching my knife like it could do anything against this.

  The figure stopped and turned its hooded head toward me. A burst of static crackled from beneath the fabric—a garbled attempt at speech.

  It wasn’t human.

  “Who… are you?” I managed to choke out.

  The figure tilted its head, and the static repeated:

  “Who… aaare… yyyou?”

  It was trying to understand.

  “I’m from… Domatoba,” I stammered.

  It repeated, slowly: “Doo-ma-to… bah.”

  Then it said something else, clearer this time:

  “Not… threat.”

  The faint glow of green light flickered beneath its hood.

  “Are you… alive?” I whispered.

  It hesitated before answering.

  “Abraham.”

  A name. It had a name.

  The figure—Abraham—lowered its weapon. Its hood turned briefly toward the distant tree line, where faint chittering noises began to rise.

  “We… move. Unsafe here.”

  It turned and began walking, its robe trailing behind like shadowed silk.

  For a brief moment, I hesitated. Then, with the knife trembling in my hand and my chest tight with fear, I followed.

  Ahead, Abraham walked into the waiting dark of the jungle.

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