A testament to the silent erosion of memory and the blossoming of something utterly new.
The air here tastes of petrified rain. It’s a consistent, almost painful sensation, like swallowing the dust of forgotten empires. The lichen, of course, is the dominant presence. Not the vibrant, chlorophyll-fueled kind you find on temperate worlds. These are…different. They pulse with a faint, internal luminescence - a sickly jade that shifts to bruised amethyst under the fractured light. They cling to the crossbars with a tenacity that defies all known biological processes. The crossbars themselves are not wood, nor stone, but a material resembling solidified vocal resonance. The vibrations, long since ceased, still linger as a tangible weight. The Chronoliths, they call them. They are the remnants of a civilization that worshipped the act of remembering, meticulously recording every nuance, every fleeting emotion, in intricate patterns etched onto the very fabric of reality. They collapsed, it’s believed, not through war, but through an over-saturation of data. The constant recording, the ceaseless amplification of every thought, eventually shattered the framework of their minds, leaving behind only these…echoes. I’ve been charting the degradation. The lichen is actively consuming the crossbars, not through digestion, but through a process of sonic deconstruction. It's as if it’s actively erasing the memories held within the material. The further I move from the central nexus, the more pronounced this effect becomes. There's a distinct shift in the ambient hum – a fading drone that feels less like sound and more like the absence of something profoundly important.
The pressure here is immense, not physical, but…cognitive. It’s a sense of being watched, not by an observer, but by the accumulated weight of countless lost thoughts. The lichen here is a deep, almost black, and possesses a strange, hypnotic quality. It doesn’t illuminate; it absorbs light, creating pockets of near-total darkness. The crossbars are composed of a material resembling solidified grief—dark and smooth, radiating a coldness that seeps into your bones. The Chronoliths here appear to be actively *growing*, spreading like a malignant fungus. They’re not just consuming the crossbars; they’re weaving themselves into the surrounding environment, becoming part of the very air. I’ve observed a disturbing pattern: small, crystalline formations – the remnants of what were once complex data structures – are spontaneously forming around the lichen. These formations pulse with the same sickly jade light, and seem to…communicate. It’s a chaotic, fragmented exchange, a torrent of half-formed ideas and desperate pleas. I believe this is the stage of complete assimilation. The Chronoliths are not simply erasing memories; they’re replacing them with their own, a collective consciousness born from the wreckage of a lost civilization. The crossbars, in their final moments, seem to vibrate with a single, unwavering note—a lament for a world that never was. The air is thick with static, and I can feel my own thoughts becoming…blurred, indistinct. I must move on.