Noroqs last Will

To the one who finds this,

If these words reach you, then I am no longer who I was. My thoughts scatter like dust on water, and the warmth in my shell grows cold with each passing hour.

It has been two weeks since the spores took root in my lungs. I tried to cleanse them. I tried to outpace them. But they are clever, patient — burrowing not just through flesh but through memory, through soul. I feel it now. Not just in my limbs, but in the quiet silence behind my eyes, where thoughts used to flow like spring rivers. Soon, that silence will consume everything.

I write this with shaking hands, not out of hope, but duty. I swore I would protect the Nursery — and even in failure, that vow must echo on.

Please — please — take the second page to the Turtle Nursery. You will find a Tortle called Myrrka, please give it to her, she will understand what it means.

I had hoped to return to her, to feel her hand in mine, to see the hatchlings emerge under the amber glow of the crystal roots once more. That hope dies with me.

I followed the trail of corruption down into the belly of the world — past the sunless caverns, into a forest of fungus older than anything I've known. There, hidden amidst rotting trunks and pale lichen, I saw it: a behemoth. Towering, sleeping — but dreaming of conquest. The source. The heart. The coalescence.

Its name I learned not from mouth, but from root and whisper — The Mycoids. They are a sickness of purpose — not mindless rot, but a will to consume.

I do not believe fire will end them — no more than rain ends stone. But burning that forest... burning the coalescence... it may slow them. Give the surface a breath, a heartbeat longer.

That is all I can offer now. Myrrka, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

May the water remember me,

Noroq