TLegend XXV – The Gate of Silent Roots

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Deep in the heart of the Dark Forest, where even the wind held its breath and the light trickled in thin streams between the trunks, stood a gate that no one seemed to have built. It was older than the forest, a structure of stone and root, crisscrossed by veins of moss and time. The animals avoided it, and those who came too close sometimes heard voices from the earth, as if the trees themselves were whispering. It was called the Gate of Silent Roots. The old folks said it led to where the world hid all that it did not want to remember—names, songs, promises, tears. Everything that is forgotten, they said, eventually sinks through the earth and finds its place here. One evening, when the fog lay thick on the ground and the twilight turned the forest into green glass, a woman stepped into this silence. She carried no torch, only a silver bowl in which a drop of light floated, trembling like a living heart. Her name was Nareth, Keeper of the Thresholds. She had come because she had been called in a dream—by a voice that knew no words, only memory. She stopped before the gate. It rose high like a cathedral, covered with runes that moved as if the stone were breathing. Above the arch loomed a face, half-eaten in moss, half-awake. Mist trickled from its open mouth, and Nareth sensed that this mist was not air, but memory, condensed and ancient. She placed the bowl on the ground and waited. The forest was silent. Then the ground beneath her feet began to tremble, softly, like a slow heartbeat. Something stirred among the roots, dark, shimmering, infinitely old. The gate's breath deepened, and a whisper rose from the earth. There were many voices, one over the other, blurred like water over stone. They spoke of things once loved, then forgotten: of names no longer called, of promises no longer kept, of prayers never answered. The forest had absorbed all of this to protect the world from the overwhelming weight of its memories. Nareth knelt and placed her hand on the moss. It felt warm, pulsating. She understood: the gate was not a passage, but a heart. It bore the world's suffering by concealing it. The voices begged her not to open, but to remain, so that someone might guard the silence. But above them, the face of stone began to move. Its lips parted, and a voice, clearer than the others, spoke: "Every threshold demands a name." Nareth raised the bowl of light, which by now flickered like a dying candle. "Then take mine," she said. "I am Nareth, Keeper of Oblivion." Then the roots withdrew, the ground smoothed, and the gate opened silently, as if made of breath. No gleam, no thunder, only darkness, soft and deep like sleep.