Elian had always felt the pull — downward.
Not in the way sadness pulls, or gravity, or fear. This was different. A magnetic softness. A whisper beneath his thoughts: There is more beneath the light.
He’d lived centuries above — through gardens that floated, temples made of sound, love affairs that lasted three lifetimes and ended with kisses made of wind. But now he was ready for something older.
He walked to the Valley of Hollow Winds, where a crack in the earth shimmered with green mist. A gate stood there — formed not of metal or stone, but of forgotten dreams, slowly coalescing into shape as he approached.
A guardian met him at the entrance. She had three eyes — one on her forehead, closed gently — and her voice was mossy.
“You seek the Underhome.”
Elian bowed. “I seek the roots of paradise.”
She opened her third eye and the gate melted. “Then go as you are. Leave no armor. No name.”
He nodded, stepped forward — and descended.
Beneath the surface, the light changed. It was not bright, but not dark. It pulsed in hues of umber and gold, like the belly of a campfire. Roots from giant trees ran along the ceiling, each glowing faintly with bioluminescent memory.
The air hummed with voices — not whispering to him, but within him.
“We are the ones who shaped the first laughter.”
“We are the ones who caught the tears of stars.”
“We remember you.”
Elian passed stone doorways that led to memory chambers — small circular rooms where moments lived like butterflies in jars. He stepped into one and saw himself, as a boy on Earth, writing letters to a god he couldn’t see. Praying for someone to understand. Asking, softly: Is this pain supposed to teach me something?
He touched the vision. The boy turned and smiled.
Elian wept — not from grief, but gratitude.
The deeper he went, the stranger things became.
He met creatures made of language — swirls of glyphs and voice. He touched moss that sang his mother’s lullabies. He passed through a corridor that bent time backward, and for ten steps, he became a child again, giggling as he ran.
Then he reached the Heartwell.
It was a massive underground lake. Still. Mirror-like. Above it, carved into the walls, were thousands of glowing names — every soul who had come here to remember.
He stepped into the lake.
And it held him — not just physically, but emotionally. The water whispered his entire life to him — not with judgment, but completion. Every choice, every mistake, every prayer unanswered until it was.
Then, something rose from beneath the lake.
A statue — but alive.
A figure made of black stone and pulsing amber light. It was God, or maybe a memory of God. Or maybe just a part of Elian that had waited to be witnessed.
The statue spoke: “You have lived many lives. You have created, you have healed, you have grieved.”
Elian nodded, trembling. “I want to be reborn. Not as a child. As a tree. One that remembers.”
The figure touched his forehead.
“You already are.”
When Elian returned to the surface weeks later, he walked more slowly, more rooted.
His skin shimmered faintly with bark. His breath was laced with the scent of cedar.
People touched his hands and saw visions of the underground city — a truth few had dared to descend to.
Now he sat beneath trees and told stories of what lives beneath joy.
And paradise became even richer for it.
Mechanicism Official 
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