Chapter 36: The Shepherd of the Forgotten Land

When David awoke to a sticky atmosphere, thick with the sweet, cloying scent of humus and moss, he thought he had fallen into the realm of the dead. Yet, death was not supposed to be this damp, this cold, this filled with a silence that chilled him to the bone. He forced his heavy eyelids open, and a faint sliver of ethereal light, seeming to seep from the very edge of the world, pierced his pupils like the tip of an icy needle.

"Save your strength, newcomer. Down here, strength is the cheapest thing you have, and the most precious."

A hoarse and weary voice came from nearby. David turned his head to see a gaunt man huddled not far away. His beard was unkempt, his eye sockets hollow, as if every drop of vitality had been squeezed out of him by this land. He called himself Old Bach, a "stray" who was older than most of the moss in this place.

"Don't think about a way out, and don't think about why," Old Bach said, gnawing on a piece of grey, dried fungus, his gaze empty as he stared at the unreachable dark dome above. "You only need to remember a few things to live a little longer. First, do not question the Shepherd. Second, stay away from that giant glowing tree, especially its heart. And third, the most important of all—forget the world you came from. Here, the past is poison."

Old Bach's words were like a rusty key, unlocking for David the cage known as the Forgotten Land.

It was an underground cavern of a scale so vast it was despairing, a secret world utterly forgotten by the surface. Over the next few days, David gradually came to understand the "rules" Old Bach spoke of, and he met the "Shepherd."

The Sanctuary, a settlement of several hundred survivors, clung to the base of a colossal tree that defied description. Its trunk was a pillar holding up the heavens, like the divine, skeletal remains of a god, cold and jade-white. What hung from its branches were not green leaves, but countless strange, crystal-clear nodes that glowed with their own inner light. This "Great Tree of Light" was the sole light source in this eternal darkness, the cradle of life, and the bedrock of all order. The people's food, water, clothing—all resources for survival—came directly or indirectly from the grace of this divine tree.

And Landon was its one and only, its first, priest.

He was said to be the first person to have fallen into this place. Legend had it that he discovered the Great Tree of Light amidst the endless dark and silence, that he deciphered the tree's "oracles," and single-handedly established the Sanctuary, pulling survivor after desperate survivor, just like David, back from the brink of death and under his wing.

In everyone's eyes, Landon was no mortal leader; he was a god. His words were inviolable law, his will an all-seeing truth. He was revered as "The Shepherd," and the rest of the Sanctuary's inhabitants were his faithful, docile "flock."

Landon's divine kingdom was built on a few edicts that seemed compassionate but were, in reality, draconian: To question the Shepherd was to commit blasphemy against the Great Tree. Any unauthorized exploration or invention was a breeding ground for selfish desire. The individual's will must unconditionally submit to the collective good—and the "collective good" was defined solely by Landon.

At first, having narrowly escaped death, David was filled with gratitude for Landon. It was Landon's followers, the "Watchers," who had found and saved him. It was Landon who had healed his near-fatal injuries with fruit from the Great Tree of Light. Life in the Sanctuary, though monotonous and oppressive, was orderly. Everyone functioned like a precision part in a great machine, their faces wearing a piety bordering on catatonia. In a hopeless, isolated place like this, to maintain such stability was a miracle in itself. And Landon, the architect of this miracle, was undoubtedly great.

But David had been a geologist and an engineer. His nature was to explore, analyze, and question. As the physical pain faded, the sharp edges of his reason began to grate against the "common sense" of this divine kingdom.

He keenly sensed that this radiant "Garden of Eden" was already crawling with hidden cracks.

He saw that the scales Landon used to distribute resources were not balanced. Families who were most obedient, most skilled at singing his praises, received larger, sweeter light-fruits. Those who were silent and just worked hard, like Old Bach, often received second-rate rations, barely enough to fill their stomachs.

He saw a blacksmith named Elias publicly flogged by Landon's Watchers for attempting to fashion sharper tools from the obsidian on the cave walls to improve his efficiency. Landon's reason, delivered with solemn coldness, was: "Any creation not sanctioned by me is a transgression against the wisdom of the Great Tree. It corrupts the purity and harmony of the collective." Elias's eyes, filled with humiliation and a wild, untamed resentment, were seared into David's memory like a brand.

And he saw, most clearly, that the so-called "piety" in people's eyes was, at its core, a deeper, stickier fear. They revered Landon, but they feared his power over life and death even more. They feared being exiled from the Sanctuary, to be swallowed once again by the boundless, lurking darkness and its unknown horrors. The stability here was not born from the cohesion of faith, but built upon the shackles of thought and the terror of the unknown.

Landon was a god, but his kingdom was a gleaming, beautiful prison, meticulously crafted from fear and lies.