Lore of track 17: Eun-ha travels to Doom's ruins and follows him through the open time gate into the past. [Verse 1] The words of the shaman stayed with me, like echoes in the ancient air. She gave me no promise of tomorrow, only a path and a warning there. Doom walked into his forgotten past. Agwi was waiting in the dark. And if he had lost the way to himself, I had to find his hidden spark. I did not know what I would lose. I did not know what I would find. I only knew I could not leave him alone behind the edge of time. [Verse 2] Then Dol Dom stood before me, as if he had followed from afar. Dol Dom, you came just right in time. Maybe you can bring me to Doom's ruin? He did not hesitate. I knew it. Curiosity burned behind his eyes. He wanted to see what I would do. Not every day a human asks a spirit to lead her to an ancient home. [Chorus] Take me back to where he vanished. Take me where his memories sleep. If there is a road through time and darkness, I will walk where he cannot reach. I don't need a promise of returning. I don't need to know the cost. If Doom forgot the one he rescued, I will find the soul he lost. [Verse 3] The ruins waited without a whisper. A place I knew from long ago. Where I once searched for something hidden, before I knew what I would know. Dol Dom moved through the ancient chambers. While I was Looking, he saw it first. Doom's staff was resting where the broken walls had bled. He reached his hand toward Doom's anchor. Then suddenly he pulled it back. A flash of pain crossed his face. "Will it accept me when I take it?" [Bridge: otherwordly hall rise] The air began to change around us. The silence opened like a door. A road appeared beyond the ruins, a place no human had seen before. Dol Dom stayed beside the edge of shadows. But I knew where I had to go. One thing was still demanded of me: To leave a piece of myself behind. [Verse 4: ] [Voice: subtle ethereal hall, soft long reverb begins to bloom, intimate but no longer completely human] I looked at what had always followed me. The thing that saw what others missed. My camera. My artist's soul. The keeper of the moments I could not lose. I placed it on the ancient stone beside the place where Doom's staff lay. Without it I felt strangely empty. Was this how Doom felt that day? I reached my hand toward Doom's old staff. It did not burn. It did not reject me. [Chorus 2: ] [Voice: deep cathedral reverb, wide ethereal hall, layered ghost harmonics, voice floating beyond physical space] Warmth moved through my fingers slowly, like something waiting to be found. A feeling rose inside my chest: "You finally came." The staff remembered what I lost. The road was opening again. I carried hope into the darkness, to find the soul I came to save. [Outro: ] [Voice: vast otherworldly reverb, infinite hall, distant spectral echoes, almost disembodied, fading into silence] The years unfolded like a river. I stepped into a world before my own birth. I was searching for Doom. But the man who stood before me... did not know my name.
