Shade, on the other side, had no idea what surprise awaited him when he returned next time. He followed the nimble hound weaving through the gravestones, wondering if it would lead him to its master's grave and ask him to help dispel its resentment—an extremely common turn of events in stories.
Unfortunately, he had guessed wrong this time. As the hound advanced, Shade vaguely saw a massive shadow emerge from the thick fog ahead. As he drew closer, he realized that directly ahead of the hound's path stood the very same large tree he had seen while out with Theresa.
"Again? This tree? Was this hound bait released by that tree?"
Shade stared at the tree and pondered this. After confirming with "her" that he really could leave at any time, he continued onward with the iron shovel over his shoulder.
The closer he came to the tree, the more noticeably the density of surrounding gravestones decreased. Shade also gradually noticed that the tree seemed to glow with a faint blue glimmer. After pursuing it for another half minute, the Whisper Element suddenly grew dense amid the chaotic elemental environment around him.
"A relic?"
The tree was not tall, at least not compared to the trees Shade had seen in Vesta Woodland. By rough estimate, it was less than three meters high.
Once all the surrounding gravestones had vanished, countless roots bulged beneath the black ground around the tree. Shade could now see that the giant tree not only had a crown emitting an eerie blue light, but also vines hanging down from it, each suspending a dried corpse.
Shade looked up at the scene and instinctively slowed his pace. The familiar relic before him gave him a strange sense of overlapping spacetime. After everything he had experienced, he had