Andy Arrives in The Uncharted Lands

Recovered from Andy's expedition journal, written the night of his arrival in The Uncharted Lands.

I can still feel the storm in my hands.

The ship is quiet now, tied off in a little cove at the mouth of a river I do not know, under cliffs I have not climbed, beside a land no living mapmaker in The Forgelands has ever properly marked.

The books were right about one thing.

This place is old.

Not old like a road that needs repair, or a tower that lost its roof, or a village that forgot why its well was built where it was. This land feels older than memory. The trees grow like they have been keeping secrets. The river moves like it knows where it is going, even if I do not.

I should have arrived with more.

That was the plan, anyway. Good tools. Food stores. Mapping gear. Spare lanterns. Books. A clean chest of archaeology brushes and field supplies.

The sea had other ideas.

One barrel went overboard in the worst of the storm. I watched it vanish in black water before I could even curse properly. Then, three days later, I stopped at a small island for food and lost more tools to illagers than I care to write down. I got the pigs. They got the better end of the bargain.

So here I am, one last barrel of supplies left, a ship that needs rest as badly as I do, and a continent in front of me that has waited thousands of years to be found.

There is another boat in the cove.

That is the part I keep looking at.

It is old. Too old, maybe. Weathered, abandoned, wrong in the water, and still floating. I do not know who built it. I do not know why it has not sunk. I do not know whether it was left as a warning, a marker, or a gift.

There is also a light on the cliffs.

A lantern, I think.

Too steady to be a trick of sunset. Too deliberate to be nothing.

I have not gone ashore yet. I want to, but a good explorer learns the difference between courage and impatience. Tonight I will count what I have left. Tomorrow, if the weather holds, I will take the small boat in and see what this place wants me to find first.

I came here looking for a forgotten world.

I think I found one.