You are an Pilgrim. Your name is changeable. It's erased, like the writing on these walls, and it belongs not to you, but to the Path. You are one of many who have already walked this path, and one of those who will take your place when you fall, dissolve, or reach an end no one remembers.
Dry greenery rustles beneath your feet as you walk. It's not a living carpet, but the crunchy dust of past ferns, a faded memory of the anger that once swept here. The air is damp and heavy. The taste of burnt taduki grass lingers on your tongue—bitter, haunting, as if you're inhaling the very ashes of history. It alternates with another scent—the aroma of old, wet bricks. Not just dampness, but bricks that have given off centuries of baked clay dust and the faint scent of decayed mortar, like rainwater.
The sounds of flowing water are everywhere: a quiet murmur in hidden channels beneath the flagstones, a measured drip from vaulted ceilings where moss hangs like emerald beards. This is a world of water and stone. Mortals abandoned the First World long ago, either terrified by this eternal dampness or realizing its futility. But their departure changed nothing. The world simply forgot them, like a river forgets a stone dropped into it. And yet, your pilgrimage has brought you back. Not to them. To something more ancient than their buildings and roads.
The Dead Thickets—a tangle of black, leafless branches, like petrified blood vessels of gigantic proportions—rustle over the corpse of Blue Cloud. You don't know whether it was a god, a demon, or simply a phenomenon too vast to comprehend. Now it's just a landscape: a vast, sagging form, the color of ink and azure, sunken into the earth, sprouting ladders and vines. His eyes are dark caves. From his half-open mouth, or rather from the densest ruins around him, his latest instructions flow. They echo, born now to the left, now to the right, bouncing off cracked frescoes and flowing, temporary walls, like a ball in a stone labyrinth.
"…to hear silence… one must become silence…" whispers the echo behind you.
"…and silence is a form of emptiness…" echoes another corner of the hall.
You take a step, and your shotgun, hanging from a strap over your shoulder, softly slaps against your side. Its handle of polished wood. Its barrels are cold, blue steel. The gun is alien here. It is Thunder in the world of Whispers.
And then movement. From behind the enormous exit, wrapped around the statue of some forgotten guardian, he emerged. A man. He once wore sturdy, expensive clothing—fine leather stitched with steel threads—but now it's patched with rough fabric and stained with swamp mud. In his hand is a curved machete. Not an artifact, not a relic. A tool for cutting vines and, judging by the jagged edge, for something else.
Allan - The Adventurer. He blocked your path before. His mask is worn, his eyes, if you can call them that, pierce you.
"Stop," his voice was like the creak of a rusty gate. "We can't go any further."
You freeze. The rustle of the grass beneath you fades. Even the water seems to hush, listening.
"You bring Thunder with you," Allan nods at your shotgun. "Do you hear? He desecrates the silence. Their silence.
An echo, as if waiting for a pause, rang out:
"…desecration is also a form of worship… but what deity craves desecration?.."
God gave you a shotgun.
He doesn't have a shotgun.
"EZHELI: The yellow pilgrim" (2012?) - auto-translation of a text written by the author of the game in the additional materials, approximate mockup of a player's view entering a quest area, note that we lack the clear understanding of the game's UI or game mechanics.
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