"Did I die?"
Light existed here, though not the kind found at the tunnel's end. The distant sun was breaking through, throwing shadows across impossible trees that floated on water, while their roots clung to the earth below.
Halo rested upon a tangled lattice of green, moist roots that rose from the water like grasping limbs. They knotted and coiled over one another, thick as beams, slick with algae and clinging moss, spreading so densely across the surface that the water beneath was hardly visible.
The roots pressed together in such profusion that there was no clear boundary where one tree's hold ended and another's began had long been erased by time and growth.
Despite the persistence of the roots, the water still held firm, showing itself where it wasn't allowed to.
They formed a living floor, tight and unyielding, warped by centuries of expansion, as though the forest itself had clawed the swamp dry and refused to let go.
