-19th Rest-

I stumbled upon… a lake? At first, I thought it might be another symptom of the graying—maybe a hallucination brought on by dehydration or my unraveling mind—but hallucinations aren’t typically part of the graying process, or at least they’ve never been recorded. So, this has to be real. Yet, I’m deeply unsettled by it. The few who ventured into the Graylands before me never mentioned a lake, only endless stretches of gray grasslands and rolling hills. Nothing even remotely like this.

The lake is vast, its gray waters stretching far enough that I could barely make out the opposite shore from where I stood. Its gray water slowly rippled. The entire area around the lake was surrounded by large clusters of gray flowers—the very thing we had been searching for all this time.

It was the first time I had ever seen one in person—a gray flower. Up close, it looked eerily similar to a rose, though entirely stripped of its natural beauty. There were no thorns, no vibrant hues—just an unsettling palette of dull, lifeless grays, as if all the color had been drained away, leaving behind only the ghost of what it once was. The petals seemed fragile, almost brittle, yet perfectly intact. It was both haunting and mesmerizing, a symbol of everything the Graylands represented—beauty twisted into something hollow.

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I wasted no time and pocketed as many flowers as I could, though I could hardly feel any sense of victory in finding them now, not after everything.

I also filled my canteen with the lake’s water. I’m not exactly thrilled about the prospect of drinking it—I imagined it would be tainted just by being here—but I’m running dangerously low on supplies. Without this, I won’t last much longer. At least now, with the water, I should be able to last a little longer than I first expected.

But still, the lake’s presence gnaws at me. Why hasn’t it ever been mentioned? Is it truly real, or just another sign that I’m slipping further into the gray? I’ll set up camp near it and then continue my journey on my next waking. I have no other choice.