Crossing the cavern does not feel like a trial. The rock opens into gentle terraces, the light falls without weight, the air is steady. For a moment, it seems like a forgotten paradise.

You take a few more steps.

And then you look back.

At the entrance of the cavern, lying across the rocks, there is someone there.

It’s… a Keramon?

It is stretched out without haste, using a Kuramon as a pillow. Behind it, motionless, a Tsumemon stands upright.

They are not watching you.

Each one is looking at something different, something you cannot see in the open landscape of the region.

The Keramon smiles. Not aggressively. Not kindly.

A thinking smile.

It touches its chin, as if solving a slow problem, one that requires no words and no violence.

The question arises on its own:

Why Digimon like these, who would normally initiate combat without hesitation, seem so… distracted?

And before you can answer it, the region does the only thing it knows how to do:

it lets you move forward.

Keramon — I like it here because it remembers.

Tsumemon — I stay because they repeat.

(The three look in different directions.)

Keramon (very quietly) — Shh… Another one is coming.