Above: a vast stone plane, its skin cracked with deep fissures and on which nothing grows. Below: a forest, reaching to catch the sunlight, its ecosystem unique. This is Chika-Rin, named the brilliance underground, for delicate patterns of bioluminescence shine across the immense forest.
If someone was to venture into the depths, they’d find themselves dwarved. The foliage competes for light, trees towering upward while the thick vegetation rises near as high as a man. But it is the sheer scale of the fissures overwhelms all else. Each is over 30ft deep before intersecting the cavern, making the thin shafts of light reminders of the distance from the surface.
In the records of Ikaiguchi, none have made the descent into the depths. Truth, however, tells a different story. Scattered ropes descend into the fissures, and skeletal remains are occasionally half-glimpsed by keen eyes, lying unburied far below the ground.
