The flame-colored hues of the dawn just started washing the edges of the horizon, leaving a dark, inky stain to fill the rest of the expansive, midnight-colored skies. The clouds, painted with the fresh juice of grapes, faded into the blotchiness around them, leaving the amorphous blobs as subtle smears of paint haphazardly drug across the canvas. The smudges mingled together, making it difficult to discern them from one another. Below the dreary painting, a mass forest of stark-white trees pierced the underbelly of the grimness, providing a harsh and ghastly element to the already foreboding scene. On the edge of the thicket stood a humble cottage with a thatched roof, cobblestone walls overgrown with ivy. Around the perimeter and growing into the yard of the abode was a well-maintained garden. Fruits and vegetables were flowering with a renewed vibrance, intermingling with a bouquet of wildflowers showing the same care and devotion. A warm light glowed from the diamond-shaped panels of the cottage, juxtaposed against the bleak and terrorizing backdrop of the ancient forest. Inside, Maester Harron stirred from his nightly meditation.

He never really called it ‘sleep,’ he felt that was a lazy term for lazy people, and he was far, far too busy of a man to allow for such trivialities. Every morning, and always an hour before dawn—not a second more, not a second less—Harron would rouse from his simple straw bed nestled in the corner of his tiny hut, and set himself to dressing for the long day ahead. “No time like the present,” he would sing merrily. With haste, the tiny man would prance across the dusty, hard-paneled floor of his hovel to the old trunk that rested against the adjacent wall. It was a single-room shack that Harron endearingly called “Home.” From wall-to-wall, books lay strewn across the floor, many of them left open. The pages, yellowed and well-read, were teeming with notes, subsets, and markings along the margins and in-between passages, their spines broken from constant use. Others, dog-eared and set aside for future reference, were simply stacked precariously on top of one another or various pieces of furniture. It was a homely hovel and impossible to tell where the bedroom ended, and the study began. In truth, that was really all Harron felt was necessary. “Too much wasted space was excessive and ostentatious,” he would say beaming. “There’s no justice to an empty room. No comfort,” he bobbed his round head as he pulled on his leather slacks. “Space does not breed knowledge, and a crowded room means for a clearer mind,” Harron smiled at his own wit. One day he would have to take on an apprentice, and he intended to be able to pass on as much of his self-taught “wisdom” as he could.

Treading carefully to avoid disrupting the piles he had about the place, Harron hobbled his way towards the small cook fire and sink he called a kitchen. He was a rotund Higher-Syl man—which was rare to see—and he likened his weight to be caused by one of his past lives. His eyebrows were long, thick, and feathery, curling up and over on each other once they passed the edges of his face. As he fixed himself a breakfast of boiled eggs and sausages, the Syl found himself staring out the window towards his garden and the forest beyond. Master Harron had been the caretaker of the trees for the latter half of the Empiric Age. He had seen the branches of life grow and wither for seven centuries now, losing count of the once great nations that had risen and fallen, for rejecting The Great Serpent’s will. His master’s master before him had seen the same, Gani.

After finishing his morning routine, Harron would begin the trek from his home—resting on the edge of the sacred grove— to the center of the woods, tending to his charges. Traversing the garden, Harron recalled memories of one of his past lives. At one point, he had been a young Lower Syl, female at the time, with brown skin glistening in the Autumn morning. He was called Lisuania then and spent most of her time with her children. They would dance and sing, and play together in the gardens of their river-side home. Harron had no children, so instead, he would nurture and tend to flora and fauna of his settlements as if they were his own offspring, taking meticulous care in choosing the proper fertilizers and seeds for their beds. For the animals that visited him, he would feed and treat wounds as necessary. A grey and black Timberwolf was one of his regular visitors and had been visiting him for the better part of three-hundred years now. He had always found it sleeping under one of the trees in the center grove. Harron assumed it was the Life Tree of a previous master. Harron pitied the pup, being blessed, or cursed, by ancient magic was all he could think to explain its unnaturally long life. Harron looked around the garden expecting to see the wolf bounding over to him, as per usual. Harron even brought some sausages for the poor pup to enjoy, but there was no sign of it.

“Well, that’s peculiar…” he said quietly, scratching his head. The grease from the sausages still dripping from his hands. He was going to call out to the wolf, but then realized he had never given it a proper name. “What do I call out?” Harron pondered this for a second, but then ultimately decided to return to his usual routine. Slipping the sausages into his mouth, he picked up his watering pail and focused back on his garden. Although Harron still fancied himself a gardener, he adhered to a higher purpose now. To the Fae, he was The Caregiver, and as such, this was Maester Harron’s first life tied to the World Grove, Reka’karn Sylvara.

After he finished tending his garden, he grabbed one of the leather-bound notebooks that rested on his desk and a piece of lead. The leather of the cover was cracked and faded, the oils from his hand had long smoothed the book many years prior. Next to the garden door rested his staff, made of the same smooth azure Whitewood from the trees of the World Grove, and a rough dark leather satchel with a pale-white fur interior. The glass and clay vials inside the bag clinked as he carefully strapped it to his back. Grabbing his druidic staff, he smiled and headed out.

When he had first accepted his role, Harron was wary of the insurmountable weight his position carried. It was chaotic at first. He had just celebrated his 160th year and was finally recognized as an adult in the eyes of the Syl. The trials and training he went through were challenging, but through the long years and unchanging seasons, the fear of failure and dread of insipidity had lessened their deathly grip from his heart and mind, and now Harron couldn’t imagine a better—or more fulfilling—path. All around him, the forest bloomed with an eerie silvery-blue glow that blossomed from the behemoth-sized trees, lighting up the heavens like temple beacons. The stark, white light gleamed a thousand-fold creating an ethereal aurora that hid the sky from view and shrouded the passage of day from those dwelling beneath its speckled canopy. Since the Age of Divinity, the trees thrived—a gift from The Divine—dwarfing the Great Pines of the Northwest. The natural monuments told the history of Ellisandere and sang the songs of Her people. Every living being was tied to this thicket. Fae, Human, Beast, none of that mattered in the eyes of the Great Mother.

As Harron roved through the grove, he paused at each tree to examine trunk, leaf, and limb, checking for any new growths or abnormalities. Tura Syl, Life Trees, were from the Age of Divinity. When the Great Sages returned to the people, they brought with them gifts of magic and life. They taught their followers that each person was capable of learning and using magic, wielding the natural elements like elegant blades. They were taught how true mages could cast spells speaking only a few words or without speaking entirely! Nothing like the protracted prayers or chants used nowadays by so-called ‘mages’ most only able to cast with the use of exponents or ingredients. Harron soured at the thought. He was envious of those who lived in the Age of Divinity, the Golden Age, he called it.

The further he went, the more sparingly the trees grew, scattered throughout the area. Some of the trunks were flush with branches and leaves, while others still had space for new growth and lay mostly barren. These trees were the markers of the more prominent members of the age, rulers, teachers, mages, great warriors of legend. This is where they were born, where they died, and where they were born again. Harron paused at one of them and ran his hand along the branch. At the base, connected to the trunk, it glowed with the bright silvery-blue light as all the others, but the further it went out, the darker the branch became. Its leaves withered and broke off, crumbling to the ground despite the lightness of his touch. It was dying.

Harron knelt down, gingerly setting his pack on the forest floor next to him. He untethered the tie straps and began rummaging through it, pulling out baubles and trinkets, small vials, and large until finally locating the item in question. He reached into the satchel with his other hand and slowly pulled out a simple ceramic pot, cupped in his palm as if it was a robin’s egg. The container was roughly the size of a serving bowl, made of smooth white clay. Around the sides, it was decorated with thin ribbons of gold, emerald, and turquoise, curling and spiraling together, intertwined like ivy. The lid was decorated in a very similar way with the knob at the top painted gold. Despite the age of the item, Harron did his best to keep it clean and without a single blemish. The gold still gleamed brightly, even in the aura of the World Grove. He removed his handkerchief from his pocket and buffed the bowl, gingerly lifting up the lid and setting it next to him. The sap inside glowed with the same ethereal light of the trees, almost blinding him. He dipped his second and third fingers into the container, its contents were warm and hummed ever so slightly. It was thick as if he was reaching into a jar of paste or molasses. As he lifted his hand to place on the tree, the sap dripped slowly and steadily down, covering it. He used his hand as a brush and smeared a small amount on the trunk opposite the dying branch as he prayed: “May the light and embrace of the All-Mother carry you home so that you can be reborn into this world.” He waited a minute to feel, or at least hear, the drumming of a new heartbeat. Silence. He tried the same thing on the branch, hoping to heal it. Nothing happened.

Perturbed, he inspected it further. Typically, if he could not force a new branch to grow, he could at least heal the dying one until a new limb took its place. The fact that neither was working was a sign of something much darker. The Final Death. This was not natural. Each Tura Syl was the gift and symbol of the life of someone who had lived at least at one point in Ellisandere’s history, and each branch a new incarnation of that person. Each leaf, a memory or experience. The cycle didn’t just end. It was impossible, just like how the center tree never grew a new branch. He sprinted over to another tree nearby and checked. It was in the same condition as the one prior. He tried healing them or regrowing a new branch to no avail. He found another, and another, all of them were dying. How did he not notice this before?

Never in his time as The Caretaker had this happened. He checked the notes from his previous masters, only to turn up nothing. A thought flashed through Harron’s mind, and a look of horror twisted his usual, calm, and jovial face. Frantically, he lidded the mortar and stuck it in his satchel with everything else. He grabbed his staff and moved towards the center of the World Grove, the tinctures and tonics clinking loudly in his bag. He could only hope that nothing would break as he refused to let himself check, despite every fiber of his being urging him and begging him to do so.

When he arrived at the center, a solitary tree stood at the peak of the incline, daring the Highlands to strike it down. It towered over the world around it, dwarfing the already massive trees. There was no grass or sod remotely close to it. The earth itself look charred and blackened as if a great fire had once razed the land around it. Nothing around this Tura Syl grew, and it hadn’t changed since the original soul of the tree was slain in the dying days of The Age of Divinity, its existence erased from history. On The Great Tree rested a single branch that extended far beyond the hill, as a guardian. Tiny leaves covered the length of the limb from end-to-end, shimmering, and moving like an unearthly silver liquid. All of them, save for the largest at the very end, wide enough for a fully-grown man to stand under and be sheltered from rain and snow alike. The leaf was black. Darker than the most shadowed of places to exist, as if all light that came into contact with it was absorbed, sucked into an endless void. Never to escape. This was the tree of Aiysara, the Great Sage. Leader of all of the Fae.

Harron approached the mighty tree and raised his hand. Closing his eyes as he felt the smooth, metal-like surface of the trunk. It was tacky, but beneath it, there was a thrumming as the tree pulsed with new life. He felt a warm, viscous liquid begin to cover his hand and opened his eyes. Crimson sap leaked from a bulbous, cancerous lump on the tree as if something was trying to break out. His eyes went wide as he drew his hand back from the trunk. This wasn’t possible. This tree was supposed to be dead. Aiysara could not be reborn, right? Harron brought the liquid to his nose and sniffed it, it smelled like sap. He clenched and unclenched his fist. The air from it created a sucking sound as he strained to separate his fingers from his palm. It was thick and felt like sap. Hesitantly, Harron brought it to his lips, tasting it. Disgust contorted his face, the bitter iron flavor of blood sent him reeling.

As soon as the taste left him, pain shot through his head, piercing his skull like an arrow, and he collapsed. His whole body writhing in pain. Visions poured through his head like a coursing river, bursting from a dam. These memories weren’t of him or his past lives, but of someone else. Someone foreign, a Valeman. He had just been born, or he will be born, or had the Valeman been born already? Harron couldn’t tell, thinking hurt and used up so much of his energy. Time had lost all its meaning and purpose. Harron’s internal clock collapsed, as he felt his heart begin to slow.

Nearby, hidden in the shadow of the totem, stood the lone figure of a great wolf. Its amber eyes watching in acute and revered silence. Harron reached out to grasp at it in a desperate attempt of freedom from the pain encompassing him. His vision faded in and out, his heart stilled. Harron pleaded for the watcher to ease his suffering, it stared back. Its yellow eyes glowing in the shade of the wood, and when Harron’s eyes closed for the last time, the wolf turned and walked away, disappearing into the thicket.

It is time, He will return to us.