Lindarion's lips curved faintly but he didn't respond. His senses were already spreading outward, mana threads extending into the mist like invisible roots. He could feel the hum of life below: not human, not elven, not even beast. The earth here remembered being alive.
Hours passed in the same steady rhythm, footsteps, fog, faint whispers of wind. Then, just as the sun sank behind the clouds, the ground changed.
The mist thinned slightly, revealing what looked like the remains of a colossal root, so large it split the landscape, a massive rib of stone and fossilized wood rising like a bridge across a shallow ravine.
"That," one of the commanders murmured, "can't be natural."
"It's not," Lindarion said. "We're standing on what's left of the First Root. The Tree of Origins, the one the gods tore apart when they remade the world after the First Epoch."
Ashwing whistled low. "So, this whole valley is basically… a grave?"
