No one remembers the exact moment when the forest began to die.
First, it was a whisper in the roots.Then the song of the streams turned sharp, like a muffled scream.And one moonless night… the great Dawn Tree spread its branches and cast out its children as though they no longer belonged to its sap.
The elves called it "The Second Birth of Mana."But history would remember it as the Day the Forest Rejected Its Children.
"When the green light tore across the sky, we thought it was an aurora.It was not. It was judgment."
A figure emerged from between colossal roots, wrapped in spectral leaves and living bark.He did not walk—he floated, as if the earth itself feared touching him.
It was Aeltherion, Herald of the God of Nature.
The trees bowed before him.
The elves did not.
They trembled.
The herald extended his hand, and with a whisper that shattered thousands of years of silence, he spoke:
"The forest weeps for you. Not because it rejects you… but because it can no longer contain you. The mana that is growing here is not natural. It comes from something even the earth itself cannot understand. If you remain, your blood will become the seed of death."
That was when the roots began to bleed burning sap.
More than a thousand elves died within three moons.
Some, overwhelmed by energy, burst apart like overripe fruit of pure magic. Others were devoured by beasts that had changed—animals that had never before dared enter the heart of the forest.
To sustain those who still lived, the herald spread blessings among the elves.
But he did so with a warning.
"This grace will not make you stronger to conquer… but stronger to endure. Your struggle is not against nature, but against that which is corrupting it."
During the final ceremony before the Dawn Tree, when many believed the elven lineage was doomed, the luminous sap gathered and spiraled upward.
From it emerged an emerald radiance that descended upon a young elven archer.
Grisela Etherealwind.
She was not the most powerful.Nor the wisest.
But she was the only one whose heart, according to the herald, still beat in rhythm with the original forest.
"You will not lead your people to a new land… but to a new era. Do not survive as elves. Survive as what you must become."
She did not answer.
She simply fell to her knees, silent tears streaming down her face.
From that day on, the elves called her:
"Voice of the Old Wind.""Guardian of the Last Shoots.""She Who Will Lead Us Away from the World's Spring."