Under the Elder Tree

Long before the kingdoms of men carved roads through wild hills and named the stars in the sky, there was a tree older than time, standing in the center of an untouched glade. This was the Elder Tree—its bark black as midnight, its leaves silver as moonlight, and its roots coiled deep into the bones of the earth.

No one knew who planted it. Some said the gods placed it to mark the heart of the world. Others claimed it grew from the tear of a grieving titan, weeping for a world it could no longer touch. What all agreed on, however, was that the tree whispered stories to those who listened.

Not all could hear them—only the Chosen, marked from birth by a spiral of vine on their wrist.

And so begins the tale of Elian, the last Listener.

Elian was born in a cottage near the River Vyr, where the mountains bowed low to the forests. His mother, Maera, was a healer; his father, a quiet man lost in the grip of dreams too large for his soul. On the night Elian came into the world, lightning cracked across a cloudless sky, and the Elder Tree shed a single leaf that drifted a hundred leagues to land upon his cradle.

He grew with the hunger of one who felt something calling beyond the veil of sight. As a child, he’d disappear for hours, sitting beneath oaks and birches, trying to catch the voices of wind and bark. On his thirteenth birthday, the vine mark bloomed upon his skin. His mother wept—not with sorrow, but with awe.

“You’ve been claimed,” she whispered. “The roots remember you.”

The next morning, she handed him a walking staff carved from fallen elderwood and sent him east, toward the glade of the Elder Tree.

For seventy-seven days, Elian walked. He crossed black rivers, spoke with fireflies that knew the names of stars, and was guided by a fox with silver eyes. When he reached the glade, it was as if time itself bowed.

The Elder Tree stood taller than mountains, unmoved by wind, untouched by age. Its roots twisted in solemn spirals, and the ground hummed with memory. Elian placed his palm against the bark—and the world fell away.

Visions swarmed him.

He saw the First Flame kindled by beings of starlight, the forging of the seasons, the wars of the ash-blooded kings, and the rise of men who forgot their songs. He saw the future, too—a world choked by silence, where nothing grew, and no one remembered how to listen.

“You are the root that must hold the story,” the Tree spoke in a voice like thunder soaked in honey. “All is memory, Elian. But memory fades. Will you become the voice beneath the bark?”

Elian nodded, and the spiral on his wrist glowed like dawn. His mind filled with every tale, every truth, every secret the world had whispered into soil. His body became part bark, his breath the rustling of leaves, his heartbeat the steady thrum of the earth.

From that day on, those who wandered the old paths could find the glade, and if they sat quietly under the Elder Tree, they would hear stories—epic and small, sorrowful and joyous—carried on the wind, growing with the roots.

And though Elian never walked again, his voice became the wind in the leaves, his soul the keeper of stories too vast for parchment. He was the Listener Eternal, the memory of a world that dared not forget.

So when the fires rise, and silence threatens to claim the land, find the Elder Tree. Sit beneath it. Listen. Because the story still grows.

And it remembers you.