"Life gathers, even where no call was made."
Seasons had passed.
The grove had changed — not through command, but through coexistence.
What began as a handful of wanderers had grown into a small camp of fifty-three beastmen, scattered across the soft grass and under the canopy's green embrace.
Their presence had become part of the rhythm of this place. Fires glowed at dusk, voices carried softly through the leaves, laughter and argument intertwined like roots beneath the soil.
The young tree had watched them all.
Listened.
Learned.
At first, their words were little more than sound — sharp, guttural, textured by growls and hisses. But Mana flowed through sound as much as it did through flesh, and with time, the tree began to feel the meaning beneath the noise.
"Language is just resonance," he realized one evening. "The will shaping air, the same way Mana shapes matter."
He could not speak, not yet. But he could understand — slowly, imperfectly, as though remembering a song once known long ago.
---
The beastmen themselves had changed, too. Their camp was no longer chaos. A clear hierarchy had emerged, born not from blood but survival.
At its head stood Rhaegor, a broad-shouldered wolfman with grey fur streaked by old scars. His eyes were sharp, his voice low, commanding respect without the need for violence. He was the chieftain by presence alone.
Below him, three others stood out:
Maera, the camp's quiet heart — a lynx-eared healer who worked with herbs and water drawn from the grove's stream.
Thorn, a tiger-beast whose temper was as fierce as his loyalty; he led the hunters and guarded the outer perimeter.
Kara, a leopard-beast scout, lean and cunning, often seen perched in the trees, her gaze always searching the horizon.
Beneath them were the hunters, gatherers, and the young — a fragile balance of strength and dependence. The grove provided food and shelter, though none understood why the air here was always fresh, the water pure, or why no beasts dared approach from the deeper forest.
They simply called it "The Blessed Hollow."
---
From his place at the grove's heart, the tree observed their lives unfold.
Children played between his roots, chasing light and shadows.
Maera sang soft lullabies as she crushed herbs into healing paste.
Rhaegor sat by the fire at night, speaking of lands lost, of wars between humans and beastmen, of the hunger that drove them north.
Each word was a seed.
Each voice, a thread weaving through his awareness.
And as the days passed, the fragments within him began to stir again — flashes of faces, streets, and voices. Words he understood. Emotions he recognized.
He remembered what it meant to be hungry.
To hope.
To fear for others.
"So this is what it means… to live together," he thought. "It isn't perfection. It's struggle, shaped into order."
Mana flowed quietly through the grove, reacting to his thoughts. The soil grew richer, the air more fragrant, the nights warmer. Unknowingly, he had begun to nurture them — not as a god, but as a guardian.
Sometimes, the beastmen whispered of it:
"The forest watches us."
"No beast comes near."
"The trees breathe with us."
Rhaegor would only nod, staring toward the great trunk at the grove's center.
"It watches," he would say simply. "Then let us be worth its gaze."
---
Through them, the young tree learned more of the world beyond his grove: of human kingdoms with burning cities; of elves who closed their borders; of dragons who vanished into storms.
Of inequality and fear, spreading through species like a blight.
The memories within him stirred again — a feeling of standing under rain, arguing with someone unseen, and a whisper: "If the world is cruel… change it."
But that was not yet his purpose.
For now, he simply watched.
---
As twilight fell, the grove shimmered under starlight. Children's laughter faded into quiet snores. Maera tended the fires, Thorn patrolled the edge, Kara disappeared into the branches, and Rhaegor gazed up at the stars.
The tree extended his awareness, not to command, but to listen.
Their heartbeats echoed softly in the soil, their dreams humbling and warm.
For the first time since awakening, the young tree felt something akin to peace.
Not stillness, not emptiness — but the steady rhythm of life continuing.
"I was human once," he thought faintly, as the last memory fragment flickered through his consciousness. "And perhaps... I still am."