The Tree

The Tree, in addition to being a literal tree, was an Unarithian cultural icon that grew in the city center of Balanor. For ages, it chronicled the story of the elves whose lives progressed around it, absorbing memories and life essence from the very soil of the elven realm. So it had been, and according to the elves, so it would be.
  But the elves were mistaken.
  On the very day a band of messengers arrived from Vramsgate to inform Balanor of the coming threat, Astral Raiders dropped an island into the Alathlian Ocean, causing an unprecedented tidal wave to crash over the city, demolishing hundreds of structures including the temple of the Tree.
  Were it not for one of the Vramsgate messengers, the Tree would have been the last of its kind. Before teleporting away to confront the raiders, Mikhail harvested a single seed from the great tree, vowing to do the doomed colossus justice and continue its line elsewhere in the world.