Echoes of the Worldroot

Collected tales and truths spoken in groves older than the sky. Best heard beneath the boughs, with dirt beneath your fingernails and no quill in your hand.

Prologue: When the World Breathed First

“Before the sun knew its name, before the gods carved laws into starlight, the Worldroot stirred. It was not a tree, though it was root. It was not a thought, though it dreamed. And from its dreaming came the lines—the ley-lines, we now call them—threads of purpose stretching through the marrow of the earth.”

The Thistlecradle Blessing

“In the Vale where mist drinks sun, there grows a tangle of soft-thorn thistle that blooms in moonlight and hums when no one watches. They say the Worldroot laughs there. The leyline beneath it isn’t power—it’s permission. Things are allowed to grow. Allowed to live. Allowed to return.”

The Emberthroat’s Hunger

“The fire that speaks is not cruel. It is not gentle. It is hungry. The Emberthroat Leyline pulses with the Worldroot’s need to change shape—to crack the old shell, to melt the broken limb, to burn the dead tree that the forest might breathe again.”

The Seasinge Song

“Beneath the cliffs where the gulls cry in their sleep, there is a song that pulls the tide and the heart. The Seasinge Leyline is the Worldroot’s longing—its dream of movement, of echo, of the sea that once washed its fingers in starlight.”

The Hollowstar Dimming

“Deep, where even roots go blind, Hollowstar winds like a question never asked. It is the Worldroot’s forgetting. Not rot. Not death. Just the quiet where names go when they’re no longer needed.”

The Auracle Wind

“Not all roots grow downward. Some stretch skyward, becoming song. The Auracle Leyline is a reaching—it sings not of what was, but of what might be. The Worldroot wonders, and in wondering, sends questions into the wind.”

Closing Passage: We Are Rooted Too

“You think you stand atop the world. You do not. You dangle from it. The Worldroot holds you. Every word you speak, every seed you bury, every dream you forget—it hears. You are a leaf, a fruit, a bloom upon the unseen branch. And when you die, you do not fall. You return.”