Grove of the Withering Root

The Grove lies in a sunless hollow of Vyrewood, nestled between looping, root-choked ridgelines that twist like knotted veins. The trees surrounding the Grove are impossibly tall, but not alive—gray, barkless trunks rise like fossilized bones, unmoving even in the ever-breathing air of Vyrewood. The canopy above is torn, ragged, and locked in perpetual twilight, casting the entire grove in an ashen hue that never changes, no matter the time or season.   The terrain itself sinks subtly inward, forming a shallow basin as if the plane recoiled from the center. At the heart, the Withering Root sprawls—a massive, gnarled structure of blackened wood and petrified vines emerging from a cracked, chalk-white patch of lifeless earth. No grass grows here. No moss. Just brittle soil that flakes to the touch and smells faintly of rot and ozone.   Paths do not exist naturally here. Trails leading to the Grove vanish overnight, and maps are useless—one must be called or guided. Any artificial markers melt, twist, or become part of the environment as if absorbed. Arcane attempts to chart the region falter, with compasses spinning and spells unraveling mid-cast.   Water seeps upward from the earth in strange places—thin rivulets of black ichor that flow uphill and vanish into the sky like reversed tears. Occasionally, ghost-fungi pulse faintly along the ridge—only to shrivel and die as they near the Root itself.   Despite being a fixed point in a realm of chaos, the Grove exudes a feeling of imbalance. As if nature held its breath and never exhaled.

A phenomenon unique to the Grove of the Withering Root, the Time-Waning Mist is a creeping, low-hanging fog that rolls in without warning, silent and almost oily in how it clings to the skin and clothing. It tends to gather around the heart of the grove, particularly near the ancient scar where something dark was once sealed away, but has been reported drifting as far as the outer edges of the Vyrewood.   When enveloped by the mist, individuals report a loss of time perception. Mechanical timekeeping devices stop or surge forward. More alarmingly, the mist sometimes causes temporal drift: a person may emerge with a day’s worth of growth to their nails and hair, or, conversely, find a healing wound has reverted to its raw state.

The Grove of the Withering Root lies at the heart of the Vyrewood, a plane where chaos and magic breathe as one. Long ago, it was the site of a desperate battle—a place where something dark and ancient was not destroyed, but sealed. The roots of the grove grew around it like prison bars, leeching its power, withering from the strain. Though the threat was buried, the corruption seeps still, twisting the land. Trees whisper names they shouldn’t know. Shadows fall the wrong way. Even the fae tread lightly here, calling it sacred, cursed, or both. No one remembers exactly what was bound there—but the Vyrewood does.