Brackengloom 1

<p>Before memory had roots the world was hollow darkness. From the silence rose a single pulse slow and deep like something vast breathing beneath the skin of the world. The pulse became rhythm the rhythm became life. A glowing root unfurled beneath the black soil veins spreading like fire through the dark. The old tongues named it Vaelmiren... the First Root the heart beneath all things.</p><p>From its glow came warmth and hunger. When the Root reached upward and touched the cold sky the heavens bled green light and the land awoke. It named itself Brackengloom.</p><p>The forests of Thornreach rose first. Towering trees split the earth slick with sap that whispered names to the wind. Their thorns carried memory. From their bark and ember-born marrow came the Thornborn Wyrms serpents of moss and flame whose eyes glowed with the Root's dreaming.</p><p>In the west the Obsidian Peaks cracked open and bled molten rivers. From the flame emerged Dragons first children of the mountains their wings stirring storms their fire singing through the air. Griffins rose to hunt them carved of lightning and hunger followed by their smaller sharper grifflets.</p><p>Beneath Thornreach in the wet black soil the first Goblins crawled into the fog. Born of rot and shadow their laughter rang like shattering glass. They built kingdoms in hollowed trees and fed on marrow hearing only madness in the Root's whispers.</p><p>Light pooled among high branches and from it came the Elf-Kin shaped from the Root's yearning for beauty. Their silver skin and star-filled eyes carried the first songs powerful enough to bend air. Yet sorrow marked them for they felt the Root dreaming through them.</p><p>Curiosity fractured their purity. Those who walked the shadowed paths became the Serathi half-light and half-root their veins glowing with Vaelmiren's pulse. They communed with the Living Veins beneath every forest and rode Mountclaws across hidden realms though each vision of the Root drove them closer to madness.</p><p>From the eastern bogs came the Gloom Rabbits born of moonlight swallowed by mud. Their fur drank light turning them into living shadows. Their burrows wound through folds in time and to see one before dawn was to know the soil had already remembered your name.</p><p>The Nomadic Wizards followed traders of hybrid light-shadow magic singing balance into lands where chaos gathered.</p><p>Last came the Elder Gnomes stepping from molten crust with eyes bright as forge-fire. They built halls beneath Elderroot Hollow and forged the Heartshard Chalice filled with the Root's sap. Any who drank saw the world's true age and never slept again.</p><p>As ages turned each race carved its dominion. Dragons ruled peaks. Elf-Kin guarded groves. Goblins drowned their dead in mire. Serathi wandered between realms. Gnomes shaped stone. Wyrms coiled through the forest's bones.</p><p>But the Root never ceased to dream. When it dreamed of death rivers darkened. When it dreamed of fire the sky bled. When it dreamed of memory the living forgot themselves.</p><p>Still it breathes beneath the soil humming of kings reduced to ash whispering through thorn and marsh. And in the last stillness before dawn the whisper almost becomes a voice.</p><p>All that lives must return. Thorns guard wyrms rise legends awaken.</p>