I felt the first pains in my roots - never had I felt such pain. My branches were strong stretching towards the ever lasting light. 

My roots held an entire kingdom beneath their mass. 

I am a silent witness to the passing time. In the past the gods walked through my woods when I was a sapling, tending my tender branches with loving care. 

Then man came. 

All of creation watched the birth of the sentient beings, a marvel of curiosity and potential.

At first their innocence guided them. But their hearts grew restless, their minds ever seeking more. They built cities and raised monuments, their hands shaping the world in a futile imitation of the gods. But in other ways the gods had not foreseen. The kingdom that now rested beneath my roots was born of their ambition, a testament to their ingenuity and will.

They were still young when they came to my roots. Looking up and marveling at my heights. Children played in my branches, laughing and climbing, higher and higher. It was a whole world in adolescence. How I wish the kingdom could have stayed within this age. 

I was half-grown then, my roots not yet as deep, my branches still reaching for the heights. I watched as they toiled and dreamed, as they built and battled. Their creations, though grand, came at a cost. Blood was spilled in earnest. The earth beneath them groaned under the weight of their ambitions, pain, and death. The once gentle pulse of the soil grew uneven, disrupted by their ceaseless drive. 

My roots, which had known only the embrace of the gods and the whispers of the earth, now trembled with the burden of the kingdom's legacy. My roots drank in their blood and death. My branches dipped from the sorrow. No longer did they return to the earth from whence they came with joy, but in agony as if it was a thing they could escape, a cold embrace into the eternal night. Not the warm embrace of the gods welcoming them into the bossom of the earth. 

Though I remained steadfast, a bridge between the divine and the mortal, a living link to the gods, a keeper of stories untold, they stopped coming.

Man no longer listened, indeed they feared that which they no longer knew. 

The gods shook the earth in sorrow at their creation. The original city with it's marvels -- died under the dust, the inhabitants scattered to the winds. The gods bade me cover the city with my roots. 

And so I spread them out, covering the grounds, the palaces, the graves with earth and roots. Nothing remained on the surface but scattered hopes and wishes. A whisper of what could have been. 

Judgement had been rendered.

I sat with bitterness, my branches becoming twisted and gnarled. I sent out saplings to cover the grounds, with guarded silence we hide the beginnings and sway under the branches. Men have come and gone and played on our branches but none have come for their ancient inheritance.

And I, the silent witness, stood alone, my roots holding the memory of what once was, my branches reaching ever towards the light, waiting for the day when man might remember, when they might return me to the embrace of the earth and the gods.

The pain cut deep - through my roots. I shook and swayed. The tools were a pale imitation of what I'd seen in the past.  But my time had indeed come. I could sense it as the metal ripped through me. 

Mankind had returned to reclaim what was lost.