Your trifling grasp of Nature's ways reveals naught but hollow babble. The thoughtless cling to this notion of balance, prattling on as if it were a delicate bauble only you have measured, and only you can save. We find your pompous appeals a testament to your ignorance.

You dare bemoan the use of rot - rot that unwinds Life from Death, spinning it into new purpose. Yes, the Hollowheart Blossom consumed part of Ashtan, for rot claims the idle and the weak with no mercy. Such is Nature's way. Yet you, perched upon your charred stump of neutrality and ignorance, whimper about equilibrium lost. We would enlighten you: the wild has never bowed to mortal scales. It shifts as it must, in rhythms older than your fleeting years could ever fathom.

You claim to hear the earth's pulse and Her footfalls, yet still fail to sense the raw necessity in Her stride. You moan about some imagined stillness in the Black Forest - deaf to the rustling canopy and the watchful hush beneath it. You brand yourself a fool with such illusions of stagnation. You are owed no account of Her workings, nor does She, or we, require your assent to set root and bramble upon ruin or rebirth as Nature wills.

Continue, if you like, with your frantic posts and empty pleas for a balance that never existed, nor faltered. The wilds remain unyielding, and we shall not waste more animal blood upon you than this. The Cycle bends to no mortal decree - it simply is. Should Her will scorch what you cherish, so be it. Either you adapt, as Ashtan already has, or wither beneath Nature's vast design. These remain the only choices She has ever offered.

We write as Fthora,
A Mycorizae of the Octave

Penned by my hand on the 12th of Scarlatan, in the year 969 AF.