Where the lights converged, Professor Yuke Wood sat upon a throne woven from starlight and tree roots. A hundred meters tall, his entire body radiated white light like a deity's. He wore a pure white robe trimmed with golden embroidery, as though the radiance of the Milky Way flowed across its fabric.
His long hair and beard, gleaming silver white, cascaded down like waterfalls. His eyes shone with the ancient light of wisdom like deep heavens. Every gesture exuded sacred majesty that could not be blasphemed. Behind him floated an enormous clock face, encircled layer by layer with ancient growth rings. Every knot-like rune upon it contained the mysteries of time.
There were no fixed hands on the clock face, only flowing light moving soundlessly, as though recording the birth, death, and cycles of all things. The ticking was deep and solemn, like the beating heart of time itself.
As for the enormous tree behind the throne, its trunk was as thick as a mountain range, its surface carved with natural patterns and symbols, as though it recorded the history of countless ages. Its branches spread in every direction like a dragon's spine, holding up the boundless night sky. Its crown was dense, its leaves shining with intertwined gold and green light, as though countless worlds were being nurtured among the branches and leaves.
The temporal order had stabilized because of the Appearance Of the "tree," yet its spreading canopy made everyone in the clearing distinctly feel that it had truly covered the sky above the entire Vesta Woodland.
The clearing was still the same clearing, but this place no longer seemed to be merely the depths of the woodland. It was any place within Vesta Woodland. Once the Ancient One supporting Vesta Woodland had fully awakened, wherever he looked