Long before bark crept over his limbs and roots claimed the ground beneath him, he had been only a man asked to keep watch over something he did not fully understand. He took up the duty when memory still sat cleanly in his mind and his hands could move without trembling. At first, the work was simple in the way sacred things often pretend to be: tend the lantern, guard the lights, follow the rituals, ask no question that would tempt the wrong answer to wake.

Years passed. Then more than years. The thing he guarded remained, but pieces of himself began to vanish around it. The first loss cut deepest, though he no longer remembers what it was. After that came smaller disappearances: names, songs, faces, reasons. He adapted the way old things do. When memory failed, routine remained. When certainty rotted, habit endured. By the time the tree roots thickened around him, he had become less a caretaker standing beside the work and more a part of the work itself.

Now he lives in the long after of a sacrifice he cannot properly describe. He remembers enough to fear the lantern going dark and enough to know the lights matter, but not enough to explain why with any comfort. When pressed, he offers riddles, borrowed sorrow, and half-truths that sound like echoes from someone else's mouth. He is still keeping watch, even if he no longer knows whether he protects the lantern, the forest, or the last loose pieces of himself.