[Prologue: Spoken Before the Bark] [Narrator:] Once upon a time, in a place where trees were older than names, there lived those who climbed and those who waited below. A monkey learned the joy of height and forgot the cost of falling. A crab trusted weight and patience, believing the ground would answer in time. A chestnut was born to burn once. A bee carried pain sharper than song. A stone remembered every strike it received. And even the dirt knew where footsteps would fail. This is not a tale of heroes. It is not a tale of villains alone. It is a story told whenever taking goes unanswered for too long. Listen carefully. The tree still stands. And it remembers.
