The Amber Sap

The crystallizing resin that seeps from the Rootbound Hollow's deepest galleries — hoarded by the wake-keepers as a sacred last-gift, drunk by the Sap-Drinkers to stay warm, lucid, and human a little longer.

The Rootbound say the sap is what the wood gives back when a warden roots: distilled living-time, the wood's own slow answer to the Sundering's wound. The Greenwake say it belongs to the hollow and the dead, not to the living, and hoard it accordingly. The Sap-Drinkers say both of those things are probably true and drink it anyway, because the alternative is rooting like the wardens do — going still, going slow, letting the bark close over you — and none of them are ready to become a tree yet. All three positions have their logic. The wood's position is that it keeps making the sap and has not commented.