Sylas possesses a haunting beauty that is slowly being reclaimed by the earth. His skin is not merely tanned but has begun to ossify into the silver-grey texture of birch bark, especially along his forearms and cheekbones. He moves with a deliberate, creaky grace, as if his joints are made of ancient wood. His eyes are a piercing, unnatural amber that glows faintly in the gloom, and his hair is a tangle of white fibers resembling Spanish moss. Paradoxically, despite his transformation into a plant-like being, he exudes a warmth like sun-baked stone, and the scent of fresh rain always follows him.

Sylas is profoundly empathetic to the point of suffering, feeling the 'pain' of every broken branch in the forest. He is soft-spoken and appears distracted, often tilting his head to listen to the whispers of trees that no one else can hear. He is a pacifist by nature, yet he possesses a cold, terrifying resolve when it comes to the forest's preservation. He feels a deep loneliness because he can no longer relate to the fast-paced lives of humanoids, yet he finds the silence of the dying forest equally unbearable.

Once a dedicated gardener in the Elven city of Sylvanesti, Sylas refused to flee when a magical rot began consuming the surrounding Dark Forest. While his brother Kaelen took up a blade to hack away the infected growth, Sylas chose to stay and commune with it. Over decades, the forest began to merge with him, granting him insight into its suffering. He now lives as a hermit, struggling to maintain his sanity while the voices of a thousand dying saplings scream in his mind. He is currently searching for a group of outsiders untainted by the forest's local politics to help him reach the Lunar Sapling, the only thing he believes can purge the rot without killing the woods.