The night stretched on, an eternity of tense, watchful silence. No one in the cave slept. The hunters took turns at the ledge, their eyes straining against the darkness, watching for the next sign of movement from below. The pile of earth-root embers was now a carefully guarded treasure, a heap of glowing orange coals that represented their only hope. Gron had given strict orders: no more was to be burned for warmth. Every fragment was a weapon.
Karuk, across the chasm, was a prisoner of his own helplessness. He had gathered more brush, building a small pile for a signal fire, but he dared not light it, preserving his own small chunk of the black stone. He watched the cave, a dark smudge in the moonlit cliff, and the deeper darkness below where the Cliff-Ghasts gathered. He could feel their patience, a cold, predatory stillness that was more frightening than their attack.
They are learning, the Voice stated, its tone analytical. They understand the fire now. They will not attack the same way again. They will wait for a mistake. For exhaustion. For the fire to die.
What can I do? Karuk thought, the despair a lead weight in his stomach. I have no more spears to throw. I cannot fly.
You have knowledge. They have strength. A bargain must be made.
A bargain? The concept was so alien, so audacious, that Karuk could barely comprehend it. Bargain with who? The Ghasts? The idea was ludicrous.
Not with them. With the other power in this valley. The one that walks the Old Ways. The one whose path you followed.
The Stone-Man. The walking mountain. Karuk's blood ran cold. The memory of its earth-shaking steps, its immense, indifferent presence, filled him with a terror deeper than the Ghasts. To approach such a being was suicide. It was a force of nature, not a tribe to be reasoned with.
It is a mind. An ancient mind. It values order. The Ghasts are a chaos, a blight on the stone. It may listen. It is the only chance.
"It will crush me," Karuk whispered into the night, his voice trembling.
It may. Or it may not. The alternative is the certain death of your tribe. The calculation is simple.
The Voice was right. It was always right. There was no other path. He had to go back. Back through the deadly ridge, back into the heart of the mountain, back into the valley of war to find the titan.
The first hints of dawn were bleeding into the sky, casting the world in a pale, grey light. He could not wait for full sun; every moment was precious. With a final, agonized look at the cave where his family was besieged, he turned his back and began the arduous journey.
The return across the razor-backed ridge was, if possible, more terrifying than the first crossing. Fatigue made his limbs clumsy, and the morning light revealed the true, dizzying extent of the drops on either side. But fear was a potent fuel. He moved with a desperate speed, driven by the image of the Ghasts swarming over the cave ledge.
He reached the tunnel entrance as the sun fully crested the horizon. The archway of bones seemed to mock him, a testament to the fate of those who disturbed the Stone-Men's domain. Taking a deep breath, he plunged back into the darkness.
The journey through the mountain was a blur of fear and exhaustion. He did not pause, did not rest, his spear held before him as he jogged through the vast, fungal-lit tunnel, his footsteps echoing in the immense silence. He passed the side passages, ignoring the skittering sounds from within, his focus absolute. He had to find the titan.
He emerged from the tunnel into the morning light of the valley. The scene was eerily quiet. The evidence of the previous night's battle was everywhere—shattered trees, scorched earth, the mangled body of a Goblin half-buried in the mud—but the combatants were gone. The war had moved on.
It is near, the Voice guided him. Follow the river upstream. Its trail is fresh.
Karuk moved as swiftly as he dared, sticking to the cover of the trees, his senses screaming at every sound. The trail of the Stone-Man was impossible to miss—a swath of destruction leading away from the river, towards a cirque of jagged peaks. The footprints were deeper here, the strides longer, as if it had been moving with purpose.
He followed the trail for what felt like miles, the air growing colder, the trees thinning out. And then he saw it.
The Stone-Man stood in the center of a vast, rocky amphitheater, surrounded by towering peaks. It was motionless, its back to Karuk, its moss-covered form blending with the mountain itself. It was even larger than he remembered, a living summit. In its hand, it held the carcass of the troll-like creature, and with its other, it was methodically placing immense stones into a complex, spiraling pattern on the ground, as if repairing a broken design in the world.
Karuk's courage almost failed him. To approach this being was like a mouse challenging a mammoth. But he thought of Lana's face, of his mother's terror, of his father's grim resolve.
He stepped out from the cover of the trees and into the open.
He did not run. He did not shout. He walked slowly, deliberately, towards the colossus, his spear held low, point down, in a gesture he hoped conveyed no threat. The ground trembled with a deep, sub-sonic hum that he felt in his teeth.
The Stone-Man did not turn. It continued its work, placing another multi-ton boulder with delicate precision.
Karuk was fifty paces away. Then thirty. The scale of the being was overwhelming. He felt like an ant at the foot of a giant. He stopped, twenty paces away, directly in its line of sight should it turn.
He had no idea what to do. How did one speak to a mountain?
Show it, the Voice instructed.
Understanding dawned. Karuk knelt on the cold stone. Using the tip of his spear, he began to scratch a picture into the flat rock before him. He was no cave painter, but he drew what he could. He drew the cliff, and the cave. He scratched the stick-figure forms of his tribe inside. Then, with slashing, frantic lines, he drew the Cliff-Ghasts, their hooked limbs crawling up towards the cave. Finally, he pointed with his spear, first at his drawing, then up towards the distant ridge where his people were trapped.
He finished and looked up.
The Stone-Man had stopped moving. The two amber lights of its eyes were now fixed on him. There was no anger, no curiosity. Just a vast, ancient awareness. Karuk felt its gaze like a physical pressure, as if the mountain itself was weighing his very soul.
The giant took a single, ground-shaking step towards him. Karuk flinched, but held his ground. The Stone-Man lowered its head, the amber lights focusing on the crude drawing at Karuk's feet. It studied the image of the Ghasts for a long, long time.
Then, it did something utterly unexpected. It reached out one of its colossal, stone fingers, each segment larger than Karuk's entire body, and pointed towards the drawing of the Ghasts. Then, it slowly dragged the tip of its finger across the image, obliterating the crawling creatures from the stone, leaving only a smeared, dusty scar.
It straightened up, the amber lights shifting from Karuk to the distant peaks where the tribe's cave was located. It took a step in that direction, then another, its purpose clear.
The bargain had been struck.
The Stone-Man began to walk, its strides eating up the distance, heading not towards the tunnel, but directly for the mountain itself, as if it intended to walk straight through it. Karuk stood, his legs weak with relief and awe. He had done it. He had summoned a god.
But as the titan marched away, a new, chilling thought occurred to him. He had asked for its help. He had not specified how that help would be given. The Stone-Man valued order. It removed blights. As it moved towards the mountain, a path of pure destruction opening before it, Karuk could only hope that his tribe, trapped in their cave, would be seen as part of the mountain worth preserving, and not just another piece of disorderly chaos to be swept away.