Prologue
The Whisperer and the Splintering Path
**
As remembered in a dozen temples, and denied by a thousand more.
Before the world was folded, it cracked.
Not silent, not swift, but with a roar that tore sky from sea, mountain from bone. The Core split open like an ancient wound too long ignored, and the Earth heaved. Continents buckled. Cities vanished beneath tsunamis of molten glass and tide. Forests became salt. Deserts drank the oceans. What rose in place of the old world was something warped and unfinished, a labyrinth of layered realms wrapped around the fractured Core, each one breathing new laws of magic and death.
For a time, the skies bled light. The stars fell. Gravity forgot its loyalties.
And then came the One Who Returned.
He did not arrive in a blaze, but in a shimmer, barefoot on dust, his robes laced with firelight and mourning. Those who looked upon him saw not a man, but the memory of every saviour their ancestors had whispered of. In one nation, they called him the Shard of Heaven. In another, the Starborn Reclaimer. In the broken libraries of the East, he was etched into salvaged scripture as He Who Was Promised, Before Promises.
He spoke no prophecy.
He simply acted.
When Breathlings surged from the fault-lines like veins turned monstrous, he stood before them, alone, and stilled the tide. Not with violence, but with Breath. Crystalline waves of light pulsed from his palms, casting patterns in the air that sang. Entire hordes crumbled into dust mid-sprint. Others sank into the earth, dreaming of peace.
He walked where the dying screamed, and they stopped screaming.
Villages broken by plague, a girl in Ash Vale woke to clean Breath and colour in her cheeks.
To find every wound sealed, every sick child sleeping safely in their mother's arms. His voice was heard in no tongue and every tongue. And wherever he stepped, the ground remembered green.
But it was not just healing he brought, it was memory.
He revealed that he had come many times before. That he had planted seeds, myths, rituals, fragments of old faiths, in countless cultures. The stories of gods walking among mortals, of radiant ones, of silent watchers and crowned healers, they were all echoes of him. Echoes left like breadcrumbs for a day when humanity would need them most.
And that day had come.
He called no one follower. Built no temple. Yet everywhere he went, people knelt.
To the last surviving nations, he gave vision: of a world reborn through unity, of power shared and not hoarded. He whispered to the leaders of men not promises, but choices. And those who listened formed the Last Accord, a coalition of minds, mages, and makers willing to try, even at the end.
It was he who gave the first theorems of Core stabilisation.
It was he who transferred healing Breath into the hands of others, for the first time, not inherited, but bestowed.
And it was he who warned of the other.
The one who whispers.
But that story belongs to another day.
When the last gate sealed and the buried world slept, he was gone. Some say he walked into the Core itself. Others believe he became light, scattered into the air we still breathe.
But those who saw him last remember this:
He placed a single crystalline seed into the hands of a weeping child and said,
"You won't know me when I come again.
But you'll recognise the shape of mercy."
**
Prologue
Mountain Shrine — A New Cycle Begins
**
The mountain village sprawled along the ridge like a line of old bones, its houses and shrines hugging the earth where the Royal Road curved north, never daring the valley below, never reaching for Bastion's crystal heights.
The world was waking in bruised light. Wind clawed through pines, carrying smoke, promise, and the cold taste of coming loss.
Dawn kindled every rooftop and carved blue fire from the veins of corecrystal set into each arch and terrace.
Far below, the Core of the world throbbed, a presence you felt in your teeth, your blood, your Breath. The old road shimmered, veined with memory and silence, tracing the story of people who had built sideways, not upward, binding their hopes in stone and ritual.
At the shrine's crown, Elyas climbed the final steps. His hood was down, eyes shadowed in the blue gleam from the Breath-crystal above the gate.
His construct, diamond-shaped and restless, hovered at his shoulder, humming with fractured gold and indigo. It circled the centrepiece: a massive corecrystal caged in iron and root, humming with the world's slowest, oldest heart.
Six guards formed a living barricade, bare hands pressed to stone and root. Runes glimmered along their arms, Breath swirling up from the earth at their feet. No one drew a weapon. There was no need. The shrine itself was their shield.
The eldest, Captain Vesh, eyes set and sorrowful, raised his hands.
"If you're here to help, you're too late. The Colossus is already in the lower woods. Orders are no one touches the wards."
Elyas shook his head, voice tight with grief.
"I'm not here for you. But you'll have to let me through."
Mira, hair matted with clay, flexed her fingers. Vines and roots writhed at her feet, lashing into a living net across the shrine's steps.
"We don't fight each other," she shouted, but fear was thick in her throat. "Not here. Not now."
Elyas swallowed, willing his own Breath to still. "I know how this must look. I'm not asking you to understand."
Captain Vesh's jaw worked. His voice lowered, as if that made it safer. "If you touch the heart, the wardline snaps."
Elyas's eyes flicked to the caged corecrystal, then back to Vesh. His hands trembled once, then steadied.
"It's already snapping," he said quietly. "You can feel it. The mountain's Breath is wrong."
Vesh's gaze hardened. "And you're going to make it worse."
Elyas's mouth tightened. "If it stays, everyone dies anyway."
He did not explain how he knew. He did not say what he needed.
He only lifted his chin.
"But you'll have to let me through."
The youngest, barely more than a boy, planted both hands to the ground, veins glowing with green and gold. The flagstones trembled, rising into a jagged wall.
Elyas's construct pulsed, anxious and sharp.
He gritted his teeth and willed it to act.
It darted straight through the net of roots, bursting them in a shock of colour. Vines shrivelled, the air thick with sap and the scent of ozone. Mira cried out, trying to reweave the barrier, but the stone beneath her feet buckled, sending her sprawling.
A guard on the far side, desperate, called a chunk of granite from the ground and hurled it with a scream, aiming for Elyas's unprotected ribs.
Before Elyas could move, he commanded the construct to unfold.
Fractal wings of crystal and Breath snapped into place. The granite smashed against the barrier, exploding in a flash of light and dust.
Elyas staggered, shock and gratitude raw on his face. He met the construct's shining "eye" for a heartbeat.
"Thank you," he whispered, breathless, though he knew the words were for himself.
Another guard slammed her hands to the steps, sending a wave of soil and broken tile surging at Elyas's feet, trying to knock him off balance. Elyas, without hesitation, sent the construct streaking ahead, slicing through the attack, sparks of Breath bursting everywhere it touched.
A third defender, older, tried to trap the construct in a cage of tangled roots and earth, calling the oldest magic of the shrine. The cage snapped shut. Elyas cut through it before it could hold, the construct collapsing and reforming outside, leaving the guard dazed and gasping.
Elyas pleaded one last time, even as he moved his hand and the construct responded.
"Please. Don't make me do this."
But there was no stopping, no turning away.
Elyas pressed forward, every command sharp and desperate, the construct spinning, light blazing, cutting through every wall and every defence. With each blow, Breath leaked from the wounded, ochre, cobalt, emerald, pooling with their blood on the ancient stone.
Mira, on her knees, tried to pull the wall back up, hands shaking, dirt and Breath running through her fingers like water.
"I'm sorry," she gasped, voice breaking, as the construct's edge caught her, spilling a ribbon of gold and crimson into the dust.
The youngest tried again, mustering every last drop of courage, raising a trembling hand to the earth, only for the construct to reach him first. His Breath spilled blue-white across the stones.
Captain Vesh, defiant to the end, managed to shape a final stone barrier in front of the caged corecrystal.
Elyas destroyed it.
Tears ran down his face as the shrine's runes flickered and died.
When it was over, Elyas stood in a shrine streaked with every colour of loss. His hands shook. His tears fell freely, mixing with the wild light on the floor.
The construct circled him, its song low, both apology and warning, but it was Elyas's will that had guided every stroke.
Far below, the Colossus's roar deepened.
The world's fate had changed.
The mountain's old heart was beating too fast.
At first, the tremors felt like a joke, an earthquake too gentle to fear, the kind that made tea rattle and children race to the terraces, daring each other to leap the shaking stones.
But then the air began to pulse.
A humming grew beneath the Breath of every tree, a pressure behind the teeth and eyes that no one could name.
A youth sprinted through the lower field, yelling, "Gather at the ring! Wall up, wall up!"
Marik, the fastest and loudest, reached the edge first, knelt, and slammed both palms to the soil. Breath channelled, root and stone rising beneath him, energy racing up his spine, an exhilaration that felt like victory already won.
The other teenagers followed, eyes wild, laughter cutting the wind as they forced the earth to their will.
"Let it come! We'll hold the first charge! The shrine never fails!"
Everywhere, families and elders gathered.
Some clung to old faith, hands pressed to amulets, runes drawn on doorframes, quiet prayers whispered to the valley's bones.
Others simply stared toward the far ridge, dread coiling as a rumour spread. No one had ever seen a true Colossus rise this close to the living, not in a hundred lifetimes.
Old Sava's voice cracked through the growing panic, eyes narrow with remembered loss.
"This is no wave. This is judgement."
Someone near her muttered, "Why isn't Bastion sending anything? Why now?"
A hush swept the crowd.
The Colossus emerged, slow as the grinding of ages. Its back shone with molten seams, volcanic shoulder smouldering, every step tearing new scars through the valley.
The wind sang with the sound of its movement: stone breaking, metal shrieking, crystal dust swirling in a storm of forgotten light.
Suddenly, a youth burst from the stairway, face ashen, breathless.
"The central ward! The shrine's corecrystal is gone. Shattered. The light's out! They're saying it's, it's…"
His voice broke.
For a heartbeat, time hung suspended.
Every head turned to the mountain's crown, where blue fire should have burned eternal.
Then the panic began in earnest.
The bravest tried to rally, Breath flaring, walls of earth heaving higher, runes scrawled so fast they blurred.
But for every stone that rose, twice as many hearts broke. The elders knew what the youth would not admit.
With no corecrystal, their hope was just dirt and memory.
For the first time, the whole valley screamed together, not in defiance, but in the wild, ragged voice of people who knew the story had changed forever.
**
A shudder in the Breath, as the Colossus bore down on the village's first defence.
The Colossus felt the pulse of Breath in the ground, every wall, every root, every challenge, a living song, not meant for it, but for the land itself.
It moved, not to destroy, but to remember.
Stone walls rose, singing with runes; roots curled and flexed, forming living barricades that pulsed with the green-gold heartbeat of the mountain.
The youth hurled themselves forward, arms outstretched, hands flat to earth and air.
Breath surged, light arcing between fingers, up the bones of ancient pines, out along the barricades.
Marik flung himself sideways, riding a burst of living stone as if surfing the bones of the earth itself. He ducked as a razor-shard, thrown by the Colossus, screamed through the mist and split the world behind him.
Dirt and memory exploded. Breath ran wild.
One girl, quick and small, leapt high, vaulting off a blooming root, flipping above a crashing wave of debris. She slammed her palm to a boulder midair, channelling Breath. The stone shattered, sending a hailstorm of obsidian darts into the Colossus's flank.
The titan barely noticed, molten shoulder flaring, a river of fire tearing through the rampart.
The elders, too, moved; slower, but with impossible focus.
Old Sava dropped to her knees, fingers digging into the soil. With a whispered word, a ring of Breath-crystals burst from the ground, humming so loudly the air bent around them.
For a moment, the Colossus's step faltered. Shards of its own crystal armour rattled free, tinkling down the slope like rain.
But hope is a brittle thing.
The Colossus swept its volcanic arm through the barricade, earth liquefying, runes popping one by one. Shardlings erupted from its shadow, swarming into the breach, clawing at the defenders with shrieks like broken glass. A boy was dragged down, Breath spilling blue-white across the stones; another vanished in a thunder of splintered roots.
Marik spun, channelling every last reserve, pulling water from the morning mist, flinging it in a razor-thin wave at the titan's molten shoulder.
Steam howled, and for a heartbeat the Colossus blinked, its horned head turning, eyes like ancient starlight.
It paused, not in surprise, but as if marking his name.
The Colossus felt the cost.
It moved on.
The moment passed. The mountain moved again. Walls fell.
The shrine's path, once a ladder of hope, became a river of fleeing bodies and choking dust.
The Colossus stood amidst the ruin.
It felt the settling of ash, the trembling of new veins forming where defenders fell, the slow memory of lives becoming part of the mountain's story.
Smoke curled around its obelisks. The molten caldera on its shoulder hissed, cooling. Beneath its feet, the soil shimmered with fresh metal, veins of memory waiting for the next generation's hands.
It paused, a living monument, listening to the last Breath, the names unspoken, the hope unspent.
For a moment, it "heard" Bastion in the far distance; the chime of wardstones, the sound of festival bells, laughter too faint to carry up the mountain.
The Colossus did not envy. It only remembered. It only moved on.
At the edge of the ruin, a single memory stone lay half-buried. The titan stepped over it; no malice, no pity. The earth would keep that secret.
For a moment, the Colossus paused, and in all the ruin, saw only the colours it had painted.
Where the Colossus walked, life would come again, but never the same.
And the mountain remembered.