The problem with asking mountains to hide you, Gard decided, was that they had their own ideas about where you should go.
“That’s the third time they’ve turned us east,” he said, watching another path disappear into solid rock. The stone wasn’t being subtle about its preferences anymore.
Lira pressed her hand to a lichen-covered boulder, her earth-mark pulsing as she listened. “They’re getting louder. More urgent.” She frowned. “And… afraid?”
That was new. In all his years as a scout, Gard had felt the mountains be many things. Amused. Annoyed. Stubborn as, well, stone.
But never afraid.
The patterns across his back burned, showing him why:
Dark ships on dark waters.
Ancient bindings awakening.
Those who broke the dance returning.
Those who turned giants to stone.
“Gard.” Lira’s voice was tight. “The roots are pulling away. All of them. Like they’re trying to hide from something.”
He knew that feeling. The stone itself seemed to shiver, remembering old wounds. The giants’ final memory played again in his mind – not just their transformation to stone, but why. What they’d seen coming.
What was coming again.
A rumble shook the valley. Not the mountains speaking – something deeper. Older. The kind of magic that could separate elements that were meant to be whole.
“We need to move faster,” Lira said, but the words were barely out of her mouth before the path ahead burst open.
Not from violence. From welcome.
The mountain simply… stepped aside, folding rock like cloth to reveal a tunnel lined with glowing crystal. The patterns matched their birthmarks exactly.
“Well,” Gard said dryly. “I guess that’s one way to give directions.”
They entered the crystal tunnel, their earth-marks blazing bright enough to cast shadows. The stone sang around them, but not the usual slow granite songs Gard knew. This was older music. The first songs earth had ever sung, when elements still danced together.
“Look.” Lira pointed to the crystal walls where images played like memories in glass:
Four great powers dancing in harmony.
Temples where fire and water moved as one.
Air and earth sharing secrets in mountain peaks.
The world whole, unbroken, alive with possibility.
Then:
Dark ships on darker seas.
Figures who feared such power united.
A sundering, a breaking, a forced forgetting.
Elements bound separate, kept apart by law and lie.
Giants frozen, trying to protect the ancient knowledge.
Temples sunk, spheres scattered, dancing forbidden.
“They’re not just showing us history,” Lira whispered. “They’re showing us what’s at stake.”
The crystal tunnel curved steadily east, dropping deeper into the earth. Each step brought new images, new memories:
Ships like wounds in the world, awakening.
Forces gathering to keep the elements apart.
But also:
Fire learning water’s dance again.
Air writing truth in starlight.
Earth remembering its first songs.
Something dark pulsed through the stone – a negation, a wrongness. The same power that had separated the elements, still trying to maintain its breaking.
“There are others,” Gard said, feeling the truth of it in the rock beneath his feet. “Others who remember, who are trying to find—”
The tunnel ahead exploded with light. Not crystal-glow – real daylight. They rushed forward and emerged onto a ledge high above the clouds.
East. Always east. Toward:
A mountain peak split by a waterfall that burned like fire in the dawn.
A stretch of sky where winds wrote silver scripts among the stars.
A point where all elements could meet, could remember, could dance.
But on the horizon, darkness gathered like spilled ink.
Those who had forced the first forgetting were stirring.
The elements were remembering.
And some memories were never meant to stay buried.
“We’re not running away anymore,” Lira said, her earth-mark blazing as the stone sang its warning. “We’re running toward.”
Gard nodded, feeling the mountain’s fear fade beneath a stronger truth:
The elements were choosing to remember.
Choosing to dance.
Choosing to be whole.
And this time?
This time the giants wouldn’t face the darkness alone.