Back in the cave, the tension was a live wire, humming through the stale air. The grey light of dawn had done nothing to lift the siege; it only revealed the Cliff-Ghasts more clearly. They were no longer a distant threat. They were a carpet of dried-blood colored bodies, a seething mass of hooked limbs and smooth, blank faces covering the entire ledge fifty feet below the cave mouth. They did not climb. They did not move. They simply waited, a silent, patient wave of horror, their collective stillness more menacing than any charge.
"They're… waiting for something," Bor muttered, his voice hoarse. He clutched his last spear, his knuckles bone-white.
"They're waiting for us to tire. For us to make a mistake," Gron replied, his eyes never leaving the horde. His own body ached with a deep, bone-weary fatigue. The pile of earth-root embers was smaller now, a precious, glowing mound they dared not use except as a last resort.
It was Lana who saw it first. A slight shift in the air. A faint, almost imperceptible vibration that travelled up through the stone floor of the cave. She tugged at her mother's sleeve. "The mountain is humming," she whispered.
Then the others felt it. A low, resonant thrum that was felt in the teeth and the spine. It grew steadily, a deep bass note that built in intensity. A fine dust began to sift from the cave ceiling.
The Cliff-Ghasts felt it too. Their perfect, predatory stillness broke. Their heads, those featureless bony plates, twitched. They shifted, their hooked claws scraping against the stone in a sound like a thousand knives being sharpened at once. A ripple of unease moved through their ranks.
The thrum became a rumble. The rumble became a roar. The entire mountain began to shake. A large rock broke free from the ceiling near the back of the cave, crashing down and narrowly missing a group of children, who screamed and huddled closer together.
"What is happening?!" Kala cried, clutching Lana.
Gron didn't answer. He stared out the cave mouth, his eyes wide with a new, primal fear. This was not the Ghasts. This was something else. Something infinitely larger.
Across the chasm, Karuk watched, his heart in his throat. He saw the Ghasts begin to stir, their insectile calm shattered. He saw the mountain across from him tremble. And then he saw the face of the cliff, directly below the cave, bulge.
It was a slow, impossible movement. The solid rock swelled outward like a blister, cracks spiderwebbing across its surface with reports like thunder. Then, with a cataclysmic roar that drowned out all other sound, the cliff face exploded.
Not outwards, but in a shower of stone and dust as something immense forced its way through the mountain itself. A shoulder of living granite, wider than the cave itself, pushed through the rock. Then a head, a craggy summit with two burning amber eyes, emerged from the shattered stone. The Stone-Man was not climbing. It was simply walking through the mountain as if it were mist.
The Cliff-Ghasts erupted into frantic, panicked motion. They swarmed, not upwards towards the cave, but in every direction, trying to escape the cataclysm. It was too late.
The Stone-Man's hand, a landscape of fingers each the size of a tree, rose from the devastation. It did not swipe or crush. It simply opened, and then swept laterally across the cliff face.
The effect was apocalyptic. Where its stone fingers passed, the Cliff-Ghasts were erased. They did not scream; they were pulverized into black paste, smeared across the rock. Their hooked limbs, capable of holding onto sheer stone, were useless against this force. They were wiped away like dust from a ledge. The hand moved with a slow, inexorable finality, scraping the face of the mountain clean.
One Ghast, faster than the others, managed to leap and scramble past the sweeping hand, its claws finding purchase on the rock just a dozen feet below the cave mouth. It pulled itself up, its blank face now seeming to radiate a desperate, mindless hunger as it reached for the safety of the cave, for the soft, warm meat within.
"THE FIRE!" Gron bellowed.
Bor was already moving. He scooped up the entire, precious pile of glowing earth-root embers onto the slate hearthstone. He didn't throw it. He ran to the edge and, with a roar of his own, dumped the entire, searing mass directly onto the climbing Ghast.
The creature was engulfed in a mantle of white-hot fire. It sizzled, its body contorting in a silent, violent seizure. It lost its grip, but its death-throes were so violent that one hooked limb flailed out and caught the edge of the slate Bor was holding.
With a cry of surprise, Bor was yanked forward, his balance lost. He teetered on the brink, the burning Ghast pulling him down into the abyss.
"BOR!" Fen shouted, lunging.
Gron was faster. He dropped his spear and threw his entire weight forward, wrapping his arms around Bor's waist and heaving backwards. The muscles in his back and shoulders screamed. For a terrifying second, all three—Gron, Bor, and the burning, twitching Ghast—were poised on the edge of the drop. The stench of burning chitin filled the air.
With a final, sickening tear, the Ghast's limb snapped, and the creature fell, a dwindling torch, to be casually batted aside by the Stone-Man's other hand as it completed its cleansing sweep.
Gron and Bor collapsed in a heap on the cave floor, gasping, the heat of the embers searing their hands and faces. The slate clattered beside them, now empty. Their last weapon was gone.
Silence descended, broken only by the groaning of the wounded mountain and the ragged panting of the tribespeople.
The Stone-Man's work was done. The cliff face was scoured clean, not a single Ghast remaining. The amber lights of its eyes turned, sweeping over the cave mouth. It paused, its gaze resting on the small, terrified humans huddled within.
Karuk, across the chasm, held his breath. This was the moment. Would it see them as part of the mountain? Or as another disorder to be removed?
The giant stared for what felt like an eternity. Then, with a sound like a landslide, it pulled its bulk back into the hole it had made in the mountain. The ground shuddered once more, and then it was gone, leaving only a gaping, raw wound in the cliff face and a silence more profound than any they had ever known.
The immediate threat was obliterated. They were saved.
But as the tribe stared out at the devastation, at the cave now open to the world, their faces were not filled with joy, but with a stunned, trembling awe. They had been saved by a power so far beyond their understanding that it dwarfed the terror of the Ghasts. They were alive, but the world they knew was gone, shattered by the footstep of a god. And they were left alone in the aftermath, with nothing but the echo of that footstep and the knowledge of how small they truly were.