The savanna awoke sick.
Mukhar felt it in his body before the light had finished tearing across the horizon. With every step. The earth felt different: drier, heavier, as though it refused to sustain life. Even the air seemed to have lost its substance.
The mana was fading.
It wasn't a new suspicion. He had spent days feeling the flow steadily diminish, but that morning, the absence was overwhelming. Mukhar stopped and closed his eyes, sharpening his senses toward the ground.
Nothing.
Barely a dying thread coursed through the earth beneath his paws. The plants held only a faint, lukewarm energy; the animals that depended on them were already showing the first signs of weakness. The entire savanna was being drained empty.
When he opened his eyes, the landscape revealed a familiar structure. Before him stood the circle of monoliths. Ancient stone steeped in ancient blood; too many deaths accumulated over countless cycles to dare call it neutral ground.
And yet, every faction was there. None had been foolish enough to arrive unarmed.
Mukhar advanced toward the structure. Each of his steps imposed a heavy silence that did not come from respect, but from the sheer weight of his presence. When he reached the center, he let the butt of his spear fall against the central stone.
The sharp impact echoed through the circle like a metallic crack.
"Surrender and leave the savanna," he said. He didn't need to raise his voice for the command to reach every corner. "Or you will die."
A low, collective growl swept through the gathering. Mukhar raised his head calmly; the carnivores before him had not changed at all. Suppressed hunger, restrained rage, and deeply wounded pride. A Leonid stepped forward and spat onto the arid ground. Beside him, Ravik advanced until he nearly crossed the invisible boundary dividing the factions.
"There's no difference," Ravik spat bitterly. "Dying here or dying outside is the same."
Mukhar held his gaze without blinking. Stubborn. Predictable.
"Then you will die here."
The murmur among the crowd intensified. Behind Mukhar, the herbivore faction reacted heavily. He didn't need to turn around to know what was fueling their agitation; he could feel the waves of resentment. A dead son. A mother devoured in the darkness. A body crushed by panic during a mass stampede. These were not political arguments. They were living memories of slaughter.
"Don't offer them a way out," Veras of the Golden Horns intervened, his voice cracked with resentment. "My son watched them devour his mother before his eyes."
From the opposite side, a hyena bared its teeth and answered with barely contained fury.
"I watched my mate die beneath your herds as they trampled her while fleeing! What forgiveness are you talking about?"
The accusations erupted from both sides, overlapping in a chaotic chorus.
"They broke the laws first!"
"They hunt without limit or restraint!"
"They're a plague that consumes everything!"
Kael-Sur stepped forward and slammed his staff against the worn stone.
"You destroyed the ancient order of the savanna!"
The tension rose to the breaking point, knuckles tightening around weapons and claws emerging. Before the first drop of blood could touch the ground, Mukhar brought his spear down against the earth with devastating force.
The impact reverberated through the foundations of the steppe and drowned out every voice at once.
"It doesn't matter."
No one dared answer. Mukhar swept his gaze across both factions, wearing them down beneath the weight of his eyes.
"If we keep destroying one another like this, soon there will be no one left to remember why this war began."
"They started it!" several voices roared from the shadows.
Mukhar didn't even blink.
"Who started it doesn't matter anymore."
Silence fell again, heavier this time, crushing the protests in their throats. Mukhar slowly drew in a breath, allowing the emptiness of the surroundings to speak for him.
"The mana is running out."
The atmosphere of the gathering changed instantly. Violent rage evaporated, replaced by rigid, cold attention.
"The plants can no longer nourish our people as they once did," Mukhar continued, his tone steady. "Animals are being born weak. Every day, we need to travel farther just to find prey that can barely sustain life."
Some clan chiefs lowered their gazes toward the dust; others clenched their teeth in a futile gesture of denial. But none spoke. None contradicted him.
Because deep down, they had all felt the earth dying that very morning.
Mukhar drove his spear into the harsh ground.
"But there is something I don't understand."
He raised his gaze toward the imposing mountain range crowning the north, its peaks silhouetted against a clear sky strangely devoid of vitality.
"The mana isn't disappearing everywhere."
A tense, divided murmur immediately swept through the circle of monoliths.
"What are you saying?" Yhalir asked, stepping forward with one hand resting on the hilt of his dagger.
Mukhar raised his arm and pointed firmly toward the distant horizon.
"The peaks are still overflowing with it."
The news fell like an anvil, bringing an even heavier silence than before. The leaders looked at one another, unable to process the anomaly. Ravik was the first to break through the stupor, his brow furrowing with deep suspicion.
"Then... why is the savanna dying?"
Mukhar did not answer immediately. He paused for a moment because that was precisely the mystery that had driven him to summon this gathering on cursed ground. Mana did not simply disappear. It had to flow somewhere. Something was distorting its natural flow.
And then the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place with the memory of a recent event. The roar that had shaken the foundations of the steppe. The unexpected fall of the ancestral beast that had dominated and terrorized those lands for generations.
UR'KHAAL. The Manadevourer.
"The Calamity died," Mukhar said, his deep voice resonating among the stones.
Some raised their heads, surprised that he had brought up the beast.
"We all heard its final, agonizing roar," an elder remarked.
A hyena let out a bitter, humorless laugh.
"And yet it fell. A monster of that scale shouldn't have died so easily."
Mukhar fixed his gaze once more on the distant peaks. For the first time, a chilling hypothesis began to take shape in his mind. Perhaps Ur'Khaal's death had not been the end of a threat, but the catalyst for something worse. Perhaps its death had unleashed an incalculable tide of energy that was now searching for a new channel. Or perhaps... something or someone else was consuming the magical remains the monster had left behind.
He had no definitive answers, but he did have one absolute certainty: the savanna was bleeding mana at an accelerating rate. And while they exhausted their final reserves in a bloody struggle over scraps of territory, a silent shadow was taking everything that remained.
Mukhar pulled his spear from the ground with a sharp motion.
"I propose a truce."
The word fell like a stone into a swarm. Growls and protests immediately returned, threatening to drown out the circle.
"A truce?"
"With them?"
"After the massacre they carried out in the valleys!"
Mukhar didn't even blink at the insults.
"Temporary," he emphasized, fixing his gaze on Ravik. "Only until we discover what—or who—is draining the savanna's magical lifeblood."
Ravik narrowed his eyes, coldly weighing the leader's intentions.
"And afterward?"
Mukhar held his gaze without the slightest hint of hesitation.
"Afterward, you can try to kill each other again."
The silence that followed was strange, thick. For the first time in months of conflict, no one had an immediate response.
"What stops you from betraying us at the first opportunity?" Ravik demanded, baring his fangs.
Mukhar answered without hesitation, with brutal honesty.
"Nothing."
Several warriors behind him tensed, gripping the handles of their axes.
"But if we don't accept," Mukhar continued, "we'll keep consuming what little mana we have left fighting among ourselves while the land turns into an inert desert." He swept his gaze across every face present. "And when the last thread of mana runs dry..."
He left the sentence hanging in the air. There was no need to speak the ending. Everyone there knew what it meant: there would be no victors and no glory. Only dried corpses beneath a dead sky.
Ravik remained motionless for long, agonizing seconds. Finally, almost imperceptibly, he took a step back. Small. But enough to yield the space.
"Then it's a truce."
No one shook hands. No one lowered their guard or fully sheathed their weapons, but no one attacked either. For now, the slaughter was on hold.
Mukhar turned and walked back toward his own faction. Kael-Sur was waiting a few steps away, his expression dark.
"Why make a deal with the murderers of our people, Mukhar?"
Mukhar didn't stop walking.
"Because we're no longer fighting over territory, Kael."
He stopped at the edge of the monolith circle and looked one last time toward the distant mountains, where the flow of mana still pulsed with strength. Where the Calamity had fallen. And beyond them... toward the shadows where the source of an evil none of them could comprehend was hiding.
"We're fighting to survive with what little remains." His eyes hardened like iron. "First, we'll find out where the mana is going."
He glanced over his shoulder at the group of carnivores beginning to disperse warily.
"Then we can go back to killing each other."
The visceral hatred had not disappeared; it had merely been displaced by a more urgent and imminent threat. And as the savanna bled silently, everyone in the circle was beginning to glimpse a terrifying truth:
that the war between the clans had never been the real danger.