The valley did not sleep that night.
The crack in the earth had widened as though the mountain itself breathed in its slumber, its fractured lungs sighing dust and whispers. The air shifted in restless currents, filled with the faint scrape of stone grinding against stone and, beneath it, the unmistakable rattle of chains. It was faint, buried deep below, but it echoed in the stillness like the heartbeat of something vast and shackled.
They made camp in the lee of a broken terrace wall, where once rice had grown in tiered steps now smothered by ruin. A small fire sputtered against the chill, its flames wavering as though reluctant to burn. Its light was swallowed quickly by mist that had crept down from the peaks, veiling the battlefield in a ghostly pallor. Even so, it felt as if the mist itself recoiled from the fissure, leaving a hollowed space of shadow where the shrine floor had split apart.
