The ground began to change the farther we followed the river. Soft dirt gave way to uneven stone, the path breaking into slabs worn smooth by time. The sound of rushing water grew louder and deeper until it stopped feeling like background noise and started pressing in from all sides.
Before long, the trees thinned, opening into a wide stretch of jagged rock where the river no longer flowed in a single direction.
It split.
Water spilled across the stone in branching channels, collecting in shallow pools and bubbling pockets that seemed to feed themselves from below. It gushed from small holes in the rock, where fish darted in and out as if some vast network of tunnels ran beneath our feet, all of it forming a tapestry of life sustained by those scattered pools.
But with life came death.
Remains littered the edges.
Fish, mostly. Stripped clean of their skin as though something had taken only what it wanted and couldn't be bothered with the rest.
But that wasn't all. Just beyond the clearing, past where the water thinned and disappeared between the rocks, the world seemed to fall away. The sky opened wide over a distant valley, and somewhere below it all—
The river dropped.
A sheer cliff stretched out before us, where the water vanished and plunged straight into the mist below. The waterfall was massive, the kind that swallowed every other sound and replaced it with its own endless roar.
Beyond it lay a valley smothered in mist, stretching into the distance before rising into jagged, rocky mountains that cut into the sky.
"I… think we found your overlook, Amelia," Owen said under his breath, staring out over the drop.
Scoffing, Henry nodded. "Yeah, turns out we've been standing on it this whole time."
Carefully stepping toward the edge, Ella peered over the side. "That has to be a mile-long drop."
"No," Emily breathed. "It's far bigger than that."
I didn't even try to look over.
Even standing this close, I could feel the pull of the drop, the way the ground fell away too sharply for the eye to follow.
If I went over that edge, I knew I'd be falling for a long time.
Taking a step back, I forced my attention away from the cliff and toward the horizon, where the distant mountains waited. But the moment I followed their slow curve, it finally dawned on me.
"This isn't a valley," I muttered.
My gaze swept across the ridges, tracing the arc of them as they bent inward.
"It's a crater."
The whole thing was a crater, one so massive it stretched for miles, swallowed by a mist so thick it looked as though light itself couldn't reach the ground below.
And stranger still was the feeling that came with it. I felt lighter somehow, as if my body had been eased of some invisible weight, as though I could jump higher, move faster, breathe easier.
Yet even with that strange sense of rejuvenation, I couldn't shake the creeping dread. It seeped into my soul, growing stronger with every second. I tried to push it away, to convince myself it was nothing, but the chill only settled deeper.
Only then did I realize something was wrong.
A moment later, the ground began to tremble beneath us.
It wasn't violent. Just heavy. The kind of trembling that traveled up through the earth and into my legs, warning of something massive before it ever came into view. I turned toward the trees bordering the clearing and saw the underbrush begin to shake. Branches shifted. Leaves rustled. Whatever was coming wasn't trying to hide itself.
Then it pushed through the forest.
At first, all I could make out was its size, a massive shape forcing its way between the trunks. Then it stepped into the clearing on all fours, and my breath caught in my throat. It looked like a bear, if a bear had been made far too large for the world around it. Its body was titanic, thick with heavy muscle beneath a hide so dense I doubted my knife could do much more than scratch it. Every step carried weight, a slow, lumbering force that made the earth feel too small to hold it.
Then it stopped.
It stood there in the shallows, staring at us.
And there was something in that stare I didn't like. Not rage. Not the blind aggression of some mindless beast. It watched us with a strange, unsettling intelligence, as though it were studying us just as carefully as we were studying it.
Then, from deep within its chest, a low growl escaped.
The sound was so deep I felt it before I fully heard it. It rolled across the clearing and sank into the water beneath us, sending faint ripples over the surface, like a warning of what was to come.
Then one of its massive front paws reached down and closed around a nearby stone.
The motion was slow, almost casual, as if it already knew we weren't going anywhere. Its claws dug into the rock with ease, and as I stared at the paw gripping it, my eyes caught on something half-buried in the thick fur along its upper leg.
An eye.
Its iris shifted from one color to the next, a storm of silvers, blacks, and browns swirling together into something deeply unnatural. The sight of it turned my stomach, so wrong that for a second I couldn't even begin to understand how it could exist.
But before I could make sense of it, the beast shifted its weight and pushed itself upward, using the stone for leverage as it rose onto its hind legs. Its full height unfolded in front of me piece by piece, until it towered above us with a size that made the clearing feel suddenly cramped.
From where I stood, I could finally take all of it in.
Its face carried four eyes, set unnaturally across its broad skull, each one fixed forward with a horrible stillness. Beneath them, half-hidden against its massive torso, were two smaller arms folded tightly against its chest, tucked in close as if they served no purpose beyond simply existing. The sight of them made my skin crawl more than its size ever could. They were too human in shape, too deliberate in the way they clung to its body.
But it was the front paws that held my attention.
Each of them had an eye.
One on the back of the left paw. One on the right. Both open, both staring, as though they carried minds of their own.
"Atlas…" Henry's voice quivered. "What do we do?"
Sparing a glance back at him, I couldn't find the words. But one thing I knew for certain was that no matter how fast I ran, there would be no outrunning this thing.
Despite its bulk, I could already tell it was far too fast.
And it knew it.
Its maw opened, almost like it was smiling, and then the impossible happened.
The ground seemed to boil, a strange glow bleeding through the cracks beneath it. The instant my instincts screamed at me to move, a massive stone tore through the air, missing me by a hair's breadth before slamming into a tree with enough force to make it explode.
Before any of us could recover, the ground shifted again—
Another shot, this time from below.
It launched straight toward Henry with terrifying force. He barely managed to twist out of the way, and even then it clipped his shoulder hard enough to send him sprawling with a cry of pain.
Cursing, Amelia spun back, already moving.
Her gun was out in a flash. The crack of the shot split the air as the bullet struck one of the creature's eyes dead on. It roared, a deep, guttural sound that shook the clearing.
But she wasn't done.
A second shot. Then a third. Each one precise.
The beast reeled, one of its palm-eyes blinded, dark ichor leaking from the wound. But it was far from finished.
Using the stone as leverage, it shot forward with unnatural speed, hurling its entire body like a hulking projectile. Its claws lashed out as it passed, barely catching Amelia's side as it tore through the clearing, its momentum carrying it beyond her.
She cried out and clutched at her side, but to her credit, she recovered fast, faster than that creature. Her gun came back up, and she unleashed another barrage of bullets.
Only for a wall of stone to erupt from the ground in front of it, cutting the shots off completely.
"Fuck…"
Then the wall exploded.
Countless shards tore outward, forcing all of us to dive for cover behind stones or into the water around us.
Barely avoiding the worst of it behind a large slab of rock, I scrambled back, my mind racing for a way out of this.
If we ran for the forest, we might have a chance of losing it in the trees…
But getting there was another problem entirely.
Gripping my blade tighter, I studied its hide, doubting how much I could really do against something so monstrous. Then my attention dropped to its joints. The hide there wasn't quite as thick, and if I could cripple its movement, we might actually have a chance.
Darting forward, I watched as the ground boiled once more.
Several spikes of stone shot toward Amelia, only to miss when she stumbled in the water, sending them screaming overhead and out across the cliffside.
"Hey, ugly bastard!" I shouted.
The beast spared me a glance, then fixed me with one of its six eyes before lazily slashing at me with a paw, as if I were no more than a pest it needed to swat aside.
The moment I saw the strike coming, I dropped and slid beneath its massive frame, using the slick stone beneath me to carry me to the other side. The instant I came up, I spun and slashed at the back of its knee.
But its hide was thicker than I'd expected. The blade sank in barely an inch.
"Damn it, not deep enough," I hissed.
I didn't have time to dwell on it.
The creature howled and twisted toward me.
A claw swept low, carving a trench through the earth where I'd been standing a second before. I ducked, rolled, and scrambled out of reach just as another blow crashed down behind me. In the corner of my vision, I caught Owen and Benjamin dragging Henry out of the open, both of them scrambling for what little cover they could find.
I darted right, angling for another strike, but this time the beast was ready for me.
It turned with terrifying speed, its massive arm cleaving through the air in a brutal arc. I threw myself aside as the attack missed by inches.
Even so, the force of it sent me stumbling backward, and I slammed hard into the ground, the impact driving the breath from my lungs. I tried to move, but the creature was already on me, its claws flashing down.
On instinct, I threw up my arms just in time to stop the killing blow meant for my chest.
Pain tore through me.
Its claws raked through muscle and skin, carving deep trenches across my forearms.
I choked on the cry that ripped from my throat.
But just as the thing was about to maul me, another shot rang out.
The beast staggered and lurched away, leaving me sprawled in the dirt and bleeding heavily. Blood poured down my arms, hot and thick, painting them in crimson streaks.
But I couldn't stop.
With adrenaline surging through my veins, I forced myself back to my feet and stumbled forward, just in time to see Amelia struggling to keep it at bay. Yet the damage I'd done to its leg was working. It couldn't put its full weight on it, forcing it to lumber awkwardly, and that gave Amelia just enough room to slip past its deadly strikes.
Still, its powers were more than enough to deal with all of us.
On one of its lunges, Amelia narrowly avoided a killing blow, but before she could recover, several stones the size of bowling balls slammed into her and sent her skidding dangerously close to the edge of the cliff.
No…
Turning my stumble into a run, I rushed forward with everything I had left, hoping I could reach her before the creature finished her off.
But I wasn't the only one making that desperate sprint.
At my side, Benjamin darted forward with a spear in hand and, with a yell, drove it toward the beast, burying the wooden shaft deep into its side.
The thing rounded on him with a monstrous roar, the force of it hitting us like a physical blow and making even the stone beneath us tremble.
But at its flank, Amelia managed to snatch up her gun once more and fire two shots into its side, forcing it to turn back toward her just as I lunged in and drove my blade deep into the same wound I had opened moments before.
Then, with everything I had, I wrenched the blade sideways.
The creature staggered backward. Its injured leg gave out beneath it, and its massive body began to slide.
For a second, it seemed too large to fall. Too heavy to be moved by anything. But the slick stone gave it nothing to grip, and as its weight shifted farther back, I saw something almost human in its eyes.
Horror.
Its claws raked uselessly against the rock as the water pressed against its weight, inch by inch dragging it closer to the edge. It thrashed, scrambling for leverage, but there was none to be found.
Then, with one last desperate heave, its monstrous form slipped over the cliff and vanished from sight.
For a moment, none of us moved.
We looked at each other, wide-eyed and stunned, as if none of us truly believed it was over.
We did it, we—
The ground began to boil.
At first it was subtle, just a trembling beneath our feet, but then cracks split through the stone around us in jagged lines. They spread fast, spiderwebbing in every direction as the entire cliffside began to shift. Loose rock skittered past our boots. The ground buckled and rolled, rising and sinking as if something beneath it was trying to force its way free.
Then the stone surged forward in an overwhelming tide.
Tendrils of rock shot from the mountainside as though the earth itself had taken hold of them, moving with horrible purpose. They lashed over the cliff's edge, plunging down into the depths below.
And then they pulled.
From the abyss, the creature reemerged.
Its massive fist slammed into the cliffside hard enough to send a violent tremor through the ledge, fresh cracks bursting outward from the impact. The eye set into that paw stared at us with naked, murderous hatred. Then its other arm crashed down beside it, bloodied and slick, and with stone twisting around its bulk, the thing dragged itself higher.
Its maw stretched wide in a grin as it took in our stunned expressions.
But then came another sound.
A deep, splintering crack.
I turned toward it, and my heart dropped into my stomach. Far behind us, the mountainside had begun to give way. Great sections of stone tore loose, crumbling before our eyes as the rock that had once held us aloft was ripped free to answer the behemoth's call. Massive fractures split through the ground between us, widening with every second. Chunks of earth collapsed into open air, and the whole cliff groaned like it was tearing itself apart.
"Run!" Amelia shouted.
But even as the word left her mouth, the ground shifted again.
A violent jolt threw all of us off balance as the stone beneath our feet cracked wide open. The ledge split, dropped, and began to fold in on itself. Around us, the mountainside came apart in a roar of grinding rock and screaming stone.
And then the entire cliff gave way.
For one sickening moment, there was nothing beneath us at all.
Then we were falling, all of us and the titan alike, plunging together into the endless abyss below.