The northern mountains had already begun to bleed.
What started as distant rumbles three days after the cathedral battle became full-throated roars by the fourth. The peaks north of Sanctum—ancient, snow-capped sentinels that had guarded the kingdom's border for a thousand years—were moving.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Elias watched from a high ridge as the horizon itself shifted.
Entire ridges slid downward in slow, unstoppable cascades of rock and ice. Boulders the size of houses tumbled end over end, crushing pine forests into splinters. Rivers were dammed mid-flow, their waters backing up into black lakes that reflected nothing. The ground trembled in rhythmic waves—each one stronger than the last.
Behemoth walked at the center of it all.
He had left the cellar two nights earlier without a word—only a single nod to Elias and a low rumble that might have been goodbye. Now he was a mountain in motion: seven feet of living granite grown to twenty, then thirty, then taller still. Stone flowed up his legs and across his back in fresh armor; spikes of basalt erupted along his arms; his club had become a slab of mountain itself, edges sharp as fault lines.
He did not speak.
He did not need to.
The northern citadel—the last major Church stronghold outside Sanctum—stood directly in his path.
It had been built to withstand siege engines, battering rams, even dragon-fire in older legends. Gray walls fifty feet high, iron-banded gates, towers bristling with ballistae and holy arbalests. Two hundred loyalists remained inside—knights, inquisitors, a handful of surviving Prelates—clinging to the belief that the Light would yet prevail.
They watched the mountain come.
Horn calls sounded—frantic, overlapping. Ballistae loosed; massive bolts streaked toward the advancing colossus.
The projectiles struck true—then shattered against Behemoth's chest like glass against anvil. Chips of stone fell, but new rock flowed up instantly to replace them.
The citadel's commander—a grizzled knight-captain in gilded plate—stood atop the main gatehouse, banner in one hand, sword in the other.
"In the name of the Lord of Light!" he bellowed. "We shall not yield to shadow!"
Behemoth did not answer.
He raised one massive arm.
The earth answered instead.
A fault line opened beneath the outer wall—clean, surgical, as though drawn by invisible chisel. Stone split. Mortar dust exploded outward. The wall sagged, then collapsed inward in a roar of breaking masonry.
Screams rose from within.
Behemoth stepped through the breach.
Knights charged—spears lowered, war cries ringing.
He swept one arm in a lazy arc.
The front rank vanished beneath a landslide of summoned rock—boulders rolling, crushing, burying. The second rank fared no better; Behemoth's foot came down and the courtyard buckled, swallowing men and horses in fissures that closed as quickly as they opened.
Inquisitors on the inner ramparts raised staves—golden light flaring in desperate binding rites.
The light struck Behemoth's chest.
For one heartbeat it held—holy radiance pushing against primordial stone.
Then the stone pushed back.
Cracks spread through the golden shield. Light guttered. The inquisitors staggered; some fell screaming as their own power turned inward, burning them from the inside.
Behemoth reached the central keep.
One blow of his mountain-club shattered the iron-banded doors.
He stepped inside.
The great hall beyond was lined with banners of the triple cross—white and gold, now tattered and soot-stained. A final knot of defenders—perhaps thirty—formed a desperate shield wall before the inner sanctum where the last Prelates prayed.
The knight-captain stood at their front.
"You will not pass," he said—voice steady even as his hands shook on his sword.
Behemoth looked down at him.
For the first time since leaving the cellar, he spoke.
His voice was the sound of continents grinding together.
Stone does not ask.
He brought the club down.
The floor exploded.
The shield wall vanished beneath a tidal wave of rock—men crushed, armor flattened, weapons twisted into useless metal. The knight-captain was lifted off his feet, slammed against the far wall, and pinned there by a spear of basalt that grew from the floor like a living thing.
He coughed blood.
"Light… preserve…"
The spear tightened.
The light in his eyes went out.
Behemoth stepped over the bodies—unhurried, unstoppable.
The inner sanctum doors were already open—Prelates on their knees, chanting final prayers.
He raised one hand.
The ceiling cracked.
Rock fell in a controlled curtain—burying the altar, the relics, the praying men beneath tons of mountain.
Silence followed.
The citadel was gone.
Only rubble remained—fresh, sharp, smoking.
Behemoth stood atop the highest pile—once again seven feet tall, stone skin smoothing as the excess mass flowed back into the earth.
He turned south—toward Sanctum.
Toward the others.
Inside Elias's mind, Abaddon spoke—soft, satisfied.
One stronghold silenced. Three remain.
But the mountain remembers.
And the mountain marches.
Far below, in the hidden cellar, Elara lifted her head suddenly.
She felt it—the deep, grinding absence where Leviathan's rage had been redirected, now replaced by something heavier, slower, older.
She looked at Elias.
"He's coming back."
Elias nodded once.
The ground trembled—faint, distant, but unmistakable.
The march continued.
And the fractured world trembled in answer.
End of Chapter 28