The runner hit the edge of camp at a ragged sprint, half-choked on his own breath.
"Theo—" He bent double, hands on knees, sucking air. "They… they found it—"
Theo crossed the distance in long strides, a ledger still in one hand. "Slow down. Who? Found what?"
"Lord Talia," the runner gasped. "Dav, Joel, Tegan. South. Through the crack in the mountain. It's a valley—sir, it's… perfect. River, forest, meadow."
For a heartbeat, the world paused. A valley, a new home.
Then movement resumed again. The knot in Theo's chest loosened and then reformed, hope was heavier than fear, he was starting to realise. Fear just made you run. Hope makes you responsible.
"All right," he said, voice cutting cleanly through the swelling noise. "Break camp. Essentials only first. Logistics Team One—go."
Reno was already shoving inventory slates into packs. Cooks doused fires with practised flicks of wrist and bucket. Medics snapped open crate lids, packing dressings and vials into travel bundles. Childcare teams called names, corralling small bodies into tight clumps, bright scrap-cloth tied around each wrist so they could be counted at a glance.
"We're moving?" a woman asked, half-panicked, clutching a toddler.
"Yes," Theo said. "We have a site. Dav's confirmed defensibility, Talia's approved it. We're aiming to reach the mountain entrance before dark. You'll get details on the way."
Cael materialised at his shoulder like a summoned storm. "Hotheads are already talking about racing ahead," he said under his breath.
"Put them in the middle of the column, make them carry something heavy." Theo murmured back.
Cael's mouth twitched. "Gladly."
The camp folded itself away with a speed that would've been impossible a week ago. Tents vanished into rings and packs. Rope lines came down. Firewood stacks were divided—half taken, half left in neat piles for anyone who might straggle through later.
The forest swallowed them in layers. What had been a campsite became a caravan: carts creaking under crates and blankets. Guards moved at the flanks and rear, eyes scanning the undergrowth. The river to their left murmured unseen; bird calls stitched the air.
Roots snagged wheels. Twice, they had to lift carts bodily over narrow gullies.
There were no beasts, just the rustle of small wildlife staying politely out of sight. Even so, every snapped twig tightened shoulders. Nobody forgot the Horned Beasts or the Stone Rabbits that thought crates were headbutting practice.
The sun was slanting low by the time the trees thinned and the mountain rose up in front of them. The staging camp glowed in the gathering dusk: a loose ring of fires, rough stone markers for a perimeter, latrines already dug.
Reno waved them in, face smeared with dirt and satisfaction. Behind him, the tunnel entrance stood—a narrow, vertical split in the rock, curtained with moss. Even knowing what lay beyond, Theo felt his skin crawl a little.
Talia emerged from near the base of the wall, boots dusty, hair damp with waterfall mist. Her eyes were bright and tired.
Cael met her halfway. "Well?"
Talia's answering smile was small and fierce. "It's our future."
The Leadership gathered on a flattish rock out of earshot—Talia, Theo, Dav, Cael, Brielle, Dale, a couple of elders. They argued over sequence, safety, what to do if something happened inside.
"We go at first light," Dav said. "Three across, rope line down the middle. Torches, solar lanterns, glowsticks. If someone panics, we move around them, not over them."
"And if whatever made that tunnel comes home?" one of the elders asked quietly.
"Then we go faster," Dav said. "And we're lucky the floor's smooth."
Talia didn't laugh. She looked toward the dark crack, expression unreadable. "We'll get them through," she said. "All of them."
Sleep came in fits and starts. The mountain pressed against dreams.
By dawn, everyone was already awake.
Mist curled low over the grass, silver in the early light. The tunnel mouth swallowed sound; even the children, usually loudest at sunrise, were hushed.
"Form up," Theo called. "Three across. Smallest in the middle. Hands free, no loose straps, keep hold of the rope."
Dav took point on the left of the first row, spear in hand. Talia stood on the right, fingers resting lightly on the rope. Between them, a solid stonecutter from the nomad group—broad, calm, used to caves—breathed slow and deep.
"Three across," Talia said, voice pitched just enough to carry. "Stay together. If you're scared, that's fine. Tell the person next to you. Nobody does this alone."
Brielle circulated among the families, smiling at the little ones. "See those lights? If you're worried, just watch the lights and follow them. It's like a game."
When the line was as ready as it was ever going to be, Talia looked up at the grey strip of sky, then into the tunnel.
"Let's go," she said.
The change was immediate. Sound dampened, then sprang back as echoes. Daylight collapsed into a narrow wedge behind them and then vanished as the distance stretched.
The floor underfoot was wrong.
Not rough stone, not packed earth. Smooth. A continuous plane of dark rock, faintly slick with condensed moisture, as if some vast thing had pressed through the mountain and polished it by existing.
Carts rolled almost silently. Drag sleds didn't catch on anything.
"Gods," someone whispered near the back. "That's… that's not carved."
"No tool did this," one of the builders breathed, fingers skimming the wall as he walked. "You'd see chisel marks. Joints. This is—" He broke off, shivering.
"Something lived here," The Professor murmured, voice reverent.
As they went deeper, the darkness thickened. The torches carved out islands of warmth, but beyond their reach was nothing—no hint of walls, no comforting sense of enclosing stone, just a void.
The line moved. Step, step, step, the sound of hundreds of feet overlapping into a steady grind. The rope rasped softly between hands. A cart wheel squeaked and then quieted as someone dripped oil on it by feel.
Even the confident ones went quiet. The weight of the mountain became a physical thing, an awareness of hundreds of metres of rock soaring above, unmoving and indifferent.
Around the two kilometre point—though no one knew the number, only that time had stretched—the first crack showed.
A teenage boy in the middle line simply stopped. His hand clenched on the rope, breathing, high and fast.
"Can't," he croaked. "I—can't. I can't. It's—" His eyes were wide.
The people behind bumped, then flowed around him.
"Hey," Brielle said softly, already there. She must have been tracking the ones who were showing signs of distress. "Look at me, not the dark. You're doing great." gently moving him to the side of the team.
Under Brielle's gentle coaxing he joined the line again, and she moved to the next person. Similar scenes were happening across the whole convoy.
A researcher trailed fingers along the wall, eyes shining. "See the sheen? There's mineral layering here. Crystalline traces. If we could map this—"
"Walk," Dav said without turning. "Research once where settled. The mountain isn't running anywhere."
"Walking," the researcher muttered. "Just… scientifically appreciating as we go."
Elders whispered quiet prayers, not loud enough to affect anyone else, just soft syllables to whatever might be listening. Gaia, old gods, the mountain itself. Children whispered games under their breath, naming each lantern as a star, counting how many "stars" they passed.
Three kilometres. Five. Time thinned, stretched, snapped. The world became breath and footfall and the faint sway of light ahead.
After what could've been hours or days, the air changed.
"Do you feel that?" someone murmured. "Wind."
Talia inhaled. The air wasn't as stale now. Cooler, fresher, carrying the barest edge of something green.
"We're close," she said quietly.
The word slid down the line like a blessing.
The pale smear of light appeared almost by accident—a smudge on the darkness far ahead. For a moment, no one was sure it wasn't a trick of tired eyes. Then it brightened, widened, became a real thing.
Voices lifted, then caught themselves, as if afraid to disturb whatever waited.
The pace quickened, not by command. Feet moved faster, but still in rhythm. Children tugged at adults' hands, but stayed in line. The glow ahead grew from a patch to a mouth.
One row at a time, they stepped out of the mountain.
Light hit like a physical blow. People flinched, squinted, tears stinging reflexively. The air was cold and clean and damp against hot skin, tasting of water and leaves and stone warmed by sun.
Then vision cleared, and the valley revealed itself all over again.
The waterfall roared down the far cliff, a white ribbon thick enough to drown a house, flinging mist across the basin. Rainbows hung and shifted in the spray, translucent arcs that seemed close enough to touch. The river raced away from the fall, cutting the valley in a bright line, its banks soft and green.
To the right, forest rose—tall, old trees with dark canopies, their trunks dappled with moss. To the left, the meadow unfurled in gold-green waves, flowers big as plates nodding on thick stems.
The cliffs wrapped around it all, curving like a stone embrace. The sky above was a deep, rich blue, cloud tatters hanging light and high.
A sound went through the convoy that wasn't quite a cheer and wasn't quite a sob. It was messy and human and everything all at once.
Someone fell to their knees without meaning to. Another started laughing, high and bubbling, then covered their mouth, embarrassed. A child squealed and pointed at the rainbows. An elder just stood and shook, silent tears running tracks through the dust on her face.
Theo was already counting without realising, mentally placing kitchens near water, workshops near stone, housing where floodlines wouldn't reach.
Brielle wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and grinned helplessly at no one in particular. "The kids are going to think this is a storybook," she said.
"Let them," Mara murmured. "We can tell them the horror chapters when they're older."
Talia came out near the front and then stepped aside, turning so she could watch them all emerge. One by one, in three-person rows, her people came into the light. Blinking, crying, swearing, laughing, stunned into silence. Each reaction lodged somewhere deep in her chest.
The valley's breeze brushed her face, cool and sweet, smelling of wet rock and growing things. Underneath, faint but present, the same quiet hum she'd felt since arriving—like something vast sleeping deep in the earth.
Talia let out a long breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding since the world ended.
"Welcome home," she said, to the valley, to them, to the sleeping deity bound somewhere in the bones of this world.