The savanna woke sick.
Mukhar felt it before he saw it.
In every step.
The ground no longer answered the same way. There was no resistance. No pulse.Only a dry emptiness creeping up his legs like a dead echo.
Mana was fading.
And with it… everything else.
He raised his gaze.
The circle of monoliths still stood—ancient stone, ancient blood, ancient memory. Too many deaths had taken place there to ever call it neutral.
And yet… they had all gathered.
No one had come unarmed.
Mukhar advanced.
Each step he took imposed silence—not out of respect, but out of weight. When he stopped at the center, his shadow swallowed the monoliths. He did not look at the carnivores. Not yet.
First, he breathed.
The air was wrong.
Then he struck his spear against the stone.
The sound spread—dry. Final.
"Yield and abandon the savanna."
He did not raise his voice.
He didn't need to.
"Or you will die."
A low growl rippled through the circle.
Mukhar slowly turned his head.
Now he looked at them.
Hunger. Rage. Wounded pride.
The same as always.
A lion spat on the ground.
Ravik stepped forward, without crossing the invisible boundary.
"There's no difference," he said. "Dying here or dying out there—it's the same."
Mukhar held his gaze.
Stubborn. Predictable.
"Then you will die here."
The murmur grew.
Behind Mukhar, the herbivores stirred. He didn't need to turn to know. He could feel it in the air:
A dead child.A devoured mother.A body crushed in flight.
They weren't words.
They were shared memories.
"Don't offer them a way out," said Veras of the Golden Horns, his voice breaking. "They don't deserve it. My son watched them devour his mother."
From the other side, a hyena snapped back in fury:
"I saw my mate die under their hooves while we fled. What forgiveness are you talking about?"
The growls erupted.
The circle trembled.
"They broke the laws!""They hunt without limit!""They're a plague!"
Kael-Sur struck his staff against the ground.
"You violated the order of the savanna!"
The tension coiled tighter… until it snapped.
Mukhar slammed his spear into the earth.
The impact silenced them all.
"It doesn't matter."
Silence.
And for the first time, his voice weighed more than their hatred.
Mukhar let his gaze pass over both sides.
"If this continues… there will be no one left who remembers why this war began."
"They started it!" several roared.
Mukhar did not react.
"That doesn't matter anymore."
He let them feel it. Reject it.
Then he spoke:
"Mana is running out."
This time… the silence was different.
Colder.
Real.
"The plants can no longer sustain ours," he continued. "Each day it becomes harder to recover what we spend."
Some lowered their eyes.
Others clenched their fists.
But no one denied it.
"Can't you feel it?"
They could.
All of them.
Mukhar drove his spear into the ground.
"The mountains… are not losing mana."
That piece of information struck hard.
A murmur swept the circle.
Yhalir, leader of the leopards, spoke with contained fury:
"The Calamity is dead."
The air froze.
"UR'KHAAL… the Devourer of Mana," he continued. "Everyone heard its final roar."
The herbivores paled.
"That's impossible…""It was a limit…""Nothing could hunt it…"
A hyena let out a low laugh.
"And yet it fell."
The world… had changed.
Mukhar understood it in that instant with absolute clarity.
This wasn't just scarcity.
It was something worse.
Something that broke the rules.
"I propose a truce."
The word fell like a stone into still water.
Immediate reaction.
Growls. Tension. Rejection.
Mukhar did not move.
"Temporary," he added. "Until we understand what's draining the mana."
He looked directly at Ravik.
"After that… you can try to kill each other again."
A long silence.
Heavy.
Inevitable.
"And what stops you from betraying us?" Ravik asked.
Mukhar held his gaze.
"Nothing."
The murmur returned.
But this time… with doubt.
"But if you refuse," Mukhar continued, "you won't have to worry about betrayal."
He let the sentence die on its own.
The sun was already high.
The heat fell without strength.
The savanna cracked… empty.
Mukhar waited.
Not out of patience.
Out of certainty.
At last, Ravik took a step back.
Small.
But enough.
Mukhar did not smile.
He had gained nothing.
"Then it's a truce."
No hands were shaken.
No weapons lowered.
But no one attacked.
For now.
Mukhar turned and returned to his own.
He felt their gazes before they spoke.
"Why?" Kael-Sur asked.
Mukhar didn't answer immediately.
He looked toward the distance.
The mountains.
Where mana still breathed.
Where the Calamity had fallen.
Where… something had awakened.
"Because this," he said at last, "is no longer a war."
His eyes hardened.
Ancient. Cold.
"This is the beginning of the end."
He paused.
And for the first time… he let out what he truly thought.
"When we resolve the mana…"
His gaze crossed the horizon, toward his enemies.
"Then we will wipe out that plague."
The hatred had not disappeared.
It had only… been postponed.
And that made it far more dangerous.