What an electric feeling it was—like sweet wine poured too fast into the blood. A warmth that clung close, the kind of embrace one forgets until it returns unbidden. The rush of the crowd pressed in on every side, dizzying, as the procession spilled from the bastion gate and rolled forward across the bridge like a single living body.

  I found myself near the front. Authority had demanded it, eagerness had assured it, and so I was among the first across the drawbridge, boots striking solid ground beyond the fortress walls.

  The Natives—no, the Giants, the Others—had pitched their camp at a measured distance from the bastion. Not so near as to threaten, not so far as to seem aloof. A brisk walk would cover it, but only with intent.

  Behind me: cheers, the twang of strings, the clatter of drums, the steady tramp of feet in unison. An impromptu festival spilled out of our hive of stone and timber, a tide of sound chasing us onto the open earth.

  And Grave—Grave rode ahead, high in his saddle. His cuirass and steel were gone, cast aside in the square, yet in their place a bouquet of wild flowers now crowned his form, pressed into his hands by some daring soul. It lent him a strange majesty—commander no longer armed in iron, but in petals, color, and fragrance.

  I looked to the crowd. I looked to Grave.

  And then I looked to our guests.

  The nearest cluster of those olive-green giants had turned their gaze upon us—steady, unwavering. It was a gaze one did not simply receive but endured, like heat from a forge. Even at such distance, beyond the arc of a thrown spear, its weight pressed down.

  Their eyes—yellow, slotted like a goat’s—fixed sharp upon us. Piercing was too small a word. They saw past skin, past cloth, past ceremony. It was as if their gaze looked through this world and into another, and dragged us halfway there with it.

  One rose.

  Seated, its frame had already rivaled the stature of any well-fed man. Standing, it was something else entirely. Two men, mounted one atop the other, could scarce hope to mock its height, let alone its presence.

  My step faltered. Others behind me did the same, the swell of cheers breaking into uneven silence.

  I studied it in hurried fragments: the cloven hooves, half hidden by earth and fur; the coarse skin where patches of hair clung like wild growth; the ears, long and taut, set in the wary poise of a hunting cat. In its hand—no, in its grasp—was a spear, though any human tongue failed to do it justice. More a tree trunk, stripped, carved, and honed to a point fit to split stone.

  And then, the grin.

  It spread across that wide, strange face—unreadable, with the curl of lips that could signal welcome as easily as it promised ruin.

  The rest rose as well—first in clusters, then in unison, like a wave heaving itself upright before it breaks upon the shore. Their number was beyond my reckoning, but no fewer than two hundred. And as they stood upon their wind-scoured hill, their vast frames cast a pall that dimmed the sun. Along the ridge they stretched—dark, elongated phantoms, each shadow a spear aimed down at us.

  Our song faltered at once. What had moments before been a jubilant choir now dwindled to a scatter of whispers, then to silence altogether. The fiddles hung mute, the tambourines stilled. Feet that had stamped in rhythm now shuffled, retreated, broke formation. Many halted outright. Some melted back into the crowd, wordless, leaving the field to braver—or more reckless—souls.

  And there I was, pressed to the foremost rank. Grave alone was before me, astride his horse, the bouquet of flowers now absurd in his hands—a garland for a grave. He did not advance further, but wheeled his mount back and forth, eyes darting from knot to knot among the giants, measuring, calculating, waiting for a spark.

  Only one among us moved with certainty. Sul.

  His step did not falter. Not once. The bell-ringer walked forward, slow and massive, as though he had been born for this moment and nothing else.

  Sul marched forth. His stride was the old Blemmye’s gait—never hurried, never slack, each step carrying the weight of stone but closing distance all the same. His arms stretched wide now, as though to ready himself for an embrace that might span the world. Some among the Natives turned their eyes to him, curious, measuring. But many more fixed their gaze on us.

  Some of those eyes found me. The weight of them was unbearable, as if I had stumbled into a feast and been made to sit at the high table without knowing the custom. Their stare did not flit—it lingered, heavy, unblinking, until my chest burned with the pressure of being seen.

  Sul reached the foremost of their number. His arms, spread like the arms of a supplicant, wrapped themselves around the giant’s legs. And even Sul, our walking wall of flesh, was made small—his bulk reduced to a child at the knees of a tree made of sinew and bone.

  The distance robbed us of words. Whatever passed between them was muffled by the space and the crowd. Grave pressed nearer, his horse’s breath streaming hot and heavy into the chill air, and bent close to my ear.

  “Allemand, what is this?” he hissed, his voice cut to a thin thread. “What silence are we met with? Was this an error?” He dared not let the sound rise to the ears of our guests—or worse, to the congregation that had already begun to doubt.

  “I do not know,” I answered, my throat dry. “Keep faith. Keep steady. Sul is mediating.”

  “I told you a priest’s tongue did not befit you, Factor,” he spat, and this time the venom clung.

  “Faith is not relevant here!” His words were a blade hidden in the hush. “They are silent to our joy. Would they not join us, if it were true?”

  One of the giants sank to its knees before Sul, bowing in that uncanny stillness, its vast eyes locked unblinking upon him.

  Sul lifted his hand, slow and certain, and motioned toward us.

  The giant turned its gaze. Lantern-bright, searing, it fell upon us with such force it seemed to strip the breath from my chest.

  Then it rose, towering, and stepped forward—toward us.

  And it lunged.

  Each stride spanned yards no man could measure in a single bound—four men laid end to end would scarce equal the reach of its legs. The ground itself groaned beneath the weight, a low rumble with every footfall, the earth trembling as though each step were a promise of violence yet to come.

  Its eyes found mine once more.

  And it smiled—that impossible smile, stretched too wide, curving unnaturally along the breadth of its head. A smile too broad for comfort, too strange to read—welcome or warning, it could be either.

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  Its spear—no, its tree—struck the ground in rhythm with its steps. Each impact thundered, the haft driven deep into soil. No iron tip shone there, only sharpened wood honed to a lethal point, brutal in its simplicity.

  Grave’s horse reared and whinnied, eyes rolling white, the animal sensing in its bones the scale of the force bearing down. The crowd too recoiled.

  The joy was gone. In its place came reckoning—a dreadful hush breaking into ragged cries. The Natives had revealed nothing yet, no banner of welcome, no clear sign. Every gesture that reached us bore only weight, tension, and the scent of trial.

  And then—when the earth shook loudest, when the crowd’s murmur cracked into shrieks—the giant halted.

  It stopped directly before us. Before me, and before Grave.

  The vast chest rose and fell in waves, each breath drawn so wide it seemed to stretch the very frame of the creature. Steam burst from its nostrils and mouth, curling in pale ribbons that drifted in the cold air.

  Its eyes moved—first to me, then to Grave. Each glance was like a hammer blow, darkening thought, thickening my mind until it swam with haze.

  The smile never faltered.

  “Brethren,” it breathed. The word scraped, ragged, as though dragged over a broken tongue unused to speech. “You met us. Finally.”

  The smile widened. Mine did not—but the words, strangely tender, eased the dread that pressed on my ribs.

  Grave, regaining himself with the poise of one schooled in courts and ceremony, answered in measured tone. “We do. We hail thee, and greet you. Forgive us that the time has run long, but armed strangers are never welcomed lightly, no matter the assurances our shared friends offer.”

  “You are no strangers to us,” it replied. The grin stretched on, broad as a cartwheel, unsettling in its persistence.

  “We know you. We share the same spirit.”

  Its words—preposterous in any other time—struck dumb both Grave and me. The silence stretched, clinging too long, until even the giant before us seemed to feel the weight of it. Then it spoke again.

  “For God is with you, is He not? We know the same songs. Sul has told us this. He says we are one and the same.”

  Each sentence came halting, every phrase wrestled out on a single breath, followed by a sharp inhalation, a dragging of air that rasped like bellows straining at the seam. Our tongue seemed to demand of it a strength immense, as though every word was a stone pried from the depths of its chest.

  “We praise God, yes, dear friend,” I said quickly, the words rushing from me, eager to grasp at any voice other than Grave’s sharp diplomacy. “We welcome you—yes, we welcome you! Please, let us hold hands in fellowship, fellow sons of God and Joseph alike!”

  At that name the giant’s gaze shifted, the wide smile faltering, its great head lowering as if weighed by sudden thought. For the first time it looked uncertain, almost disarmed.

  “Joseph?” it asked aloud, the sound dragging from its throat with genuine perplexity. The question hung heavy, stripped of menace.

  “We know no Joseph. We know only God.”

  Their forms upon the hill no longer veiled the sun. It was gone—blotted not by their bodies but by clouds, and by a shadow of uncertainty heavier still.

  They did not know our saviour. Not He who had opened our eyes to God. Not He who had taught us the songs.

  “You do not know Him?” I asked, my voice cracking under the weight of disbelief. “The son of God? He walked among us—He is our fellow prophet, surely?”

  “Prophet,” it echoed, the word strange on its tongue. “I do not know the meaning. We only have God.”

  A thunderclap rolled, hard and sudden, punctuating its words as if the heavens themselves bore witness.

  “My friend,” Grave cut in, his tone taut, forcing the reins of command back into his grasp. “You come to our gates. You sing our songs. You wait, patient, for our welcome. Yet you know nothing of our very core? Why have you come at all?”

  The giant’s smile slackened, its vast chest rising in a new rhythm—breath no longer eager, but subdued, almost mournful. Its next words came close to a whisper, stale breath spilling like old smoke.

  “We were told you would be ready.”

  Its eyes dimmed, its voice dropped lower still. “As we changed, so did our mind. We were told you were ready. Are you not? Are you not ready for the end?”

  Grave sprang from his horse, spurs clattering, boots striking stone with a sound like judgment. He strode forward, unflinching, voice thrown like a gauntlet at the giant before us.

  “Speak sense! We have met doom already—the Storm is upon us again! We are cut off! And now you, with your riddles and borrowed hymns—you have been our gnawing uncertainty! Who are you? What do you hope to find in us? What end do we meet?”

  Thunder answered him. Close, sharp, its lightning split the sky and bathed the being in pallid fire. For an instant its features were washed into a mask of white, the renewed rise of its smile veiled by the flash.

  “We are all ending, Friend,” it said, steady as stone. “It comes for us all. We are all to meet it. So says God.”

  And then—

  A scream tore through the wind.

  It was long, ragged, putrid with pain and madness. Not one, but many.

  A cacophony rose, shrieking, echoing from wall to wall. Not from the hill. Not from the giants.

  From the bastion itself.

  And lo, it roared.

  Not like a beast cornered, nor like a soldier mustering courage, but with the force of a true hunter—a cry that split marrow, that belonged to the chase, the kill, the feast of blood.

  The giant before us bellowed, its voice rolling over the field in raw harmony with the screams still tearing from behind our walls. Whether in defiance or in dreadful communion, none could tell.

  “The presence is here! They are changing now!”

  And then it leapt. No heed for us, no glance spared—its whole frame thrown forward toward the bastion.

  The crowd broke as best it could, scattering, diving, clutching children, dragging kin aside. Those few still in the square pressed themselves flat as the bulk thundered through, a living avalanche given legs.

  The gate ahead was choked with bodies—old and young, singers and soldiers alike, a press of humanity in terror. No passage lay open to such a form without ruin.

  So it chose another way.

  With a bound it sprang, finding purchase on the sheer stone, then heaving its mass upward with a wave’s momentum. One great hand seized the ledge, and the fortress groaned like a struck bell. Thousands of pounds of stone and mortar, labored over by decades of masons, gave way like chalk.

  The bastion shuddered under the weight of its arrival.

  And the scream did not relent. It stretched on, warping into a choir of agony—pain twined with some hidden malice, a sound like meat torn from bone while the carcass still lived.

  Behind us the Natives answered, their voices no less thunderous. A storm of their own: spears driven to earth in cadence, feet pounding into rhythm, roars splitting the air—some pitched high, shrieking like beasts, others deep and guttural, bellowed from caverns of lung.

  But all in union.

  “Factor,” Grave snarled beside me, his voice breaking against the din, “what the hell has been unleashed?! What devilry is this, in our own camp?”

  And then, like a knife through fog, memory struck. The words of an angry priest, spit at me in some roadside village that now felt a lifetime gone:

  “They turn. They break from within.”

  Heat flushed through me, my skin numbing even as it burned.

  “The Storm does not pass through them—it stays. It festers. And it spreads.”

  “It is the Touched,” I whispered, the last of my strength drained from me, my voice scarcely more than breath. My eyes lifted skyward.

  Above us loomed a sky the color of dying embers, rolling, alive with lightning that split through the clouds in brief, jagged flashes. A vault of dread pressing down, as if heaven itself had caught flame.

  Grave’s gaze met mine, unflinching. His teeth ground together, jaw clenched so tight it showed through the combed bristle of his beard. The fire in his eyes matched the storm above, a fury equal to the heavens.

  “YOU let them in, Factor!” His voice ripped out, every syllable honed to a blade. “You begged for their entry, for mercy! And what has mercy wrought upon us?!”

  Then he wheeled without pause—vaulting back onto his horse, spurring it into motion. The beast reared, screaming, then thundered forward, past the tattered remnants of our festivities, through the gate and into the shrieking maw of the bastion.