Within the dark of the jungle, the trees held their breath.
The canopy above swayed with the wind, but no creature dared disturb the slumbering mass beneath. No bird sang. No beast tread close. Even the monstrous fauna of the Dark Continent—creatures bred for chaos and blood—curved their paths away, as if warned by instinct older than evolution. The ground itself bowed, sloped subtly away from the epicenter of stillness.
He was not just asleep.
He was being waited on.
A Giant. A myth. A mistake.
The slumbering figure stretched from ridge to ravine, tangled in root and fog, so still he seemed part of the landscape. But his body was not made of earth. It was made of something older. Something that pulsed in tune with the sun's own rhythm. His every breath stirred leaves in entire groves. Every exhale sang through the stones.
He had dreamed for five hundred years.
But not tonight, he had waited. Not for freedom. Not for revenge. But for an end.
