Caliross -

Where Caliross’s lower quarters had once clung to the slopes, there was now a vast, bowl-shaped depression, its edges sharp and raw as a wound. At the bottom, a lake had formed—but the water was wrong. It was the color of old milk, and it didn’t ripple. It lay flat and patient, like a lid.

It was a child. A girl, maybe nine or ten, dressed in a threadbare gray dress. Her hair was the color of dead grass, and her skin was pale—too pale, almost translucent. Through it, Elara could see the faint tracery of veins, and beneath them, something darker. Something that shifted. caliross

Inside, the light was strange—filtered through the cracked rose window, broken into colors that shifted and bled across the floor like water. The pews were empty. The altar was bare. But at the far end, beneath the great mosaic of the Saint Ascending, something moved. Where Caliross’s lower quarters had once clung to

The mountain was hungry.