Silence fell once more after Aaron disappeared among the trees.
He hadn't looked back—not once. Even his shadow seemed to have abandoned him as he left the undergrowth.
Anne stood frozen. The void he left behind wasn't physical—it was deeper, as if a force that had held their fragile balance together had suddenly withdrawn.
Roy slowly sat down on a stump, arms resting on his knees, head lowered.
— "Do you think he's right?" she asked, her voice barely audible.
Roy didn't answer right away. He stared at the ground, brows furrowed. Then he let out a long sigh.
— "I think he understands things we're still refusing to see."
— "You mean… we're doomed?"
— "I mean we're behind."
A dull ache bloomed in Anne's chest. She sat down too, directly on the ground. Her hands trembled slightly. It wasn't fear. It was something else. A quiet kind of humiliation.
— "He looked at us like we were burdens. Dead weight."
Roy nodded slowly.
— "And he's not entirely wrong."
The words almost choked him. But they were true. Since they had arrived here, they had survived—barely. They had run, they had hidden, relying on Aaron's strength, his instructions, his brutal clarity.
— "So what now? We follow him?"
Roy finally looked up at her. In his tired eyes shone something new. Not anger. Not resignation.
Determination.
— "No. We let him go. He won't wait for us. But if we want to survive… we have to change. Get back up. Adapt."
He slowly stood up.
— "If we want our lives to still mean something here, we have to stop waiting for saviors."
Anne looked at him, surprised by the firmness in his voice. Then she stood up as well.The wind blew through the trees. And in that suspended moment, something shifted.Silence stretched again, but this time, it wasn't so empty. There was something new in the air—a fragile yet vivid determination.
Roy glanced toward the forest, where Aaron had vanished, then turned back to Anne.
— "We won't be able to mimic him. He's already too far ahead. But we can learn. Slowly. Methodically."
Anne nodded, jaw tight.
— "He survived alone for a month. It's not just about strength. He observed, tested, understood."
Roy bent down and began tracing lines in the soft dirt with a stick.
— "First, we need to figure out what we know about the monsters. What we've seen, what we've heard. Do you remember the one we fought with David?"
David's name echoed painfully in the air. Anne looked away briefly, but then she answered.
— "Yes. It was fast and strong, but not very tough. It relied more on reflexes and strength than on defense. It always attacked in a straight line."
Roy scribbled simple words into the dirt: Speed, direct attack, aggressive behavior.They continued like that for a long while, listing everything they knew—the monsters, their behaviors, where they appeared, the most dangerous times of day…
Then Roy set the stick down.
— "Next, we need to get stronger. But we won't earn any points until we fight a monster one-on-one."
— "We're not ready for that," Anne said. "Not yet. But we can prepare for it."
She stood, took a deep breath.
— "We need to train. Improve our weapons. Learn to set traps. To separate a monster from the others."
— "We do like Aaron," Roy murmured, a sad smile on his lips. "We observe. We test. We learn."
Anne locked eyes with him.
— "But we do it together. Not like him."
Roy nodded solemnly.…
The grey light of the sky stretched across the tall grasses.
Here, there was no sound. No insects. No wind.
The plain seemed frozen in thick anticipation.
Aaron moved forward slowly, his back slightly hunched, each step measured so as not to snap a single extra twig.
He had left the forest less than an hour ago, and already, the silence was swallowing him.
No cries. No echoes. Just the strange sensation that the very earth was holding its breath.
Then he stopped cold.
A shape.
Not on the horizon. Not in the mist.
There—just beyond a grassy hill.
He would have missed it… if his eyes weren't what they had become.
Over there, barely thirty or forty meters away, something was rising.
An arm.
No—a trunk of wood and stone, jointed like a limb.
Then a leg… no, two.
A torso, a ribcage like an assembly of living beams, threaded with pulsing muscles and bleached bones.
The thing stood slowly, and Aaron realized he hadn't seen a hill… but a back.
He wasn't breathing.
Not out of fear.
But because instinct screamed at him to freeze. Like a child caught staring at a barbaric god.
The Titan turned its head.
No eyes.
Just a gaping cavity in the center of a mask of living stone and bark, from which a deep rumble emerged.
It couldn't see. But it could still see.
Aaron moved a millimeter, imperceptibly.
The Titan stopped cold.
Time seemed to halt as the two beings stared at one another.
They were opposites—one giant, the other small. One fragile, the other solid.
But in that instant, they both knew one of them would die today.
And both were confident it would be the other.
The first to move was Aaron.
He bent his knees without a sound, feeling his tendons stretch like drawn bows.
His lone arm slid down the shaft of his spear until his palm touched cold metal.
The Titan didn't react.
It still didn't see the man as a threat.
It was waiting. Out of curiosity? Indifference? Arrogance? Impossible to say.
One moment, Aaron was there. The next, he was gone.
The distance vanished in seconds. The grass flattened beneath his feet without leaving a trace.
The blade caught the gray light of the sky for a brief instant.
A heartbeat—and the spear struck, diagonally, toward the point he'd chosen: the base of the neck, where fibers of wood tangled with living stone.
The impact echoed.
A deep crack, a vibration through his bones.
The tip sank in… ten centimeters, no more.
Enough to draw blood. Not enough to cripple.
The Titan slowly raised its arm.
Not to strike. Not to crush.
But like one swats a noisy butterfly.
The giant palm sliced the air. Aaron leapt back, rolled.
A column of earth exploded where he had just stood.
He retreated five steps. Man and creature faced each other once again.
Black blood oozed from the wound. But the Titan didn't scream.
It barely stumbled, steadied itself… then took a step toward him.
Just one.
A step that made the plain tremble.
— You didn't hurt it enough, Noraa whispered in his mind. But now, it knows you exist.
Aaron breathed slowly.
There would be no fleeing. No retreat.
He'd had his chance. He hadn't hit hard enough.
And now, he'd have to finish the job… or die.
The Titan took a second step.
Then a third.
Each movement shook the earth. Stone plates cracked under its weight. Its muscles—or what passed for them—stretched like knotted cables carved from flesh and wood.
And despite its mass, it wasn't slow.
Aaron realized this the moment the colossus's hand shot toward him at a speed almost impossible to believe.
Too late to dodge.
The best he could do was raise his steel spear and jump backward at the last second.
Impact.
The shock was monstrous.
The Titan's hand slammed into the spear, and the weapon—though forged from the strongest metal he could acquire—bent under the pressure, groaning with metallic strain.
The gust from the blow swept Aaron away like a tornado.
He jumped back, twisted in midair, barely landed on his feet… but slid several meters, his boots carving furrows in the soft earth.
A dull pain crawled up his arm.
He looked at his spear: bent.
Not broken. Not yet.
— You can't take another hit like that, warned Noraa, her tone sharp and cold.
— "I know," Aaron growled through gritted teeth, eyes locked on the Titan advancing slowly, methodically.
The giant had tilted its head.
It had felt something. Discomfort? Surprise? Anger?
Hard to tell.
But it was moving faster.
Aaron gripped the shaft of his spear tightly. His breathing adjusted, steadier.
Nothing else existed.
The sky, the plains, the horizon… all gone.
Only him and the Titan remained.
The Titan now advanced with new purpose.
Less lumbering. Less curious.
Focused.
Its chest swayed slightly with each step, like a living pendulum.
The wound at the base of its neck—the one Aaron had inflicted earlier—still oozed, but didn't seem to hinder it.
Its joints groaned with every move, like wood twisted to its breaking point.
Aaron, meanwhile, was already moving.
He had repositioned himself, knees bent, body low.
He waited for the right moment.
— You won't win by dragging this out, declared Noraa, sharp as ever. This isn't a battle of endurance. It's a test of execution.
— "Then I'll execute."
The Titan raised its right arm to strike vertically.
A downward blow—simple, brutal—as if it meant to drive Aaron into the ground.
Aaron didn't move.
He waited.
One second.
Half a second.
Then he lunged.
Not backward.
Forward.
He dove under the Titan's arm at the exact moment it descended, sliding through the creature's shadow like a silent arrow.
The earth exploded behind him.
But he was already under the torso, less than two meters from its center of gravity.
He drove his spear into the hip joint, where the bark split to reveal spongy, living matter.
The blade pierced.
A roar.
This time louder. Longer. The Titan bent slightly at the knee.
Aaron didn't stop.
He released the spear, leapt forward, climbed the massive leg like a parasite, using knots and cracks in the living wood as handholds.
Each foothold was a promise of death.
But he climbed.
Higher.
The Titan tried to grab him. Too late.
The giant hand missed, smashing part of its own shoulder with a crack of dead branches.
Aaron reached the upper back.
He grabbed a rocky ridge on the neck, pulled a secondary blade from under his coat—a small serrated dagger—and plunged it between the bark plates, at the base of the skull.
The Titan convulsed.
A wave rippled through its body. A spasm.
Aaron took advantage.
He tore out the dagger, slid down the Titan's back, let himself fall… and grabbed his bent spear from the hip on the way down.
A fluid, instinctive move.
He hit the ground. Rolled. Rose.
And charged again.
The creature swayed.
Its left knee was giving out.
Its breath grew rough, ragged, deep. A cavernous moan.
Aaron sprinted once more.
Not to test.
To kill.
He dashed straight for the torso, spear held horizontally, feet pounding the earth.
A flash. A comet of flesh and steel.
The Titan raised its arm… but this time, Aaron jumped.
He leapt to chest height, twisted midair, and drove the blade straight into the throat, where the skin vibrated with each breath.
A hoarse rattle.
The Titan clutched its throat with both hands, slowly collapsing backward.
Aaron jumped off before the body fell, landing on the other side in a cloud of bent grass.
Then… silence.
The colossus crashed down, sending up a blast of warm air, thick with sap and black blood.
It didn't move.
Aaron, covered in dust, chest heaving from deep breaths, observed the scene.
His fingers trembled slightly.
Not from fear.
From adrenaline.
— You've won.
Noraa's voice was calm.
— You just killed a Titan of the plains, she murmured. And no one will know. Except us.