The ground shook beneath their feet.
Not once.
Not twice.
Continuously.
Each tremor rolled through the cracked obsidian plains like the heartbeat of something colossal buried beneath Hell's skin—slow, deliberate, ancient. Ash and embers drifted through the air in lazy spirals, glowing briefly before dissolving into nothing. The sulfurous wind carried the faint metallic taste of blood long since spilled.
The giants came in waves.
They were not true Titans—those primordial horrors still slumbered deeper in the layers—but lesser echoes of that lineage: towering brutes of fused stone, sinew, and corrupted flesh. Some wore jagged armor plates that had grown organically from their hides like tumors of obsidian and iron.
Others were bare-skinned, bodies scarred with sigils that burned a dull, hateful crimson, veins of molten slag pulsing beneath translucent skin. Their roars overlapped into a single, unending bellow that vibrated through ribs and teeth.
