It began below.
Not at the peaks.Not in the dense forest.Not where the Mother Tree breathed.
But in the gray band.
The land that was no longer savanna…yet not quite mountain.
First came the tracks.
Large, open footprints, with no attempt to hide them. Not patrols. Not scouts. Families. Awkward burdens. Repeated routes. The herbivorous demi-humans began to settle along the lower terraces, where the slope still allowed digging and the air no longer burned the lungs.
They built no walls.
They drove stakes into the ground.Stretched ropes.Marked boundaries with stones and ancient symbols.
The kind of settlement that does not defy…but does not ask permission either.
From a high ledge, Lusian watched.
He used no magic.He sharpened no senses.He simply looked.
Selvryn stood beside him, motionless like a root exposed to the wind. Her eyes swept across the camps with surgical precision: makeshift pens, small fires, children sleeping together for warmth.
"They're not advancing," she said at last. "They stopped where the ground still doesn't answer."
Lusian nodded.
"They know where the invitation ends."
For days, nothing happened.
The herbivores cultivated.Gathered.Grazed without lifting their gaze more than necessary.
When one of them looked upward, it was with respect. Not desire.
Selvryn frowned.
"The Tree tolerates them."
"No," Lusian corrected. "It ignores them."
That was more dangerous.
To ignore meant no decision had been made yet.
Weeks passed.
The settlements grew with painful slowness. Elders brought in on carts. Younglings wrapped in worn cloth. The youngest guarded the routes—not for war… but for fear of being seen.
None crossed the natural boundary.
Not a single track higher.Not a single fire on the slope.Not a single prayer directed toward the forest.
From above, the Mother Tree remained silent.
But the savanna… did not.
The reports came without urgency, as tragedies often do before they know their own name.
Carnivorous herds moving without direction.Territories abandoned.Failed hunts.
Prey that was no longer there.
One night, as the wind descended carrying dry dust, Selvryn spoke without taking her eyes off the valley.
"They're not being followed."
"Not yet," Lusian replied. "They're counting."
She turned to him.
"And us?"
Lusian kept his gaze fixed on the camps below.
"As long as they don't climb the mountain…we are not part of this."
The silence that followed was not comfortable.
Because they both knew the truth no one spoke aloud:
The mountain had already been chosen.Only the one who chose it remained unknown.