All was quiet at the foot of Fox Mountain as young Haj began his guarding duties. A lonely Wind gasped through winding gullies as the young man watched nothing in particular, guarding the ritual from a foe that had yet to be named or even theorized to exist.

This, in fact, was a point he had raised before being sent away to watch the sands skitter uselessly across distant rocks.

What a waste, he thought, bemoaning the missed opportunity to watch a spectacle the likes of which was rarely seen by the living.

Unfortunately, neither his tribe's elder nor anyone with a lick of sense seemed to be present when he made himself heard. As, despite his flawless reasoning, he had been shipped off to watch the solstice by himself anyway.

He was a young man on the cusp of his twenties, with dark skin and what, from a distance, might be mistaken for a beard. There was a brightness to his eyes and the way he walked, and, accompanied by an optimistic tint to how he moved through the world, Haj was generally quite a happy person.

Not that he was in a good mood at that moment.

Far from it, in fact.

Haj lay on his back, splayed out on a greyish rock in the shadow of a cliff. After some internal deliberation, he had decided that this was the closest he could bring himself to actually 'looking out' since there weren't really any threats to be looked for.

Not on a day like this, anyway.

On the solstice, there was a ceasefire of a kind in the desert. Predators didn't hunt, the sun didn't glare, and the sand didn't burn at quite the same intensity as usual. It was as close to peaceful as the barren land got, and rather than revel in the beauty of the coming ceremony, Haj had been sentenced to miss it entirely, guarding for things that weren't even there.

He looked up, seeing the sun begin to dim.

Staring directly at it hurt his eyes and would surely have gotten him an earful from his elders if they were there. But they weren't. So, possibly in spite, he glared at the sun indignantly - as though it had something to do with his current punishment.

And honestly, he just couldn't help himself but stare.

There was something utterly enthralling about the great shadow hand in the sky swallowing the sun. Haj himself had never fully understood the phenomenon, but the sheer spectacle of it always left an awkward, breathless lump in his throat, and he couldn’t bring himself to look away.

Unfathomably large fingers closed around the sun in a gloomy veil, and the land began to darken in a way substantially different from how it did at night. The darkness the hand brought was not the absence of light but the smothering of it.

As the hand began to close around the sun, the world went quiet.

And in the stillness, a solemn song rose up from nowhere in particular.

The words were ancient and cracked, as though written on weathered pottery, and they were spoken in a language so old that punctuation and grammar seemed to have not been invented yet. The song was more like a guttural animal cry than anything sung by humans. The lonely howl of a beast, the last of its kind.

It was a complex thing. Notes of loss and quiet loneliness dancing in brilliant frustration with tinges of triumph and pride, all winding together in a captivating tango of joyous sorrow. The feelings the alien song brought fought for supremacy, clashing like fire and water and yet reinforcing one another in a way that made little sense upon first inspection.

However, when one peered deeper, they found that the feelings of loss seemed to stem from the triumph, and the triumph from the loss. They created each other, and yet one soured the other.

Haj was spellbound by the tune, laying back on the rock with his eyes glazed over. Even though he had heard it many times already, it still struck a chord within him in a way nothing else quite did.

He was so entranced, in fact, that he didn't see the second enormous hand fill the sky.

This one was real, or at least realer than the one covering the sun. Scars and warts ran along thick, grubby fingers, and the palm was cracked like aged leather.

It slammed down on his face, and before he could even muster a sound of surprise, his neck made a noise not unlike a heavy boot stomping on dry tinder.

And then the stillness returned.

This time, Haj's breathing was not part of it.

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After taking out his anger on the first lookout, Kopel sank into the rhythm of it. They were usually young, distracted, and dead before they knew what was happening. Very few managed to put up a fight, and those that did... made a mess of it.

He had seen senile old cattle with more awareness than these desert folk. Half the time, they didn't even seem to hear him approach, which was... impressive - considering he stood almost ten feet tall and weighed a number he couldn't count to.

And so, he continued to move up and snap necks, oblivious to the brilliance in the sky above.

Kopel had no room for such worldly miracles. He had seen the solstice many times before and had never much cared for it. Would speaking to ghosts help him overthrow the captain? If not, then he was busy.

Of course, being the kind of man he was, blunt and painfully stubborn, Kopel hadn't managed to hide his ambitions from the captain for long. All it had taken was a few too many forlorn glances at the skiff's steering wheel, and the sly old fox had figured him out.

“Damn that old geezer,” Kopel grumbled as he crept up on another of the watchmen.

Someday, it would be him driving the ship.

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Leo was the first one to spot the mercenaries.

Or, to be more accurate, he was the first to spot them and survive.

What saved him was the direction he was looking. Rather than staring up at the solstice, he had been fiddling with a new knife he had traded some crystals for at the market. Its surface was smooth and silvery, just the right thing to reflect a ten-foot-tall giant creeping up behind him.

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Leo leapt up as though electrified and spun to face the mountain of a man with a beard thick enough to hide a small child in and eyes as black as soot.

Kopel looked surprised to see him, or rather, surprised to have been seen.

"W-Who?" Leo managed to squeeze out the question before his fight or flight kicked in.

Kopel lunged clumsily forward, his vast body doing him no favours in the cramped space Leo had been sitting in. In a straight line, he was quick, but in this sort of craggy, built-up environment, Kopel moved like an enormous ship trying to right itself.

Kopel lurched forwards, with big hands flailing and tree trunk arms closing on empty air.

Leo had managed to duck out from under the bear hug of death and burst into a run before Kopel could move again. He skipped over boulders and rocks like a mountain goat and vanished behind cover in only a few seconds, leaving the giant slack-jawed and furious.

Kopel watched the young man disappear over the rocky terrain and sniffled, rubbing his nose indignantly.

"I would have had him if we was on flat land," he grumbled, turning in a wide arc and stomping back to the main group. "Lucky brat."

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Garot watched Kopel return and storm past the captain with only a grunt in the way of greetings. It was easy enough to tell from his thunderous expression what said grunt implied, and the captain began to make swift orders as the mercenaries prepared for battle.

Garot gritted his teeth and glanced at the pallbearers carrying the cage up the mountain. His hand was now fully immersed in the heat of a thousand suns, and he could tell that whatever was about to happen would not only be catastrophic but soon.

Which was his least favourite kind of catastrophe.

As the second in command, Kopel, approached, Garot began implementing his plan.

If it could even be called that.

Essentially, it boiled down to luck, but Garot was a devout follower of chance and was, once again, all in.

The idea was simple, and - despite failing him many times before - straightforward. All he had to do was bide his time, and, when the time was right for him to make a move, his left hand would grow cold.

But what was that move?

Well, Garot had noticed that one of the pallbearers walked with a slight limp. It was nothing severe, but the big man seemed to lean heavily on his right foot. A little too heavily.

So, if the time was right, if the conditions lined up… perhaps… he might trip. And perhaps… Garot might make that happen.

Earlier, Garot had sidled around the stretcher, winding up beside the man with the limp. They were walking over unsteady, rocky terrain, and surely the chance to trip the man would present itself soon… or so he had thought.

Not once since arriving at the mountain had Garot's hand grown even a little cold, and he was beginning to think that – as usual – luck just wasn't on his side.

However, as he watched Kopel approach the stretcher and the cage beneath, his palm began to cool. It was subtle at first, so subtle that he hadn't even realised it was happening. But with each stride the second in command took towards their little group, his hand grew colder.

It felt like his palm had been dipped in a bucket of ice, and Garot couldn't help but shiver as the huge man stalked towards them with a face like a thundercloud.

Kopel rushed past, knocking into the shoulder of the pallbearer beside Garot. The big men were built like small hillocks and barely flinched as their shoulders collided, with Kopel quickly recovering and rushing further back through the group.

But one of them had a gammy leg.

One of them was not so quick to recover.

And one of them had just stepped on a rock that wobbled.

Garot's heart raced as he lashed out, kicking the rock out from under the pallbearer's weak leg. The giant stumbled forwards but almost caught himself, probably would have, if not for the boot that landed in the back of his knee, folding the limb like a woodsman chopping down a tree.

The giant toppled forwards like a great oak, crashing down with a thump that sent loose rocks careening down the mountainside.

His side of the stretcher dipped, and from beneath the tarpaulin, a twisted metal cage rolled out and landed on its side, smashing into a rock.

The sound it made when hitting the stone was like an old, tinny bell being struck, and it echoed up through the mountain passes and valleys for what seemed like forever.

The entire mercenary group turned to stare in horror at the cage, and none could quite find the nerve to check if it was alright. Even those that didn't know what it was, could tell from their superiors' reactions the severity of the situation.

Finally, Kopel roared like a wounded beast and rushed back towards the cage, picking it up and frantically turning it over to check for damage.

In the meantime, Garot had bolted.

He was already halfway down the mountain before anyone knew he was missing.

And by then, it was too late.

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Leo had never run like he did back up Fox Mountain. He had been selected to guard an upper section, which meant there wasn't far between him and the main encampment.

Nevertheless, he managed to cover the distance in a shockingly short span of time.

He raced towards the mountain peak, rushing through the built-up tents and tearing through the abandoned market towards the summit. There, hundreds were gathered in silent observation as things in the valley below began to move.

"HELP!!" Leo screamed, still too frightened to glance back.

He still wasn’t sure what had attacked him, as even the Racten could not possibly be so fearsome.

But despite his apparent panic, not a soul spared him a glance.

They were possessed.

Not of body, but of mind.

They stared, transfixed, at a distant point in the desert. There, a silvery glow had begun to pulse in cold waves of light that washed over the still sand like a winter wind. Everywhere the light touched, frost formed in tiny rivulets, glistening in the last dying light of the sun.

The temperature started to plummet and didn't stop until a deep, deep chill had sunk its claws into the air.

Every breath taken was biting. Every breath exhaled left a cumulous cloud of vapour behind.

This was not the desert, or at least not as Leo knew it.

This was the desert once a year, on the solstice.

At the centre of the eminent glow, a small creature stirred. Its fur was soft and glassy, as though formed from stolen starlight, with pointed ears and eyes that glittered like gemstones. It flickered on the verge of existence, lying somewhere in the valley between reality and dreams, neither real nor fake, dead nor alive.

A paw landed on frost-covered sand, leaving a perfect imprint in the whiteness. With each step it took, snow began to speckle the golden expanse, falling in chilling silence and landing in soft white drifts that seemed to spit in the face of all that the desert was.

Another paw carried the fox hundreds of metres in a split second, and soon, it was prancing up the mountainside like a ghost… and Leo knew that the fox appeared as ghosts did because he had something to directly compare it to.

After all… When the fox first appeared, it was not alone.

Ethereal silhouettes pirouetted up through the sand, beginning to dance and writhe in eerie abandon. Twisting and snaking as they did, the indistinguishable forms of long-dead animals and humans blurred and warped as they mingled in an immaterial embrace.

And between them danced the fox.

Below Fox Mountain, a carpet of the dead swayed in a breeze only they could feel, existing in some strange time period between their death and whatever was supposed to come next.

Many were burned, and some were mangled or twisted as though torn apart and then put back together without care for what they had once looked like. Gruesome though they appeared, such wounds caused them no pain. The dead did not fear death, after all.

Pawed feet scaled the mountain in great lopes, and in an instant that stretched into forever, the fox was atop its mountain, basking in the glory of its own existence.

It stood there, on a cliff's edge, the world beneath it, the dead beneath it, the living before it.

Glittering eyes faced the gathered tribesmen, who nervously shuffled in place. None spoke. Few dared breathe, and those that did… did so quietly.

Finally, an old man shuffled forwards. In his arms, he held a precious leather bundle wrapped tight with a red string. He cradled it against his chest and quietly made his way towards the fox – which, throughout the whole process, watched him with unwavering curiosity through eyes far too intelligent to belong to a mere beast.

The old man was Ethron, who shuffled in his usual, uneven gait. He inched forwards with the offering that Fran had prepared in his arms, wincing slightly with every step he took. There was a sort of grim determination on his face – as though perhaps the solitary act of walking proved a herculean task to the old man.

The gathered tribes watched in nervous excitement as the old man approached the fox and laid down the bundle at its feet.

A flawless muzzle was lowered, and the fox sniffed the bundle curiously. Finally, in what seemed like appreciation, it pressed its nose to the leather, and the whole package vanished into nothingness.

Ethron breathed a sigh of relief and turned to find Leo racing towards him, the younger Karak having finally snapped back to reality.

At some point, Leo had forgotten why he was afraid. Instead, much like the mercenaries further down the mountain and his fellow tribesmen, he had been ensnared by the fox's beauty, unable to tear his gaze from the unearthliness of it.

And perhaps… those precious seconds wasted would cost them everything…