Race Across a Falling Giant

The giant’s hand descended like an avalanche, a slab of living stone that blotted out the sky. The roar of displaced air was the sound of approaching doom. Beneath that crushing shadow, time didn’t slow; it congealed into a suffocating syrup. Every mote of dust, every flake of falling moss, hung suspended in the air as a witness to the inevitable. A knot of pure panic tightened in Nicolas’s throat, and his muscles locked, frozen by the primal certainty of his own obliteration. But Suge's voice, as sharp and clear as steel striking steel, shattered the momentary paralysis.

“SPLIT! LEFT AND RIGHT!”

The command was less an order and more a reflex trigger. Without a word, Katrina launched herself toward the left side of the golem’s leg with impossible agility, her body a fluid shadow flowing across the rocky surface. After a flicker of hesitation, Nicolas scrambled to the right. A ghostly overlay of the hand’s point of impact had flared in his mind, yanking his body like a marionette in the correct direction.

Suge did not move.

Just as the colossal fingers were about to crush him, he slammed his palms flat against the golem’s leg. “I didn’t want to do this, old friend,” he murmured. A visible, shimmering distortion of Kuvarsoya energy erupted from his body, forming a translucent shield. When the stone hand met this invisible barrier, a muffled thump echoed through the valley like a contained thunderclap. The raw kinetic force of the impact was nearly enough to rip Suge from his perch; he gritted his teeth, veins standing out like cords on his temples as a pained grunt was torn from his lips. The shield held, but the cost was immense. The golem retracted its hand, not in pain, but in sheer, bewildered surprise. This, however, did not mean the attack was over.

Its red eyes now burned with a brighter, more furious light. Thrown off-balance, the giant leaned its entire torso against the nearby valley wall. Its intention was horrifically clear: to grind the parasites clinging to its leg into paste, like a colossal whetstone.

“Up! Climb now, move!” Suge yelled, his breathing ragged. “The portal should be on its chest! Go!”

“Easy for you to say!” Nicolas shot back, scrambling for purchase as the valley wall rushed toward them. Dust and loose gravel already whipped against his face, stinging his skin.

At that moment, an image seared itself into his mind. A huge chunk of rock breaking free from the golem’s shoulder, set to plummet directly onto Katrina’s path. “Katrina, left! Rock fall from the shoulder!”

She didn’t waste a fraction of a second questioning the warning. With an instinct born of trust, she threw her body to the left just as a rock the size of a carriage tore loose, shattering the spot where she had just been and tumbling into the chasm below. After a quick glance at the falling debris, Katrina shot Nicolas a momentary, grateful look. “We’re even, journalist!”

“Let’s get out of this first, then we’ll settle the score!”

It was no longer a climb; it was a desperate race against a moving cataclysm. Once they cleared the immediate threat of the valley wall, the golem, realizing it couldn’t crush them, switched tactics. Freeing its other arm from its chains, it began using the tips of its massive fingers to try and scrape them off its body like insects.

“Just above the stomach! I see it!” Katrina shouted. And there it was, dead center in the golem’s chest: a subtle shimmer in the air, a nearly invisible anomaly that swirled like a vortex. It pulsed with a faint, cold light. That was their target.

As the golem’s fingers, each a pillar of stone, swept toward them, Nicolas’s mind flashed again. “Look out! It’s going to sweep from left to right!”

Armed with this knowledge, Suge deployed his energy once more, but with finesse instead of force. He spread a thin, slick layer of Kuvarsoya over the path of the incoming fingers. When the giant digits made contact with the surface, they found no purchase, sliding harmlessly past their targets. Seizing the momentary opening, Katrina yelled, “Now!” and propelled herself upward to a safer ledge.

“We’ll never reach it,” Nicolas said, his voice laced with despair. “It won’t give us a single moment of peace!”

“We can’t keep this up! It’ll get us eventually!” Katrina confirmed, her own stamina beginning to wane.

Suge paused for a second on the surface, his eyes closed as if in deep calculation. “There’s no other way,” he said finally, his voice quiet but absolute. He had made his decision. “I have to bring it down.”

“What?” Nicolas asked, stunned.

“Hold on tight,” Suge commanded, ignoring the question. He closed his eyes and focused his energy, not outward, but inward, deep into the golem’s leg, targeting its joints. He wasn’t creating a shield; he was applying a controlled, internal pressure, just powerful enough to force a catastrophic loss of balance. The golem’s monolithic leg buckled involuntarily, kicking upward at an unnatural angle.

The move caught the giant completely by surprise. Tripped by its own limb, the golem lost its footing and began a slow, inexorable tilt backward. It was like watching a mountain fall in slow motion. The world around them pitched ninety degrees.

“This is our chance!” Katrina yelled over the grinding roar. “We have to reach the portal as it falls! Now!”

“Both of you, take my hands!” she added, her voice a point of absolute certainty in the heart of chaos.

Without hesitation, Nicolas and Suge grabbed her outstretched hands. As the golem fell backward, they began to run, no longer on a vertical wall, but on a horizontal surface that was rapidly descending toward the ground. The portal, its vortex widening, rushed to meet them.

“Get ready!” Katrina yelled.

A second before the golem’s back struck the valley floor with a world-shaking boom, the three of them leaped into the void. At that exact instant, Katrina unleashed her power. Nicolas felt the world’s colors desaturate, the sounds around him becoming muffled and distant. A profound chill enveloped his body as he felt the very texture of reality thin, their forms becoming shimmering and translucent.

The golem’s hand, lashing out in a final, desperate attempt to grab them, passed harmlessly through their now-invisible bodies. The next moment, they plunged into the cold, silent embrace of the vortex.