[You have initiated the Trial of Titan]

  [Titan used Earthshaker]

  The notification appeared across Clive's vision just as Titan raised one massive foot. The mountain-god's heel came down like a falling meteor, sending shockwaves rippling outward through the bedrock.

  Clive staggered as the tremors reached him. Cracks spread across the ground in spiderwebs, racing toward his position. Anticipating the worse, he yanked his sketchbook out, desperately flipping to a page he prepared earlier.

  "First lesson," Titan's voice boomed. "The earth obeys me.”Titan stomped again and the ground beneath Clive’s feet split apart, sending him tumbling into a hole. He twisted as he fell, the sketchbook's pages fluttering in the rushing air.

  Fear clawed at Clive’s inside as he fell into the darkness. Such overwhelming power. So, this was what facing a god felt like.

  But as he fell, his mind sharpened. The rushing air, the approaching darkness, all of it crystallized into a single thought. There was nothing to fear. This was an opportunity. He never liked gods. Now he had a chance to surpass them.

  Titan wanted him to learn the earth’s obedience. Fine. He’d learn. Then he’d teach the mountain something in return.

  The fluttering pages settled onto the drawing of a rope.

  [Draw: Rope with steel claw]

  The rope materialized between his hands as the stone walls blurred past. Without hesitation, he hurled the clawed end upwards. The metal talons scraped against the edge before biting deep into the stone.

  The line snapped taut. Pain shot through his shoulders as his fall jerked to a halt, hemp fibers burning against his palms. He hung there for a moment, breathing hard, then began hauling himself up hand over hand.

  “Hmph, so you’re not completely useless. But let’s see how you handle this.” Titan said.

  [Titan used Earth Spike]

  The moment Clive reached solid ground; Titan’s voice rumbled through the space.

  “A test of your reflexes.”

  Titan stomped the ground in rapid succession.The earth bucked like an angry horse. Clive rolled sideways as a pillar of stone erupted where he'd been standing, then kept rolling as more spikes burst from the ground in rapid succession. The air filled with the grinding roar of stone splitting stone, and chips of rock peppered his face as he dodged between the deadly protrusions. One spike grazed his shoulder, tearing fabric as it shot past.

  [Titan used Landslide]

  Titan’s fingers sank into the bedrock as if it were clay. He lifted, and the entire strata of earth peeled away from their foundations.

  The ground beneath Clive tilted forty-five degrees, sending him sliding down the newly formed slope as loose stones and debris tumbled alongside him. Sharp fragments struck his ribs and shoulders, pounding him with harsh blows.

  This was ridiculous.

  Clive grabbed his dagger and slammed it into the tilted ground. Sparks flew as steel scraped granite, but the point found a crack and held. With his free hand, he manifested another dagger from his sketchbook. Now he could climb—one blade at a time, driving steel into stone, hauling himself up.

  [Achievement earned: Cliffhanger. +1 to Dagger Mastery when used for climbing.]

  "Resourceful," Titan said. " But what happens when up and down lose all meaning?"

  [Titan used Earthwheel]

  Titan grabbed the edge of the tilted ground. His arms flexed, and the entire slope began rotating like a massive flywheel on an invisible axis.

  Clive clung to his handholds as the world spun around him. Up became sideways, sideways became down, then up again in a nauseating cycle. His stomach lurched with each revolution.When the rotation finally stopped, he found himself at what had been the slope's base—now the top of level ground. He pulled his daggers free on unsteady legs, his vision still spinning from the disorientation.

  "Still standing?" Titan said. "Let's see how you handle the breath of the deep earth."

  [Titan used Breath of the Deep]

  Superheated steam erupted from a hidden vent, missing his face by inches. The scalding vapor turned his cheek red with heat. More vents dotted the ground ahead, each one capable of cooking him alive.

  "These vents reach down to the very core," Titan continued. "One misstep, and you'll learn what true heat feels like."

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Clive blinked hard, trying to clear his vision. The world still spun at odd angles in his peripheral vision. He forced himself to focus on the steam vents, watching for the pattern through his disorientation. Three seconds of steam, two seconds of silence—or was it four and one?

  His head throbbed as he tried to count the rhythm while fighting off waves of vertigo.He couldn't afford to wait for his balance to return. Clive sprinted forward on unsteady legs, diving and rolling between the eruptions more clumsily than usual. Steam scalded his back as he barely cleared the last geyser, his timing off by precious milliseconds.

  “Still standing? Most would have fallen by now. But running from steam hardly makes you worthy.”

  [Titan used Storm of Stone I]

  The sky darkened overhead. Not with clouds, but with a growing shadow that resolved into countless chunks of falling stone."Let's see how you run from the sky itself."Clive sprinted across the barren ground as the first stones struck around him. Chunks of rock exploded against the earth, sending up clouds of dust and fragments. He zigged and zagged, but there was nowhere to hide in the empty wasteland.

  Desperate, he opened his palette and flicked red paint into the air, hoping to blast through the stone.

  [Paint: Red Fireball I]

  The sphere of flame streaked upward, detonating among the falling stones. For a moment, he thought he'd found a solution—until the burning rocks began raining down. Now he faced flaming meteors that set the ground ablaze where they struck.

  Titan's laughter rolled across the landscape. "Brilliant strategy, pictomancer. Now you can burn as well as be crushed."

  Clive raised his arms to shield himself from the rain of stones. They hammered against his forearms and shoulders, causing intense pain. But through the battering, his fingers caught fragments that broke off on impact. Rough surfaces scraped against his palms. Granular textures ground between his fingers like coarse sand.

  "Sandstone," he realised, remembering Professor Hendricks' dry lectures during his geology elective. The old man had droned on about porosity and permeability while Clive had sketched in the margins of his notebook.

  Sandstone was a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized silicate grains, cemented together by another mineral.

  Grains. Cemented.

  Those boring facts clicked into place. Sandstone was porous, full of tiny spaces between the cemented grains. Get enough water into those spaces, and the binding would weaken. The rock would crumble under pressure.Clive swept his brush over the blue section of his palette. He drew quick, flowing strokes through the air, curved lines that mimicked rushing water.

  [Paint: Blue water stream I]

  [MP Cost: 3 + 1/min]

  High-pressure jets of water erupted from his brush, arcing up to meet the falling stones. The streams struck the sandstone chunks mid-air.

  Some stones shattered immediately, exploding into clouds of damp sand that scattered on the wind. Others absorbed the water as they fell, their surfaces darkening and softening. When these sodden chunks finally hit the ground around him, they crumbled on impact.

  “Clever,” Titan’s voice carried grudging respect. “You understand the earth's nature better than most. How long has it been since someone made it this far? But one insight does not make a master.”

  [Titan used Storm of Stone II]

  The falling stones began to change mid-air, their rough sandstone surfaces darkening and hardening. What had been porous rock became dense granite, immune to water's weakening touch.

  Clive's water streams struck the transformed stones and simply bounced off, achieving nothing but wet splashes. The granite chunks crashed around him with renewed force. One caught him in the ribs, driving the air from his lungs. Another glanced off his skull, leaving his head ringing.

  Damn it.

  Clive ducked as another granite chunk whistled past his ear. His water streams were useless now, but the failed strategy had given him an idea. Granite might be immune to water, but there’s more than one way to cause an erosion.

  He dipped his brush into the red paint.

  [Paint: Red Fireball I]

  A sphere of fire flew upwards to meet the falling stones. The flames struck granite chunks mid-air, superheating their surfaces in seconds. The stones glowed cherry-red as they continued their descent.

  But Clive wasn't finished. The moment the heated stones passed through his fire streams, he switched back to blue paint. His brush swept across the palette.

  [Paint: Blue Hail I]

  Chunks of ice materialized in the air above, falling like frozen hammers onto the red-hot granite. The temperature differential was catastrophic. Thermal shock raced through the stone as the outer surface contracted violently while the inner core remained expanded from heat.

  CRACK.

  The stone split down the middle, both halves tumbling harmlessly past him. Soon the air filled with the sharp reports of fracturing granite as stone after stone succumbed to the radical temperature change.

  Fragments rained down, eroded to small chips that barely stung. Clive weaved between the harmless falling pieces, swaggering forward to Titan.

  "What's the next lesson, teacher?"

  Titan's laughter rolled across the wasteland like distant thunder. “Fire and ice in perfect harmony. How long had it been since I felt alive again? Well done, pictomancer. You have earned my respect."

  The mountain god fell silent, his gaze studying Clive. Then he spoke again, “if you truly want my blessing. Answer me this. Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Why are you truly here? I know you are not of this world. Why does any of this concern you?”

  "Because I watched injustice all my life," Clive replied. "The strong bully the weak. The wealthy exploit the vulnerable. Those with power abuse it, while those without suffer the consequences. And now some megalomaniac entity turns people to stone while another poisons a sacred marsh. The pattern is the same, only the scale has changed."

  His eyes met Titan’s gaze without hesitation.

  "You speak of justice as if it were a universal constant, like gravity," Titan observed, "when it is as changeable as the weather to most mortals."

  "Perhaps," Clive acknowledged. "But some truths remain. Suffering should be alleviated when possible. The innocent deserve protection. Creation matters more than destruction. Aren't these principles old enough even for you to recognize them?"

  Titan laughed. "Oh, the audacity of the young. Very well, Pictomancer. You intrigue me—a creator who speaks to a creator. Show me what you would make of this world, and I will lend you my strength to shape it."

  [You have overcome the Trial of Titan ]

  [You have received the Blessing of Titan]

  Earth Attunement (Passive Ability) - Acquired!

  You can now perceive and navigate through the Warden's mist without suffering ill effects

  Gain resistance to corruption and poison effects

  Geological Insight (Passive) – Acquired!

  Effect: +20% earth damage and ability to identify weak points in stone structures and earth-based defenses

  I have watched civilizations rise and crumble to dust. Yet still, some mortals surprise me. These are the ones I remember when the world grows quiet.

  — Titan