Simon did not try to capture the deer on the second day. Or the third. Or the fourth.
Instead, he watched.
Each morning, just after sunrise, the white deer returned to the same pond — a wide, shallow mirror nestled among trees, its surface half-frozen, half-still. The creature would approach without fear, step lightly onto the icy edge, and lower its head as if listening to something deep beneath the water.
Then it would vanish into the forest, and by dusk, Simon would find its trail again — always leading toward the cliffs. Always toward the rocks. And always ending in nothing.
No tracks. No sign of passage. As if the earth itself had swallowed it.
Simon began studying its pattern, treating each hour like a riddle. He sketched crude maps in the dirt, marked trees, listened to the birds, memorized the silence. Slowly, he stopped thinking of the deer as prey.
He started seeing himself in it.
Elusive. Misunderstood. Always observed, never truly known.
That shift changed something in him.
On the third night, while hiding near the clearing, Simon blinked — and saw the world differently.
It began around the deer.
Faint at first, like veins of light tracing the edge of its antlers, then winding around its body in soft spirals. Thin blue lines, elegant and pulsing. They moved like breath, like the rhythm of a song only the forest knew.
And they weren't just around the deer.
They came from the pond.
From the ice. From the trees. From the earth itself.
The deer stood frozen, unmoving — and yet the lines moved as if it were dancing. As if something greater was passing through it.
Simon didn't breathe. Didn't blink again for fear of losing it.
He watched for hours.
That night, when the deer walked toward the cliffs, Simon followed again — quiet as shadow.
But this time… it didn't disappear.
It paused near a jagged outcrop of stone, looked back once — and stepped into the rock.
Simon ran to the place.
And there it was.
A cave.
Ragged and narrow, but undeniably there — where no cave had been before. Not hidden by brush. Not camouflaged. Simply… not there until now.
Something ancient stirred in the air. Not sound. Not words. But presence.
Simon stood at the mouth, heart pounding. The cold wind scraped at his cheeks. The trees behind him shifted uneasily, as if urging him back.
But the cave called.
Not with voice. Not with sound. With intent.
It wanted him to enter.
Simon stepped into the cave.
At first, it was nothing more than stone and shadow. The light from the forest faded behind him, swallowed by the narrow passage. The walls closed in, rough and wet, whispering with the slow drip of moisture.
With each step, the air grew colder.
Not the gentle chill of the night forest — but something deeper. Sharper. Like walking into the breath of something ancient that had never known warmth.
He kept going.
His fingers brushed the stone walls, guiding him when his eyes could not. The silence was immense, like the cave had forgotten sound. Even his footsteps seemed reluctant to echo.
Then, ahead, the tunnel widened.
Simon stepped forward into a chamber — vast, silent, and carved with angles that didn't feel natural. Not chaotic, but deliberate. Built.
It wasn't just a cavern.
It was a hall.
The air here was dense, heavy with something he couldn't name. His breath came out in clouds. Frost clung to the edges of the room. At the center stood nothing. No deer. No altar. Just emptiness.
Then — it happened.
The world erupted behind him.
A sound like an explosion shook the chamber — violent, deafening, primal. The kind of sound that made the body flinch before the mind understood. Stone shattered. The floor quaked. Dust and shards of rock tore through the air.
Simon spun, stumbling backward.
From the entrance, something had slammed down — sealing the narrow passage behind him in a storm of debris and fractured light.
When the cloud began to settle, he saw it.
A creature. Nearly two and a half meters tall. Its body was made entirely of deep-blue stone, streaked with glowing veins of crystal. Its form was vaguely human, but too massive, too perfect — like a statue given breath by the will of gods. Its arms hung like anchors. Its shoulders scraped the cavern's curve. It stood motionless in the rubble, as if it had been there forever and only now decided to move.
Simon had seen drawings like this before — in the oldest of the clan's books, carved into faded stone and sketched on brittle parchment no one read anymore.
A guardian of the old world. A relic of another age.
A Stoneborn.
He stood still, breath shallow.
This wasn't chance.
The guardian had been waiting.