As he moved nearer, the illusion broke.
What he had thought were sheer cliffs were actually gigantic, translucent fins rising from the creature's sides—massive structures like frozen sapphire waves reaching toward the sky. Patches of skin gleamed between them: layered blues and greens, with streaks of pale gold running like rivers under the surface. The texture of the "stone" shifted with each slow pulse that rolled through the ground.
Near what he had taken for the summit, a colossal eye slid half-open.
It glowed faintly, a deep, endless light peering through from the inside. Its iris was a storm of maroon and amber, swirling in patterns too large and slow to grasp all at once. Just that partial opening was enough to make him feel small in a way no monster had ever managed.
The mountain inhaled.
The ground rose beneath his feet in a slow, unstoppable lift. Clouds that had been drifting lazily were drawn inward, pulled toward the massive form. Then, a moment later, they billowed outward on the exhale, rolling away in thick waves. The world's rhythm synced to that breath—earth, air, and even the light pulsing in time.
This was no mountain.
It was a living thing. A creature so large that entire ranges and valleys clung to its body like barnacles. A Cataclysm Beast—part leviathan, part continent, part ancient god. Every monster he had fought until now felt small compared to this. Ants biting a sleeping giant.
Its fins ran for kilometers along the ridges, glimmering in the pale light like the wings of some dead holy creature pinned to the sky. Spines, thick as towers and coated in silver barnacles and moss, broke the surface of its body. Strands of kelp-like growth dangled from them, swaying in invisible currents. In the far distance, where the land seemed to blur into the horizon, he could just make out the faint arc of a tail, studded with stone and coral, disappearing into distance.
Its mouth was half-buried beneath rock and vegetation.
From afar, it might have passed for a colossal cave mouth—a stone gate cut into the base of the "mountain." As he drew close, he saw the truth. The arch was bone, not stone. Teeth, each one larger than a tower, formed a jawline of crystal-white blades. They were as beautiful as ice-carved sculptures and as deadly as executioner's axes. Inside, what had looked like stalactites were actually fleshy formations and long, glowing tendrils that hung from the palate, swaying with each slow breath.
Awe and fear twisted together in his chest until he could barely tell them apart.
This was not simply alive. It was a force of existence. A being whose smallest movement could crack continents, whose idle dreams might write or erase entire worlds. Standing before it felt like standing at the edge of creation and destruction at once.
Yet beneath the terror, he felt something else: a pull.
Respect. Recognition. A strange, quiet sense that this was not just a beast, but a wounded god lying half-submerged in the world, caught between sleep and waking.
He stepped forward.
What looked like stone underfoot yielded slightly when his weight pressed down. The "rock" shifted with the slow, deep rhythm of breathing. As he walked, the texture changed. Rough, scale-like patches softened into smoother membranes, draped with glowing strands that resembled underwater plants. Warm currents brushed against his skin, flowing up from fissures in the creature's hide, carrying the taste of salt, metal, and minerals drawn from the bones of the world.
Teeth loomed overhead as he approached the vast arch.
Each one was a crooked tower made of crystal and bone, edges gleaming with a pale light. They hummed faintly with old power, as if they remembered everything the creature had ever eaten. Shadows pooled between them like caves.
He passed beneath the bone arch and stepped into the beast's mouth.
Scale dissolved into enormity. The interior space swallowed him. The ceiling rose far above, lost in dim, shifting light. Fleshy stalactites hung down, thick and ridged, studded with pearl-like growths that glowed softly. Strange, jellyfish-like organisms drifted and pulsed between them, trailing tendrils that left streaks of ghostly light in the air.
Liquid radiance ran slowly down the walls, following channels in the flesh like glowing rivers. Along the floor and the broad, uneven tongue, grooves had formed, carrying streams of blue-green luminescence deeper inside. In some pockets, the streams gathered into pools full of tiny, writhing creatures—half fish, half ember—that flickered and dimmed like breathing embers.
The air inside was warm and damp. Each breath he took vibrated faintly with the creature's heartbeat. The sound was everywhere, a slow, enormous drumbeat that ran through his bones. Strange birds perched on folds of flesh that rose like ridges; their wings opened and closed in slow, measured beats, stirring the heavy air. Moss and coral clung to the walls and edges of organic ridges, forming natural bridges over chasms that plunged down into darkness. Every step he took echoed softly off living bone and pulsing tissue.
Far below, in the depths of the creature, the belly stirred.
He saw, through openings in the living architecture, giant valves opening and closing in slow, solemn cycles. Beyond them, lakes of swirling acid glowed with soft internal light, their surfaces broken by floating "islands"—chunks of hardened tissue and bone drifting lazily in circles. Some islands carried entire ecosystems of fungi, moss, and insect-like things that had never seen the outside world.
It was quiet. But it was not empty.
The quiet here felt full—packed with memory, with old sounds that had sunk into the walls. It was the silence of a place that had seen too much to keep speaking about it.
Noctis realized that he was not just inside a creature. He was inside a world. A wandering world that had lived through ages. A wounded world that now lay half dreaming, half awake. A world whose last breath, if it came, might tilt the course of reality.
He reached out and placed his hand against the inner wall.
The surface was warm and slightly yielding. Beneath his palm, something thrummed—deep and steady. The contact opened a door. Images surged through him, not as clear pictures, but as layered impressions:
Titans like the giants he had fought now, clinging to its back, tearing at each other in battles that shook mountains.
Storms ripping across its length when it flicked its tail, whole skies splitting and mending in its wake.
Planets shuddering and sliding into new orbits as it drifted past, their paths forever altered by a passing shadow.
He felt civilizations rise along the ridges of its body—cities built on its back, rituals enacted along the lines of its spines, temples carved into the walls of its mouth. He felt them fall, crushed by wars, swallowed by storms, washed away when it turned or dove. He felt them built again in different forms, by different hands, all under the same slow, indifferent gaze.
Now, though, the power that had once rolled off it in tidal waves felt dimmed.
The light running through its veins was softer, more fragile. Its heart still beat, but slower. The great valves cycled with effort. Movements that had once remade landscapes were now shallow shifts just enough to keep the internal seas from going still.
He listened.
To the roll of its guts as they moved acid and energy. To the subtle creaks and groans of internal structures adjusting under their own weight. Each sound reminded him strangely of stars being born in nebulas, of suns cooling, of galaxies spinning down.
The beauty of it struck him hard.
Not a gentle beauty. A terrible one. A beauty that came from seeing how small he truly was against something this vast, and yet how clearly his presence still mattered here, in this moment. The creature's state, its wounds, its slow breathing—none of it lied.
Noctis walked deeper.
His footsteps echoed off living bone. He moved past the glowing acid lakes, past coral forests that opened and closed like lungs. Branches of bone arched overhead, forming cathedral-like halls. Eventually, he reached a place where the glow faded.
Darkness thickened ahead of him.
Not simple absence of light, but a concentrated mass of it, hanging in the air like liquid shadow. Even the radiant growths along the walls stopped at its boundary, their light bending away. The darkness shook. Not once, but over and over, like a thousand distant earthquakes rolling together. The air grew heavy, pressing down on his shoulders and chest. It vibrated with a brightness he could not see, only feel—thick as molten metal poured into a mold.
Anyone else would have turned back.
Anyone else might have dropped to their knees under the weight or run blindly away.
Noctis stood still.
He let the pressure settle around him, through him. Sound sank into his bones, humming in his ribs and skull, turning his body into part of the echo.
Then a voice rose.
It did not come from a single direction. It was everywhere at once—in the walls, in the air, in his chest. It was older than silence, heavy as gravity, wild as falling stars tearing paths through the sky.
"Truly interesting—an unknown being."
In the depths of the dark, a point of light flickered into existence.
It swelled rapidly, unfolding into a star suspended beneath the creature's vast heart. Its light was brilliant and clean, almost painful in its purity. With each slow "breath" the Cataclysm Beast took, the star's glow expanded, washing over the nearby walls and revealing impossible structures: spirals carved into living bone; runes etched by time itself into tissue that should never have held writing; murals formed from overlapping veins and scars that depicted battles, births, and losses too large to fully comprehend.
The star's attention fixed on him.
"Little kid," the voice said, and there was almost a gentleness to it, though the brightness of its sound pressed against his thoughts hard enough to burn. "What is your name?"
Noctis stepped closer.
The weight of the place pressed on him, but his voice came out calm, steady, almost formal.
"My name is Noctis," he said. "And you? Divine being—what are you called?"
Laughter boomed in response.
It rolled through the Cataclysm Beast's immense body, turning walls into vibrating drums. Acid lakes rippled with concentric waves. Bones thrummed like plucked strings. The entire living world around him seemed to shiver with that sound, as if even this wounded god had not expected to find something quite like him inside its depths.