Chapter 2: The Weight of Things 🪨

The mountains beyond the village were a different world entirely. These peaks were alive — rockslides in the distance, narrow paths winding between formations that looked like the earth had pushed them up in a hurry and never bothered to smooth the edges. Cyan and Blanca had been climbing for the better part of a morning when they found him.

Marron is an Anima who lives in this mountain range. He was sitting at the edge of a wide rocky ledge, and around him the earth moved as casually as breathing — boulders shifting aside to clear a path, loose stones gathering into orderly piles, the ground compressing and expanding under his hands like something alive. He has the power of tierra (earth). He was a broad, round figure against the mountain backdrop, unhurried and completely unbothered by the fact that he was doing something no ordinary person could do.

He noticed them before they reached him.

Blanca told him everything she had told Cyan — the voice, the darkness, the Anima she believed she needed to find. She told him the voice had led her here, to this ledge, to him specifically. She told him she needed him to come with her, accompanying her journey in searching for others.

Marron listened. Then he went back to moving rocks.

He did not believe them. The darkness was not a thing people talked about in the mountains. It was not a thing people talked about anywhere, as far as he knew. The story of a girl who heard voices and a boy from a village was not, in his assessment, a reliable account of the fate of the world. He was not unkind about it. He simply did not believe it.

They were still there when a certain villain arrived.

There was no warning. Cyan and the others noticed a shadow up above their head. Suddenly, a person came down from high above, landing on the ground with a massive thud — leaving the surrounding area in a small crater-like shape. It was an anima with the power of weight manipulation, the weighter. The weighter struck Cyan with their fist, sending Cyan flying.

The weight hit like the mountain itself had decided to sit on his chest. Cyan went down hard — both knees, then flat — the ground rushing up as every part of him became impossibly, unbearably heavy.

Marron looked at the villain. Then at Cyan on the ground. Then back at the villain. Then stood up.

He drove his fist into the earth, and when it came back up, it came back encased in packed rock, dense and dark. Tierra Fist is a skill to harden one fist with earth’s power. He swung it at the villain with the confidence of someone who had won fights this way before.

The weighter let it come. And then took the weight out of it.

The rock around Marron’s fist went light — not crumbling, not breaking, just suddenly weightless, hollow, useless. The strike landed and did nothing. Marron pulled back and tried again, drawing from the mountain beneath him, packing more earth, more stone. The weighter made it light again. And again. Every punch that Marron raised became a dead thing in the air, drifting instead of striking, floating instead of falling.

Marron was strong. Without weight, strong meant nothing. He kept fighting because there was nothing else to do, and the gap between them slowly, steadily widened.

From the ground, Cyan watched.

He watched the way Marron’s fist moved before the rock found it — the gathering, the concentration, the deliberate channeling of something from below into something that could strike.

Cyan fisted his hand and concentrated his hielo power. The ice came easier now than it had in Halvard — not raw and erupting but focused, deliberate, gathering around his fist as it had always known where to go. It built layer by layer, hard and clear and dense, until his hand was encased.

Hielo Fist ❄️

He just needed to get up.

Marron saw it. In the space between dodges, between the floating rocks and the weighter’s advancing steps, he saw Cyan on the ground with ice forming around his fist and understood immediately what was needed. He dropped low, drove both hands deep into the rock face, and pulled — not to strike, but to fracture, cracking the ground between the villain’s feet and Cyan’s position, breaking the connection, breaking the hold.

Cyan was up in the same moment — one step, two, closing the distance at a full run — and the Hielo Fist connected with everything he got. The weighter went down and did not get back up. The cold held them there, still and silent against the rock.

The mountainside settled. The wind returned.

Marron stood over the downed villain for a long moment. Then he looked at Cyan. Then at Blanca.

The darkness was not something people talked about. But it had just sent someone here, to this specific ledge on this specific mountain, looking for them. That was not a rumor. That was not the story of a girl who heard voices.

That was real.

He picked up what little he carried, gave the mountain one last look, and fell into step behind them. And now there were 3. Blanca, Cyan, and Marron.

The path down was steeper than the path up. Somewhere far below, the world continued — vast, largely unexplored, waiting for them to find the chosen Animas who are destined to save the world.