Under the Elytra

World ended yesterday. Shudder passed through the soil, sinking into my own bones, and deep, guttural tremors shook the earth. The sky, a high, dappled ceiling of green and brown, vanished behind a descending shadow of impossible scale. Then came the pressure… force so absolute it did not just break our world, it unmade it.

Trembling ceased. Shadow passed, leaving a great canyon in its wake, ravine carved through the heart of our territory. Only a deep, smooth-walled chasm remained where the Low-Branch settlement once thrived, only packed, barren earth where the Dew Collectors had gathered the morning’s sun-gems. Scent of damp moss and sweet decay, now tasted of nothing but crushed life and sterile soil.

My duty as a Tunneler clarified. As a mapper of the deep paths, I chart the bones of our world. But with the world now broken, my duty shifted. I had to travel to the Elder Wood, to seek the counsel of the Ancient One and warn the settlements along the way.

I began my journey at the edge of the new canyon. I stood at the precipice. A sheer cliff of dark soil studded with the pale, severed roots of our lifeblood. Canyon floor below, a different country. Alien and dead. Friends, neighbors, kin… all gone. Cold emptiness in my core. Feeling heavier than the densest stone. I turned away and began my trek.

My path wound through the Whispering Grasses. They towered over me, colossal green pillars swaying and sighing with every breath of wind from the Great Open. Usually, this passage hummed with the clicks and rustles of a hundred others going about their business. Now, only silence. Silence of dread, of despair.

I saw a Forager frozen against a blade of grass, her body flattened in terror. Another family huddled in the dark hollow of a stone, limbs trembling in shock. I gave them the sign of passage… a slow, deliberate dip of my head. No one spoke, and my duty was paramount, so I didn't have the time to help.

My world is not one of sight alone. I taste the air for the promise of rain; I feel the ground for the approach of the Shakers. As I moved, a new vibration, rhythmic and heavy, shook the soil. Not the earth-shattering impact of yesterday, no, but a deliberate tread of a Giant.

The Shakers, a force in our world. Force of nature we have learned to live with. Their immense movements reshape landscapes, but they are often predictable. But yesterday’s force struck differently… a careless act of oblivion, not intent.

I found shelter under the lip of an overhanging stone. Rough, steady surface, a fortress against my back. I waited. Vibrations grew stronger. Pebbles shook loose from the rock face above me. Sound, like a series of soft thunderclaps. Pillar of flesh and fabric descending from the sky, planting itself not far from my hiding place. Another followed. The Giant. I pressed myself deeper into the crevice, making my body as small and still as stone.

The Giants speak in a language of booms and rumbles. Incomprehensible voices, but I can read their intent in the vibrations they send through the ground. This one held its ground for a long time. A presence, dominating the silence. A mountain, chosen to rest in our valley. The sheer, unthinking power of it… breathtaking. It could extinguish a thousand lives with a single movement and never know, never care. The most terrifying thing of all: the lack of awareness.

I emerged when the vibrations finally receded. New scent lingered. Sharp and artificial. On the ground lay a strange object, a smooth, white cylinder with a brown tip. It smelled of nothing I knew, a dead scent that had no place in the living forest. Another piece of the Giants’ careless world, left to scar ours.

I continued my journey over the Moss Mountains and the rolling landscape of plush green. There, sun-gems clung to the soft peaks, and I paused to drink, the cool liquid a relief after the tension of the Giant’s passing. Here I met the Legion. An endless column of them marched in perfect formation, a river of black bodies flowing over the terrain.

Their purpose, absolute. Discipline unbreakable. We have an ancient truce with them. We do not obstruct their paths, and they do not raid our halls. I stood aside. Gesture of respect. Watched them pass, each one a tiny part of an immense and unknowable will. Reminder, that even in this broken world, order still existed.

Finally, I reached the Elder Wood. Colossal structure of a fallen god whose body now provided a foundation for a thousand lives. Its skin wore a tapestry of fungus and moss. Its hollows and crevices sheltered countless settlements. I entered through a great crack in its side and descended into the familiar, fragrant dark.

The Ancient One lodged deep within, in a chamber of soft and phosphorescent wood, casting a gentle, blue-green light. Countless seasons had scarred and pitted its body. Slow, deliberate movements, great limbs sweeping the air before it.

I relayed my story, spoke of the shadow, the pressure, the great canyon. I described the silence of the Whispering Grasses and the unthinking carelessness of the Giant. When I finished, the Ancient One stayed still for a long time. Finally, it shifted, the sound like old wood creaking.

“You see a broken world.” Voice, not a sound but a vibration through the floor. Deep thrum resonating in my very bones.

“You see an ending. That is one way to see.”

I waited.

“The Giants are not gods,” the Ancient One continued.

“They are storms. They are floods. They are forces of nature, just like the turning of the seasons or the falling of a branch. Mighty, and do not see the world beneath their feet. Their gift to us is chaos. And chaos is the parent of change.”

“Change?” A bitter thought. “They destroyed our homes. They killed our kin.”

“Yes. And in the canyon they carved, new life will take root. The barren soil they packed down will be broken up by the Subterraneans. The food sources they buried will become nourishment for a new generation. They end one world, and in doing so, they begin another. Our struggle is not to stop them… that would be like trying to stop the rain from falling. We struggle to endure. To adapt. To see the new beginning in every end.”

The Ancient One’s wisdom settled over me, not erasing the pain or the loss, but shifting my perspective. The world didn’t end or break; it changed. Our purpose: not to mourn what had been, but to build what will be. Our task: to reshape and adapt.

The Giants, in their ignorant power, were not our masters; they were simply the chisel that reshaped the stone of our existence. We, the small, the overlooked, were the ones who would inherit the new shapes, find the new paths, and continue the great, slow work of living.

I left the Elder Wood with a new weight in my soul. Weight of purpose, not despair. The journey back was not one of flight or fear, but of observation. I saw the first hardy seeds sprouting at the edge of the Giant’s footprint. I saw a Weaver already casting the first silky lines of a new web across a chasm that hadn't existed two days ago. Life returned.

I stand now at the edge of the great canyon, looking down. The raw, sterile walls no longer fill me with terror. I see them now as a challenge. A new frontier. The Ancient One spoke wisdom. The Giants may shake the foundations of our world, but they cannot destroy it. They are too large, too distant. They know nothing of the true strength that lies in the small and the resilient. They know nothing of the vital, tireless work that goes on in the darkness beneath their feet.

I am small, but my purpose is grand. My work is to break the soil, to build the tunnels, to create the highways of the new world from the ruins of the old. I push aside the warm ash from a forgotten fire with my armored head. The heat faded, the danger passed, leaving only rich, dark potential. I stretch my six legs, feeling their strength against the earth. I lift my hardened elytra, unfurl the delicate, hidden wings beneath, and prepare to take flight to survey my work.

My name is Kheron. And I am a beetle.