In a village nestled between clouds and eternal mists, where time seemed to have fallen asleep, lived an old magician with eyes as deep as the abysses of the earth. His hands, gnarled like the roots of ancient oaks, trembled slightly each time he leafed through his worn leather grimoire. The villagers called him Master Sylvestre, but no one knew his true name, lost in the labyrinth of centuries.
 
One autumn evening, as the wind whispered ancient secrets through the valleys, the magician felt a distant call, almost imperceptible. It was not a voice, nor a sound, but a vibration from the bowels of the mountain that dominated the landscape. The Sleeping Mountain, as it was called, had been dormant for generations, wrapped in a silence so thick one might have thought it had never been alive. Yet, that night, it breathed.
 
Sylvestre lit a black wax candle, carved from the resin of sacred pines, and drew a circle of salt around himself. From his satchel, he took a handful of earth gathered at the foot of the mountain, dried edelweiss leaves, and a crystal tear he had collected in a forgotten cave. He began to chant in a hoarse, powerful voice, words that seemed to belong to a language long forgotten by men. The runes carved into the ground glowed with a bluish light, and the air crackled with energy.
 
« O thou who sleepest beneath the stars and centuries,
 
Awaken, remember thy breath and thy wrath.
 
Let the stone remember the lava,
 
Let the silence shatter into a thousand shards of thunder. »
 
A shiver ran through the earth. The birds fell silent. The trees bent their branches as if to listen. Then, a deep, almost imperceptible rumble rose from the depths. The mountain trembled. Cracks split its sides, and a reddish glow pierced the darkness, like an eyelid opening after endless sleep.
 
The villagers, startled awake, rushed out of their homes, eyes wide. Some fell to their knees, others fled into the forest. But Sylvestre remained motionless, arms raised to the sky, as the mountain rose, shaking off its mantle of snow and rock. A deafening roar tore through the night, and a column of fire erupted from the summit, lighting the valley with blinding light.
 
The mountain was no longer asleep.
 
It breathed. It lived.
 
And the world, for the first time in centuries, trembled beneath its gaze.