Prompt
COLD OPEN
EXT. RUINED SHRINE — SNOWFIELD — DUSK
Snow falls on the ribcage of a god.
A colossal guardian skeleton curls out of the white like a ruined cathedral, and the marauder camp inside it is already screaming.
We open mid-carnage. Two bodies lie in the snow behind THE GUARDIAN: white bone armor, mismatched, no two pieces alike. Blood leaking from beneath the plates. Coiled flat against his neck, a small whiskered serpent-dragon, THE RUNT.
A MARAUDER rushes him, artifact-studded armor humming, the Guardian's spear runs him through. The man folds.
A musket CRACKS. The Guardian drops beside the body he just made.
The camp converges, MARAUDERS ringing him, muskets leveled, technology this world shouldn't have. The laughter starting.
His hand crawls across the dead man and closes on a PISTOL. New-world steel. It does not belong in that hand.
He gets up.
Step. A ball punches his shoulder plate. Step. Another staggers him sideways. He keeps coming — then down to one knee at the center of the ring.
INSERT — THE CAGE. Behind iron bars at the camp's heart: THE MOTHER. Twenty feet of dull pearl scale, whiskered, ancient. Her great eye finds him and goes very still.