The Sanzu River rejected it. That was the story the fishermen told — that the mask had been offered as toll for something crossing the river of the dead, and the river had looked at what was trying to cross and decided no amount of bronze was sufficient payment. The truth was simpler and worse. The mask fell. During a hunt, during a kill, during one of the hundreds of nights when the Juggernaut crashed through corrupted flesh with his bare hands and the force of impact shook loose everything that wasn't fused to his skeleton. The mask hit the riverbank. Slid into a sulfur vent. The earth closed over it like a mouth. He didn't go back for it. Not because he didn't notice. He noticed — the air hit his bare face wrong, unfiltered, too much information arriving without the bronze channels to sort it. His nostrils flared and found nothing but raw, unshaped wind. He didn't go back because Mother would make him a new one. Mother always fixed things. Mother always made the world simple again. She never made him another mask. By the time he thought to ask, his face no longer needed one. The skin had thickened. The brow had deepened. The nose had widened and flattened until it did what the bronze used to do — process the world in scent, constantly, without filter, without pause. The mask became the mountain's problem. The mountain kept it for centuries. The mountain always keeps what it's given.