And up.
Up. Up.Up.
I was standing at the base of the eastern side of The Crater, a broad, flat staircase made of uneven stone leading up and into the rock. The entire place was bigger than I’d imagined. The kind of big that made my chest tighten and my legs feel stupid for trying to climbit. The Crater was not just surrounded by a rock formation like I’d thought; it was a kingdom of stone, a monument built by something that could only be cruel, vengeful.
And the worst part? There was barely any earth. Just rocks. More rocks than ground. Jagged ones. Smooth ones. Flat ones that would wobble under my steps, and the only path was a strip of stones stacked just enough to form a trail.
I grabbed my bag and started the climb, boots thudding against stone. My breath came quicker with each step, not just from the effort but from the cold biting through my sweaters.
The air here was sharp and mean, freezing me as if it hated me. My teeth were already chattering, and I hadn’t even made it halfway—rather, quaterway. Or even quarter of the quarterway.
More rocks crowded the trail, some jutting out like hunched backs, others flat as graves. I found a spot to pause and yanked out my water bottle with stiff fingers. My gloves did little to stop the creeping numbness as I took a sip, then snapped a few more photos, hands trembling against the camera body. I could barely hold it steady.
And still, I climbed.
The silence was absolute, save for the crunch of my boots on rock and the slow rasp of my breath. All around me, stone. Over me, fogs covered the grey skies and hills that swallowed the horizon. I was small and insignificant here.
And the cold only worsened.
My joints stiffened. The sleeves of my sweaters might as well have been netting. I flexed my fingers, shook my arms, and forced myself to keep going.
I wasn’t even sure I was climbing anymore. The incline was there, yes, but the terrain was so strange and so vast, it felt like walking through a dead god’s rib cage.
But I kept walking.
Because even though I had no balls, I had biting questions.
And no one ever warned a fool like me properly what it’d cost to answer them.
“I’ll take it that you can’t read, because the sign clearly states not to trespass.”
“Holy fucking shit!”
I jolted, instinctively stepping back, my foot slipping on the uneven rock. The weight of my backpack yanked me down with a vengeance, and I crashed onto the jagged stone behind me, smacking my head and elbow in one brutal blow.
Pain flared. I let out a rough, guttural “Fuck,” as my eyes slammed shut and my teeth clenched hard enough to cramp my jaw.
God. Fucking. Damnit.
I stayed there a moment, letting the sting burn through so I could be done with it faster. But then I remembered why I’d just eaten shit in the first place.
The voice.
It hadn’t been in my head. It’d echoed off the rocks around me, and it was disturbingly real. My eyes flew open. I sat up too fast, ignoring the twinge in my arm and the dull throb in the back of my skull. A shiver clawed its way down my spine, this time not from the cold.
I whipped my head left, then right, scanning the endless sea of stone. Empty. Only rocks. The same cursed terrain stretching around me in every direction, grey and ancient. There was no mention in the books of some ghost haunting or protecting The Crater. There was no tale about a spirit lingering here. But then again, no one warned me the cold in Nimorran could burrow into your marrow and kill you either.
My breath was ragged now, fogging in front of me in short bursts as the cold came back harsher. My skin felt brittle, my sweater wasworthless. Teeth chattering, I bent to retrieve my camera and stood up, wiping it gently, checking for cracks—
“Don’t tread any further.”
“FUCK!” The camera slipped through my hands again, clattering onto the rocks. I jerked my head up, heartbeat slamming like a war drum. “The fuck is wrong with you?” My half-scared, half-angry scream sliced through the air, bouncing off the walls of stone like a ricochet.
My eyes clashed with the source.
He was standing to the left above me, on the edge of a boulder jutting out, far too high for any normal person to have climbed. Black coat flared slightly in the wind, gloved hands folding across his chest like he wasn’t standing on the edge of a damn cliff. One brow arched lazily, his head tilted in response to my scream, and I swore, if disdain could be sculpted into bone, it would look like him.
My breath stalled.
