I reached for a printed photo—one I’d taken near The Crater—and scanned it for the hundredth time. Then again. Then again, willing the rocks to give me something. Anything. A hint. A glitch in the image. A ghost waving.
My temples throbbed, and I squeezed my eyes shut with a groan, my fingers shaking slightly from too much caffeine and too little sleep.
A pulse cracked through my skull.
It was a flash of something I’d seen, a memory I didn’t know I had. Something between those.
A hole.
A space carved out in the jagged rock.
Not wide, but tall. A tall, narrow slit in the rock like something had split the stone in half.
My heart took off like a startled rabbit. I dropped the photo, raked through the pile with trembling hands. Nothing. None of the pictures caught it.
I snatched my camera and flipped to the videos. I’d recorded everything with bad angles, shaky zoom-ins, even my own panickedbreaths were caught in the background. I skimmed through six videos until I hit the one. I’d been spinning in a circle like a lunatic trying to document everything. But mid-spin—I paused the video.
In a blur of rocks and frost was a slit. A vertical split between the stone, tall enough for someone to slip through if they were careful enough. Blink and you’d miss it. No wonder I hadn’t seen it. I’d been too focused on not dying of hypothermia.
It was near the same place I’d seen the weird, hauntingly beautiful man dressed like the Grim Reaper’s personal intern. The one standing too close to the cliff’s edge.
An electric thrill rose in my chest, like the spark before a lightning strike.
I wasn’t going near The Crater, I told myself. Not close-close. Just...a peek. I just needed to know what that opening was.
Without another thought or a single rational brain cell working, I launched from my bed and began layering up. Five shirts, every damn sweater I owned, two scarves, three gloves, and the beanie I bought three days ago. I was sweating before I even made it down the stairs.
Then I cursed, spun around, and ran back up with my backpack.
The medallion.
I dug through my box, yanked it out, and threaded a string through the hole so I could wear it around my neck.
Then I ran again. Out the door. Down the steps. Into the car.
And I drove.
The road was familiar now. The winding path, the turn-off at the faded sign, the narrowing dirt trail. My boots hit the ground hardwhen I got out. The evening cold bit straight through the first layer of sweaters like it wanted to punish me for coming back.
I climbed faster this time.
The rocks felt like ice bone beneath my boots. My breath fogged in front of me, and the frost clung to my gloves. The further I went, the harder it became to feel anything. That cursed wind howled like it knew I was trespassing again.
And then I reached the spot I’d seen him. I scanned the area slowly. My eyes strained, my hands shaking a little from the cold.
It took a long minute to find it, almost like it didn’t want to be seen. A tall slit between two thick boulders, surrounded by uneven rock that seemed to blend in with the terrain. If I hadn’t been looking for it, I’d have missed it again.
It was smaller than I remembered in the video. The kind of thing you could walk past a hundred times and never see.
My chest tightened with something between awe and stupidity.
I practically ran towards it.
The space was so tight I had to take off my backpack and shove it through first. Then I followed—one arm, then a leg, twisting awkwardly to avoid scraping my face on the rough stone.
As I crossed to the other side, the ground beneath me tilted. I lost my footing, cursed, and hit the earth with a grunt.
But when I lifted my head—
