The forest pressed close on either side—old-growth spruce, their branches holding the quiet in place. Every few minutes I'd pass another student making the same trek, most of them red-faced and breathing hard. A few nodded. Most didn't.
I didn't take it personally. We were all too focused on not embarrassing ourselves to make friends.
A girl with braids and a pack twice my size had stopped to adjust her boots. She looked up as I passed, expression somewhere between misery and murder.
"Please tell me we're almost there."
"Another mile. Maybe less."
"I'm going to die."
"Probably not." I kept walking. "But if you do, I'll tell them you fought bravely."
Her laugh followed me up the trail.
I checked my watch. Twenty-two minutes since the bus. Good pace, but not remarkable. Frosthaven had eyes everywhere—and showing up looking like I had something to prove was a good way to end up on someone's radar.
I had plans. None of them involved being interesting on day one.
The trees began to thin as I climbed higher, spruce giving way to scraggly birch, then to low alpine scrub that clung to the rocky soil like it was holding on for dear life. The wind picked up, carrying the smell of snow from somewhere above.
And then the ridge.
I crested it without warning—one moment surrounded by brush, the next standing at the edge of everything.
The world opened up.
Denali.
Twenty thousand feet of impossible, rising from the landscape like a fist punched through the earth. The summit caught the afternoon light, glaciers gleaming white and gold against a sky so blue it hurt to look at.
I stopped walking.
I'd seen it from a plane. Studied topographical maps until I could trace the routes in my sleep. Watched documentaries, readexpedition journals, memorized the names of everyone who'd ever died on those slopes.
None of it prepared me for this.
The mountain didn't just exist. Itpulled. Like gravity for me personally, like something in my chest was hooked to something in that ice and the line between us had just gone taut.
My vision blurred at the edges.
No. Not here. Not now.
I gripped the strap of my pack, forced myself to breathe. The world tilted anyway—pressure building behind my eyes, metallic taste flooding my mouth, that familiar sensation of standing in two places at once.
White. Endless white. Wind that screamed like something dying. And in the snow, barely visible—
The vision shattered before it finished.
I gasped, stumbling, one hand catching myself on a boulder. My heart was hammering.
Denali stood exactly where it had been, unchanged, unconcerned. Just a mountain. Just rock and ice and weather.
Except it wasn't.
Something up there knew I was here.
I'd been preparing for this mountain for seven years. I wasn't prepared for how it recognized me back.
