They can’t face Mourn Peak with me.
I have to go alone.
This was the Hollows’ last twisted game.
Ryder’s voice is a raw whisper carried on the wind. “Asha… please. Don’t leave us.”
My throat burns with unshod fear and something like heartbreak.
But I turn toward the mountain anyway.
Because there is only one path left, and it leads straight into the darkness.
III
Part Three
Chapter Thirty-Three
Scaling a mountain this large would surely take days.
—And I don’t have days.
The thought burrows beneath my skin, pushing me forward even when every muscle begs for stillness. I have to atleasttryto make it to the top.
Each breath is a sharp, chilly drag through my lungs, and the ache radiating through my legs pulses every time I stabilise myself on the cliff edge and pull myself up with what little strength I have left. My heart drums a panicked rhythm in time with the frantic beat of the clock I can’t outrun—Ryder’s clock, the Gods’ clock, the dying sun’s clock.
All of Palidonia hangs in the fragile space between now and too late.
How long until the Siphon finishes its slow devouring, until Nyxos gathers enough stolen power to force his way through the cracks of his cage?
The image slithers down my spine like shattered glass. So I push harder while Oriah’s warning echoes through my mind—“Mourn Peak will deceive you”—but hadn’t the world been one deception after another since the moment we stepped into the Shadow Realm?
The Hollow.
The trials.
Three days of reality-bending and twisting, of being torn apart and stitched back together, only to be torn apart again. In hindsight, her warning feels almost redundant. We’re far past deception; we’re dancing barefoot on the knife-edge between life and the placehalf-deadsouls go to dissolve.
The mountain seems determined to resist me, as though each step I take is a trespass it intends to punish. The incline sharpens abruptly, transforming into a brutal climb over jagged onyx-like stone. Shards jut from the mountainside, slick with frost, drinking in what little light the dimming sun casts and reflecting nothing back. My breath turns to steam the second it leaves me, drifting upward in ghostly ribbons before the wind snaps them away.
The cold here feels unnatural, almost calculated, threading icy fingers through my hair and tugging at my clothes like the mountain is testing whether I truly belong on its skin. Part of me wants to stop—to catch my breath, to look back—but I don’t dare.
Below me, the remains of the bridge sway helplessly, its snapped ropes dangling like torn veins over the maw of the canyon. Ryder and River are little more than silhouettes now, distant ghosts on the other side of a world I can no longer return to. Ryder’s voice still echoes faintly, carried more by memory than wind, but I don’t let myself turn around.
If I see their faces, I’ll freeze.
And freezing means losing everything.
The cold bites through my skin, sharp enough to sting, grounding me in the urgency of every movement. The sun is dimmer each day, like a flame gasping its last breath, and if Nyxos slips his chains… There won’t be a sun left to save.
I dig my fingers into the stone until my nails bend painfully, threatening to split as I haul myself upward toward the spiralling path. The rock beneath my hands feels wrong—slickerthan it should be, too smooth, too warm—and just as I shift my weight, the mountain seems to exhale.
Not a breeze. A breath.
The surface ripples almost imperceptibly under my grip, like something alive rolling in its sleep.
My boot slips, and my fingers follow.
