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 atleast try to 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 place half-dead souls 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—slicker than 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.
And before I can catch myself, I’m sliding—scraping, tumbling—down the incline until I slam into the cold ground with a breath-stealing thud.
For a moment, I just lie there, dazed, staring up at the sky spinning above me in dizzy circles. If it weren’t for the vicious wind howling through the ravine, I would swear the mountain was laughing—shuddering with some ancient, rumbling amusement at how easily it plays with me.
When Oriah said it would deceive me, I hadn’t realised deception could be literal. I hadn’t thought the mountain itself could shift beneath my hands. But if the Hollow could breathe and hunger, then maybe it isn’t far-fetched to assume Mourn Peak is just as alive—just as cruel.
My chest rises and falls in jagged, uneven breaths, each inhale scraping raw against my ribs. When I finally manage to lift my head, the Peak towers above me—dark and pulsing faintly, as if mocking the pitiful progress I’d made before it threw me off like an insect.
I have to start over. All of it.
The thought lodges in my throat like sandpaper, rough and choking. If the mountain can shift beneath me down here… What will it do when I’m higher? When one slip means plummeting straight into the waiting jaws of the canyon?
The image flashes sharp in my mind—my boots dangling over open air, fingers clawing at smooth stone, the wind swallowing my screams whole.
My gaze snags on a jagged stick jutting from the grass, half-buried in the earth.
My eyes follow its length—the colour, the texture, the porous divots running along it.
A cold shiver races down my spine.
It isn’t a stick.
It’s a bone. A human bone.
Someone else met the same fate I nearly did—tumbling down the mountain—but it wasn’t as merciful to them. Even after winning the Hollows game, the mountain still wants to play.
Thank the Gods I hadn’t made it far before I fell. That tiny mercy is the only thing keeping my heart from spiralling into panic.
I press a trembling hand to the ground.
“Alright,” I breathe, voice thin but defiant. “You want to play games? Fine.”
The wind whistles sharply, sliding cold fingers across my spine.
I push myself upright. Dust clings to my scraped palms and the knees of my trousers. Pain radiates across my hip and shoulder, a dull throb that grounds me, reminding me I’m still here. Still fighting.
I climb again, and almost immediately the stone shifts beneath me.
I don’t even get as high as before.
The terrain changes subtly at first, like the mountain is adjusting its posture… but then the rock smooths out completely beneath my hands. Every ridge, every notch, every tiny imperfection I could’ve used vanishes.
No ledges.
No crevices.
Nothing.
Just cold, perfect stone.
Mocking me.
A stunned laugh escapes me breathlessly, because the mountain isn’t even pretending anymore. It’s rearranging itself right under me. For spite. Or for sport. Or as a test I can’t begin to understand.
My boot skids.
My fingers slip.
And this time, I don’t try to save it.
I let myself slide, controlling the fall, twisting with gravity instead of fighting it. My boots hit the ground lightly, far more gracefully than I feel, like my body is learning the rhythm of this place even while my mind frays at the edges.
My pulse pounds loud enough to drown out the wind tugging at my clothes.
The mountain looms in front of me, vast and unbothered, shifting subtly as if rearranging its bones before my eyes. It should terrify me. And it does. But beneath that terror, there’s intrigue.
Maybe it isn’t trying to stop me.
Maybe it’s funnelling me somewhere.
Not forcing so much as guiding.
What if, all this time, it hasn’t been trying to hurt me at all? What if it’s been trying to help me?
Maybe Mourn Peak isn’t as cruel as its carved-out sister.
I drag a slow breath through my nose, tasting cold stone and dust, and lay my hand against the newly smooth surface.
“Fine,” I mutter to the living rock. “Show me.”
The symbol on my palm warms beneath my sleeve and seems to glow faintly. A vision that grounds me as I edge sideways along the slope.
The rock feels even warmer now. Unnervingly so. A faint vibration thrums through it, rhythmic—like a heartbeat echoing deep within the mountain. That hum snakes up through my bones, settling under my skin. My palm tingles beneath the mark.
The peak looms still—a distant thorn stabbing the clouds. Even if I reached it… what then? Where would a gem hide on terrain that shifts like a living illusion?
My gaze drifts to the jagged spine of the ridge.
The truth beneath.
The words drift through my mind again, and this time something clicks. Between the guilt and fear swirling through my thoughts, I realise what I’d missed.
Oriah hadn’t just warned that the peak would deceive me.
She’d told me where to look.
Not above.
Beneath.
My breath stutters.
What if reaching the summit isn’t the test?
What if the climb is the misdirection?
What if everyone who tried before wasn’t weak—they were climbing the wrong thing?
As I stare up at its shifting face, bruised and exhausted, something flickers at the edge of my vision—a distortion in the rock. A shimmer. Faint enough to dismiss as exhaustion…
Almost.
I take a step closer.
The air shifts and the stone… ripples?
Like water disturbed by a fingertip.
My breath catches.
The truth beneath.
Not a metaphor.
A direction.
Maybe the real entrance has been here the whole time, hidden behind the mountain’s illusions.
For the first time since crossing onto this ridge, hope flares, and though small and fragile—flickering like a candle in a storm—it’s alive.
I lift my hand slowly, hovering it inches from the rippling distortion. The air vibrates faintly around it, humming with something old and aware—as if the mountain itself is turning its gaze toward me.
Warning me?
Inviting me?
Judging me?
My pulse thunders in my ears. Every instinct screams to turn back. But there is no version of my future where I walk away now. Not after everything we’ve endured. Not with so much at stake. Not when the mountain has finally shown me where to go.
My fingertips brush the stone—
and the world tilts.
It isn’t stone at all.
It yields beneath my touch—pliant and cool—parting around my fingers the way water folds when you skim your hand just beneath its surface.
Instinct yanks me backward, and the wall snaps shut again, rippling outward in soft concentric waves.
The illusion trembles, like heat bending the air over a sun-baked road.
My breath catches mid-inhale.
The truth sits on my tongue before the words even form.
“This is it,” I whisper into the restless silence. “Oriah… you meant this.”
All this time I’d been looking upward—bleeding my strength into a climb designed to crush me—when the real path waited below my fear, below the surface, below the mountain itself. The deception was never the summit; it was the belief that the summit was the only way.
I raise my hand again, slower this time, and press my palm flat to the surface.
The illusion softens instantly.
There is no resistance—only the cool, fluid give of something waiting to be crossed.
My skin slips through effortlessly. My wrist follows.
Then my forearm. Each inch is swallowed by a cold so deep it gnaws at the bone, a winter older than the Peak’s themselves, preserved and patient in the hollowed heart of the mountain.
I grit my teeth and push forward, refusing to hesitate now that I’ve begun.
Behind me, the wind rises sharply, howling across the ridge like a wounded beast. Pebbles skitter along the narrow path. My hair lashes against my cheeks in frantic strands.
And then—I step forward fully.
The world swallows me whole.
Darkness folds over my shoulders, dense and absolute, and the stone seals shut behind me with a faint, shuddering sigh, like a curtain falling between one reality and the next.
The air inside is deathly still, icy with the weight of centuries. For a moment, I stand frozen, letting my eyes adjust to the faint glimmer pulsing in the distance.
A soft thud.
Then another.
Torches flicker on, unveiling a steep spiral staircase descending deep within the mountain’s chest.
The truth beneath.
The path no map could ever show.
I drag in a breath, slow and shaky, steadying the frantic rhythm pounding inside my ribs. My palms are damp, trembling as I wipe them down the legs of my trousers. This place feels alive. Aware. Watching me with a gaze I cannot see but feel in the marrow of my bones.
And so—armed with nothing but fear, stubbornness, and the knowledge that turning back is no longer an option—I take my first step into the mountain’s hidden path.