Chapter 9
Chapter nine
My body knew before I did.
It started with small things. Waking before my alarm. Eating faster, barely tasting food before it was gone. Moving through hallways like I was calculating distances, conserving energy, already rationing myself for something my conscious mind hadn't fully acknowledged.
I ran the trail behind the dormitories every morning now—not jogging, running.
The kind of pace that burned your lungs and turned your legs to rubber.
Then I hit the stairs. Then the climbing wall in the athletic complex, before it opened to other students, while the janitors were still mopping floors.
Coach Reeves found me there one morning, halfway up a difficult route, chalk dusting my fingers.
"You're here early," she said.
"Couldn't sleep."
"That route's rated for advanced climbers."
"I know."
She watched me finish—watched me navigate the overhang that had defeated three upperclassmen the day before, watched me find holds that shouldn't have existed, watched me top out without hesitation.
When I came down, she was still there.
"Where'd you learn to climb like that?"
"The Tatra Mountains."
Reeves nodded slowly, something calculating in her expression.
She let me go. But I felt her watching as I gathered my things and headed for the showers.
Wilderness First Aid became my favorite class.
Not because of the content—I knew most of it already. Gregor had drilled emergency medicine into me since I was old enough to hold a bandage. But Boone was thorough, and thorough meant details. Details I could use.
"Mr. Boone." I caught him after class on Thursday, notebook in hand. "I had a question about the hypothermia protocols."
"Shoot."
"You mentioned that rewarming too quickly can cause cardiac arrest. But what about in a solo situation? If you're alone and you start showing symptoms, what's the protocol?"
He tilted his head, curious. "Interesting question. Most training assumes you have a partner."
"Most situations don't."
"Fair point." He leaned against his desk, settling into teaching mode.
"Solo hypothermia management is tricky. The key is recognizing symptoms early—before your cognitive function degrades.
Once you're confused, you can't help yourself.
So you monitor constantly. Set alarms if you have to.
Check your fingers, your toes, your reaction time.
The moment something feels off, you stop and address it. "
I wrote it down. "And if you can't stop? If stopping means dying anyway?"
Boone's eyes sharpened. "That's a different question."
"It's a realistic one."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "If you're in a situation where stopping means dying and continuing means dying slower, you focus on buying time.
Vapor barriers. Chemical heat packs against major arteries.
Keep moving if you can—motion generates heat.
And you hope like hell someone's coming for you. "
"What if no one's coming?"
"Then you survive anyway." He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "That's what humans do, Miss Orlav. We survive things we shouldn't. It's our best and worst quality."
I thanked him and left.
That night, I added vapor barriers to my mental checklist. Chemical heat packs. Timer alarms for cognitive monitoring.
The list was getting long.
James noticed.
Of course he noticed. He noticed everything about me—a fact that was both infuriating and, in moments I refused to examine too closely, comforting.
He didn't say anything at first. Just watched from across dining hall tables, from the edges of classrooms, from the bench near the athletic complex where he'd taken to reading in the mornings. Present but not pressing. There like a question I didn't have to answer.
But on Friday, he fell into step beside me as I left the library.
"You're not sleeping."
"I'm sleeping fine."
"You're not." He kept pace easily, long legs matching my stride. "I can tell. You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The one where you're running calculations behind your eyes. Like you're always solving something."
I didn't slow down. "Maybe I am."
"Want to tell me what?"
"No."
He nodded, accepting that. We walked in silence for a while, our breath fogging in the cold air.
The snow had stopped overnight, leaving the campus blanketed in white.
Beautiful, if you were the kind of person who noticed beauty.
Right now, I was the kind of person who noticed ice patches and wind direction and the angle of the sun.
"You asked Boone about solo survival yesterday," James said.
I stopped walking. "You were listening?"
"I was in the hallway." He had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. "Wasn't trying to eavesdrop. But you were asking about dying alone on a mountain, so. Hard not to pay attention."
"It was a hypothetical."
"Was it?"
The hum flared between us, warm and insistent. I wanted to lean into it. I wanted to run.
"James."
"I know." He held up his hands. "You don't want to talk about it.
I'm not asking you to. I'm just—" He stopped, frustration flickering across his face.
"I'm worried. That's all. You're training like you're preparing for war, and you won't tell anyone why, and I don't know how to help if you won't let me in. "
"Maybe I don't need help."
"Everyone needs help sometimes."
"Not everyone."
He looked at me—really looked, with those steady brown eyes that seemed to see past every wall I'd built. "You're not as alone as you think you are, Lumi."
The words hit somewhere tender. I turned away before he could see the impact.
"I have to go."
"I know." He didn't try to stop me. "Just... be careful. Whatever you're planning. Please."
I walked away without answering.
The supply skimming started small.
A few extra energy bars from the dining hall, pocketed during breakfast. A thermal blanket from the First Aid supply closet—Boone had dozens, he wouldn't miss one. Waterproof matches from the outdoor equipment room. Paracord from the climbing wall supplies.
Nothing dramatic. Nothing that would raise flags. Just quiet, methodical acquisition.
No one noticed.
I kept a list in my head. Cross-referenced it against the gear guides I'd studied, the accounts I'd read, the hard-won wisdom of climbers who'd survived Denali and those who hadn't.
Base layers: check. Mid layers: check. Outer shell: still needed. Sleeping system: partial. Cooking gear: minimal. Navigation: downloaded to my phone, backed up on paper maps I'd traced from the library's collection.
I couldn't exactly smuggle a mountaineering tent out of the athletic complex. But I had money saved—years of odd jobs and careful hoarding—and I had the gear I needed ordered.
Three weeks. Maybe four. That was my window.
After that, the weather would turn. The route would close. And the wolf in my visions would be alone on that mountain until spring.
I couldn't wait until spring.
The visions came more frequently now.
Not the full immersive experiences—those still hit without warning, pulling me under like a riptide. These were fragments. Flashes. Moments that seared across my mind and vanished before I could hold them.
White. Endless white. The kind that erased horizon lines and depth perception, turned the world into a blank page waiting to be written.
Wind. Not the gentle wind of campus, but something alive and hungry. Wind that could strip heat from your body in minutes, that could knock you off your feet, that could kill you while you were still trying to understand what was happening.
And lately, something new.
A figure. Not the wolf—something else. Someone else. Dark against the white, struggling, falling.
Going down.
The first time I saw it, I was in the middle of Mythology class. Vince was lecturing about hero's journey archetypes, and suddenly my vision split—half classroom, half mountain—and I watched someone tumble down a slope that seemed to go on forever.
I gripped my desk so hard my knuckles went white. Ivy glanced over, concerned, but I shook my head. Fine. I'm fine.
I wasn't fine.
That night, I sat in my bed with the lights off and tried to make sense of what I'd seen. The wolf I understood. The wolf was my mission, my purpose, the reason I was preparing for something that might kill me.
But who was the figure? Why were they falling? And why did watching them go down feel like watching myself?
The vision always finds a way to fulfill itself.
Silas's book. The warning written in a dozen different hands across centuries.
The only question is whether you're prepared when it does.
I wasn't prepared. Not yet. But I was getting closer.
And the visions were getting clearer.
That terrified me more than anything.
Saturday morning, I pushed too hard.
The stairs behind the dormitory were brutal in good conditions—two hundred steps carved into the hillside, steep enough to make your thighs scream. In six inches of fresh snow, they were an exercise in controlled suffering.
I ran them anyway. Three times. Four. Five.
On the sixth repetition, my foot slipped.
I caught myself on the railing, heart hammering, and stood there in the gray dawn light with snow melting into my shoes and my breath coming in ragged gasps.
Stupid. Gregor's voice in my head, sharp with disappointment. Tired climbers make mistakes. Mistakes kill.
I knew that. I knew better. But my body was screaming for exhaustion, for the kind of bone-deep tiredness that would let me sleep without dreaming, and I'd been chasing it for days.
I walked down the rest of the stairs.
At the bottom, I found James watching me.
"How long have you been there?" I asked.
"Long enough."
"Creepy."
"Worried." He stood up, brushing snow off his jeans. "You almost fell."
"I caught myself."
He crossed the distance between us, and the hum sang at his proximity. I was too tired to fight it. Too tired to do anything but stand there and let him look at me with those steady eyes.
"When's the last time you ate?" he asked.
"This morning."
"What did you eat?"
I tried to remember. Couldn't.
"That's what I thought." He reached into his jacket and pulled out an energy bar—one of the good ones, with actual protein. "Eat this. Then go inside and sleep. Real sleep, not whatever you have been doing, obviously more thinking than sleeping. I can hear you thinking too loud right now."
I took the bar. "I don't think too loud."
"You think at a volume that could wake the dead." He smiled, small and wry. "Eat. Sleep. Whatever you're training for, it'll still be there tomorrow."
I should have argued. Should have pushed back, maintained the distance I'd been trying to keep.
Instead, I unwrapped the bar and took a bite.
James watched me chew, something softening in his expression. "Good. Now go inside."
"Stop telling me what to do."
"Stop scaring me and I will."
I finished the bar, stuffed the wrapper in my pocket, and headed for the dorm. I didn't look back.
But I felt his eyes on me all the way to the door.
Sunday night, the vision came in full.
I was on the mountain. Not watching from a distance—there, boots crunching in snow, wind cutting through my layers, cold seeping into my bones.
The wolf was below me. I could feel it more than see it—a presence in the white, wild and terrified and hurt. It was running from something. Or toward something. I couldn't tell.
I started down the slope.
The wind picked up. Snow whipped around me, erasing visibility, turning the world into a howling blank. I kept moving. One foot in front of the other. The wolf was close now. I could hear it—not howling, but something worse. A sound like breaking.
And then I saw the figure.
Dark against the white. Struggling. Arms pinwheeling as the slope gave way beneath them.
Going down.
I reached for them—
The vision shattered.
I was back in my bed, gasping, sheets twisted around my legs. Ivy was still asleep across the room, undisturbed.
My hands were shaking. My whole body was shaking.
I pressed my palms against my eyes and breathed.
The visions were getting clearer. More detailed. More urgent.
The wolf was running out of time. And so was someone else.
I didn't know who the falling figure was. Didn't know if they were part of the rescue or part of the problem. But I knew one thing with absolute certainty:
I couldn't wait anymore.
Three weeks was too long. Two weeks was too long.
The mountain was calling. The wolf was dying. And somewhere in that white hell, someone was going to fall unless I did something about it.
I got out of bed and started running through my lists again.