Chapter 52: The Peak

Dawn stood halfway up the ridge.

The storm had passed. The snow had settled into a cruel stillness, as if waiting for the next outburst. The sky above was slate-gray, pale light flickering between broken clouds. Dawn sat in silence beneath a jagged overhang of ice, his back pressed against stone laced with frost, eyes fixed on the horizon.

The wind had howled like a living thing for hours. Now it whispered low, cautious—a predator eyeing its prey through narrowed slits.

He rose.

His breath steamed before him as he began the second half of the climb. It was colder now, the kind of cold that felt like needles threading through muscle. He moved with slow, careful intent, as though the mountain were a beast he didn't want to wake.

The first half had been harsh.

But the second?

It was something else entirely.

The air grew thinner, sharper. Each breath was a theft—a price taken from his lungs. The snow no longer crunched beneath his boots—it cracked like brittle bone. Ice slicked every surface, and the wind no longer came in gusts.

It came as a presence.

Unrelenting. Sentient.

It didn't push or pull randomly. It waited. Then struck. As if it were learning his rhythm and adapting.

He rose from his resting place and faced the final stretch. The mountain peak above looked jagged, deformed—a beast's snarl frozen in time. The peak itself was shaped like a roaring maw, fangs of stone and frost arching toward the sky. A sculpture wrought by rage and time.

The closer he drew, the more the world narrowed.

His vision tunneled. Breath fogged before him. Time slowed into the repetition of movement.

Step. Brace. Breathe.

Every step was a battle.

The wind pulled at his limbs, sapping his warmth. The slope was vertical in places, forcing him to claw with pick and rope, body pressed against the mountain like a second skin.

Once, a blast of wind nearly wrenched him free. He dangled over an abyss for a full minute, suspended only by the bite of a rope knot and his left arm hooked through a crevice. The ground below blurred with snow and shadow. His heartbeat was the only thing that felt real.

His fingers bled. His legs trembled.

And still he climbed.

He climbed because he couldn't stop. Because something inside refused to kneel.

His thoughts turned inwards.

Why do you climb so bitterly?

Not from the mountain. The question came from himself.

He could feel the pressure in his chest. Not just the wind. Not just the cold.

But resistance.

From within.

I want to rise above the mortal world. But why?

His Primal Origin Light pulsed faintly, flickering beneath his ribs. Then again. Stronger.

The wind howled louder, as if in defiance of his answer.

I want to rise… because only by rising above can I oversee it, protect it... protect others from a fate similar to mine.

He drove his hands into the next ridge, rope wrapped tightly, fingers stinging.

I am not content with my progress. I have to get stronger, better. I have been granted another opportunity at life—and I shall not waste it.

The light in his chest surged. It rippled outward.

One by one, his six halos flared within his core.

And then—

They stretched.

Faintly. Barely.

But enough.

The outermost rings shimmered past the boundary of his skin, pushing forward from his chest like an echo of his struggle. They weren't visible to the eye, but they were felt. The cold lessened—not because the wind had stopped, but because something inside had awakened.

With a final heave, he pulled himself over the last ridge.

And he stood on the summit.

The mountain's peak was not a narrow needlepoint.

It was a shape.

The carved outline of a beast's head, mouth open in an eternal roar toward the heavens. Horns curled from the stone. The mouth formed a gaping maw, wide and jagged, rimmed in frost and ice.

From within the open mouth, Dawn saw what lay inside.

A deep, blackened hollow—not dead, but pulsing with faint red light. Steam rose in whispers from the cracks. The Infernal Bolcanon wasn't just a name.

It was a myth made real.

He took one step forward.

And everything else fell silent.

---

Far below, on the shadowed slope, something stirred.

A figure in black robes crouched beside a stone outcrop.

Blood-red sigils shimmered across his cloak, pulsing with a silent hum. His hands were covered in bone-woven gloves. His face was hidden beneath a hood drawn low.

Before him, a strange device blinked to life.

It bore no markings of the academies—just raw, angular machinery shaped like bone and crystal, etched with crimson lines that pulsed like veins.

It pulsed.

Then projected.

On its surface: a halo signature. A hologram of the mountain.

Six halos. Primal resonance. Ascending pattern.

On the hologram, at the mouth of the volcano, a blinking red light pulsed in steady rhythm. The red light signified life—not just any lifeform, but one that bore the origin of a Prime.

The robed man tilted his head.

A grin, sharp and crooked, curled beneath his hood.

He pressed one finger to the device.

A faint trail of light sparked toward the summit.

And then, without a word, he rose.

And began to climb.

His shadow stretched behind him.

As if the mountain, too, was watching.