The wind howled like a living thing, shrieking across the frozen peaks of Kazakhstan’s mountains. Snow slashed sideways through the air, blanketing the jagged cliffs in white. Amid the storm, a single sleek ship cut through the sky like a whisper, cloaked in silence, descending into a narrow valley lost to time.
Starman stepped out first.
The cold hit him like a wall, biting, brutal, indifferent. He didn’t flinch. Not this time. He had walked through worse. But something in his chest fluttered, not fear, exactly. Dread, maybe. A quiet understanding that the path ahead would change him in ways he couldn’t undo.
Jace followed close behind, his jacket too light for the weather, boots crunching over ice. “Come on,” he said, his voice barely audible over the storm. “He’s expecting us.”