The Star-Eater's Ascent

The wind didn't so much howl as it screamed—a sound like tearing stone that had followed you up the face of Mount Vael for three days. Your gloved fingers found the next crack in the basalt, tested it, and held. Above, the storm churned in a slow, hungry spiral, its eye fixed on the summit like a pupil staring down at you.

Behind and below, the rope went taut. Kaelen's voice came up thin and sharp through the gale. "Hold position. The ledge is gone."

You didn't look down. You'd learned that lesson on the first day, when the mountain had rearranged its own cliff face and the ground had fallen away into a throat of blackness where the base camp should have been. Instead, you pressed your forehead to the cold rock and breathed.

Then the wind died.

It was sudden enough to make your ears ring, a silence so total it felt like the mountain had drawn a breath. And in that stillness, a voice—soft, feminine, and far too close—whispered from inside your own skull.

You feel it, don't you? The pull.

The rock beneath your fingers was warm now. Humming.

You looked up.

High above, framed against the churning storm, a figure stood on a ledge that hadn't been there a moment ago. It wore the tattered grey robes of the cult, hood down, face young and pale. Lyra. She stared down at you with eyes that reflected starlight that wasn't there.

"The eye is closing," she said, her voice cutting through the gale like a blade. "It knows you're coming."