The air thins one breath at a time.

  Eric doesn’t notice it at first. He only knows that his chest feels tight, like his lungs have learned a new shape and don’t quite agree with it yet. Each step uphill takes more effort than the last. The path, if it can be called that, winds between stone and scrub, climbing steadily toward a line of jagged peaks that cut the sky like broken teeth.

  The streams are colder now.

  He kneels once to drink and jerks his hand back with a hiss. The water burns with cold, numbing his fingers instantly. Meltwater. Snow-fed. Honest and cruel. He drinks anyway, cupping it carefully, letting the shock wake him fully.

  By midday, the wind finds him.

  It slides down the slopes and through the pass without obstruction, sharp and relentless. Eric pulls on every layer he owns, shirt over shirt, patched jacket, the spare tunic tied at the waist and wrapped up around his shoulders. He looks ridiculous. He doesn’t care.

  The peak looms closer with every hour.

  He tells himself he doesn’t need to cross today. That there’s no rush. But the truth presses on him with the same weight as the sky: he wants to see what’s on the other side.

  Not because it’s safer. Not because it’s promised.

  Because it’s there.

  The climb steepens as the sun dips low.

  Eric reaches the crest just as the world begins to turn gold and bruised purple. The pass opens suddenly, a wide saddle between peaks dusted with old snow that refuses to melt. Beyond it, land falls away into shadowed valleys he can’t yet make out.

  He stops.

  For a long moment, he just stands there, chest heaving, legs shaking, the wind tearing at him from every direction.

  “I made it,” he whispers, more to himself than the mountain.

  But the light is failing fast.

  Eric looks down the far slope and knows immediately, he can’t make it before dark. The descent is steep, broken, treacherous even in daylight. At night, it would kill him.

  So he turns back a few dozen paces and finds what shelter he can.

  A shallow bowl between two slabs of stone. Barely enough to block the wind, but better than nothing. He gathers what scrub he can find, snaps it into kindling with stiff fingers, and works until a small fire crackles to life.

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  The relief is immediate.

  Eric leans back against the stone, heat on his face, wind screaming overhead. The fire is pitiful, really, hardly more than a promise, but it’s his. He feeds it carefully, guarding it like a living thing.

  Above him, the stars sharpen as the sun dies.

  The mountain does not care that he is tired.

  The night is brutal.

  Even wrapped in every scrap of cloth, Eric shivers uncontrollably. The wind never stops. It howls through the pass like something alive, tugging at the fire, stealing heat whenever it can. He feeds the flames until his fuel runs low, then curls close, trying to trap what warmth remains.

  Sleep comes in thin, broken stretches.

  When dawn approaches, it almost kills him.

  A sound, sharp, sudden, wrong, cuts through his dreams.

  Crack.

  Eric jolts awake, heart hammering. Frost coats everything. His breath fogs thick and slow. The fire has died completely, reduced to blackened stones and ash.

  Another crack splits the air.

  Ice.

  The ground beneath him shifts.

  Eric scrambles up just as a sheet of frozen meltwater fractures where he had been lying. The frost has hidden it, a thin skin over a trickle that thawed in the day and refroze overnight. One wrong movement and he would have slid, helpless, down the far side of the pass.

  His legs buckle when he stands.

  Cold seizes him violently now that he’s moving. His hands shake so badly he drops his pack twice before managing to pull it open. He fumbles for flint and steel, curses when they slip from numb fingers.

  Focus.

  He forces himself to breathe.

  In.

  Out.

  Slow. Intentional.

  The lessons Mara drilled into him rise up, unbidden. Breath is control. Breath is life.

  On the third strike, sparks catch.

  A flame blooms, fragile and miraculous.

  Eric feeds it desperately, crouching low, using his body to block the wind. The fire grows grudgingly, licking at the cold, pushing it back inch by inch.

  He sits as close as he dares and breathes.

  In.

  Out.

  The shivering doesn’t stop for a long time. His teeth chatter until his jaw aches. Pain flares in his fingers, his toes, his ears, sharp, then dull, then sharp again as sensation fights its way back.

  He could have died.

  The realization hits him harder than the cold ever did.

  Not to a beast. Not to a blade. Just… carelessness. One bad decision. One night too high.

  Eric stares into the fire and learns something the capital never taught him.

  Survival is not bravery.

  It’s judgment.

  When the sun finally clears the ridge, the world thaws with alarming speed.

  Frost melts. Ice cracks and collapses. The mountain groans softly as if annoyed to be waking. Eric keeps the fire going long enough to warm himself fully, then packs with shaking hands.

  He practices his breathing as he moves.

  Walking. Standing. Waiting.

  Even here.

  Especially here.

  By the time he starts down the far slope, his legs are steady again. Every step is careful. Every choice deliberate. He does not rush.

  Halfway down, a flicker crosses his vision.

  Text.

  Pale. Brief.

  Supplicant is of age and viable.

  Eric stops so abruptly he nearly loses his footing.

  “What?” he breathes.

  The words fade almost immediately, like mist burned away by sunlight. No fanfare. No sound. Just… gone.

  His heart pounds.

  Sixteen.

  The thought lands slowly. He hadn’t marked the days. Hadn’t counted the months. Time blurred on the road, shaped by hunger and work and weather instead of calendars.

  Six months into his supplicant year.

  Near death on a mountain pass.

  And the System notices now.

  Not with praise. Not with threat.

  With acknowledgment.

  Eric swallows and keeps walking.

  Whatever that means, he will learn it later.

  For now, the mountain loosens its grip, and the path opens before him, winding down toward whatever waits on the other side.