The Wilderness offered opportunity, but not freely.
For Dawn, that opportunity had a name—the Internal Mantle.
Six halos pulsed quietly within him, settled into a rhythm that resonated with his breath and blood. That was the foundation. The requirement. But two more conditions remained to begin the forging of an Internal Mantle:
A place of Infernal Bolcanon, a mythical mountain draped in snow and flame. And a piece of a fallen star—an Infernal Meteorite Stone.
The stone he already had.
Gary had provided it, courtesy of his family's ancient vaults. The gift had been given with little fanfare but immense weight. Dawn had accepted it without thanks. Not out of arrogance, but because words would have cheapened it.
Now he stood at the base of a peak unlike any other.
The mountain loomed before him, white and seething. Unlike the academy-guarded lands, where the weather was strangely still, almost docile, here the air was violent.
Winds howled down the slopes like living things, cold enough to pierce bone, loud enough to drown thought. The snow didn't fall—it struck. Swirling, blinding, slashing.
It was alive, in the way only truly untamed places could be.
Dawn tightened the length of cloth he'd wrapped around his face, checked the bindings of his leather-clad hands, and adjusted the weight of his pack. He wasn't dressed in the modern gear of the high nobles. He wore layered hides, tightly bound, waterproofed with resin. Simple tools hung from his belt—a bone hook, climbing cord spun from core-root fiber, a handmade ice pick gifted by a wandering instructor long ago.
There was no one to watch him.
Only the storm.
He began the climb.
Step by step, foot by foot, he moved with deliberate care. He planted each step diagonally into the slope, carving an edge with his outer boot and leaning slightly into the mountain. His weight was low, center tight.
His hands gripped rock and ledge where available, his body moving in low bursts of motion rather than a constant push. Climb, brace, breathe. Repeat.
And the wind?
The wind did not blow from above.
It fell from above.
Like a waterfall of frozen blades.
At times it slashed, sudden and sharp, trying to knock him sideways.
At times it pulled, like invisible claws grasping at his shoulders, trying to rip him free of the rock.
At times it shoved—a burst like a wall of invisible pressure pressing into his chest and legs.
He learned quickly to read the rhythm. The gusts came in intervals, and he began to move during the lulls.
He was methodical. Like a tribal climber of old, born not of luxury but of survival. He moved with the patience of someone who understood that mistakes were not injuries here.
They were death.
More than once, he slipped.
Each time, he caught himself—a buried spike, a braced elbow, a hook jammed into a crack just fast enough.
By the time he reached halfway, the ground beneath him had shifted from bare stone to a cruel field of compact snow and jagged ice. He pulled a rope of nails from his pack, began setting them into narrow gaps to use as anchors.
The snow here was deceptive.
It looked soft. It was not.
The cold was no longer just pain. It was a constant bite at the edge of awareness, a voice that whispered: stop here. Rest here. Let the wind take you.
He pushed through it.
His breath became shorter, more controlled. He breathed through his nose, slow and steady, to conserve warmth. His fingers, though wrapped, began to lose feeling. His feet were solid stumps of movement.
But his mind?
Sharp.
Focused.
Ascension was not gained in moments of ease.
It was claimed in trials.
And this was one.
Why do you climb? the wind seemed to whisper.
To Ascend the mortal coil, one must climb above the mortal world first, Dawn answered inwardly.
He remembered his time beneath the waterfall. The resonance. The way the world had bent around him for a moment. It had been power—not to wield, but to become.
I wasn't chosen. I stepped forward.
Another gust nearly knocked him loose. He dug in deeper. The snow tore at his face, his ears burned with numbness, and still he climbed.
Every time his body begged to rest, he answered with movement.
Every time fear pressed in, he countered with silence.
Not yet. I haven't reached it yet.
He passed a frozen ridge. A slope slick with compacted ice. There were claw marks here—not human, not natural.
The mountain was not empty.
He pressed on.
Eventually, he reached a small overhang. He pulled himself onto the ledge and collapsed, chest heaving, eyes unfocused.
For a moment, he simply existed.
Breathing.
Then he sat up, back against the frozen stone, and looked around.
He was halfway up. Just beyond this stretch, the true snow field began.
Blank. White. Waiting.
He pulled a strip of dried rimefruit from his satchel, chewed slowly, eyes fixed upward.
He would climb again soon.
But for now, he watched the storm.
And the storm watched back.
---
Far away, on a separate ridge hidden by the storm, a strange device pulsed quietly against a rock face. It had not been there before.
And near it, a faint outline moved.
Not a student.
Not a beast.
Something else.
Watching.
Waiting.
Unseen, but no longer unaware.
---
To be continued