—FWOOOOOM—
Morning—if the mountain allowed such a word—arrived as a change in the blue torches.
They flared brighter for exactly seventeen heartbeats.
Then dimmed.
No dawn. No sun. No birdsong.
Only Blackwind deciding it was time to work.
Hands seized Leon before his eyes had fully focused.
Two cutters—both men, both visibly incomplete—hooked their arms beneath his shoulders and hauled him up like a sack of frozen grain. His legs dangled uselessly, boots carving shallow furrows through stone dust.
Pain bloomed instantly.
Bright.
Familiar.
Leon clenched his jaw.
He had already learned.
Screaming earned nothing here—except echoes and contempt.
They carried him up the spiral stair Claire had once glanced toward in silence.
The steps were worn smooth down the center, polished by centuries of dragging feet. With every turn, the air thinned, sharpened, filled with new scents—
Incense.
Old blood.
And the faint, sweet rot of dying flowers that should never have existed on a mountain like this.
At the top, the stair opened into a vast circular chamber carved directly into the peak.
The ceiling was gone.
Above, the sky yawned like a torn wound—jagged black ice forming teeth around the opening. Snow fell constantly through the gap, but never reached the floor. It dissolved into mist a few feet above the polished stone, as if the chamber itself drank it.
At the center stood a single altar.
Black stone.
Veined with violet.
Upon it rested a shallow basin, already half-filled with something dark and syrup-thick.
Seven figures knelt around it.
White furs.
Immaculate.
Obscene against the mountain's filth.
Their faces were hidden behind smooth bone masks, each carved into the same elongated, eyeless visage.
One figure did not kneel.
She stood beside the altar.
Tall.
Wrapped in robes the color of fresh bruises.
No mask.
Her face was young—too young—skin pale as untouched snow. Her hair was obsidian black, bound into a single heavy braid that fell to her waist.
But her eyes—
Her eyes had no whites.
Only violet.
The exact shade of the vein.
Glowing softly, like lamps left burning in an abandoned house.
The Mistress.
The cutters dropped Leon at her feet.
—THUD—
Pain lanced through his shattered legs, stealing his breath. He stayed where he fell. Moving would only make it worse.
She looked down at him.
No expression.
"Thirty-Seven," she said.
Her voice was quiet. Almost gentle.
It vibrated—subtly—with the same resonance as the ore itself.
"You answered the call."
Leon forced his head up. Dried blood crusted his upper lip. He licked it, tasting copper.
"I didn't have a choice."
A faint smile touched her mouth.
Gone before it could mean anything.
"No one does."
She gestured.
One masked figure stepped forward holding a long, slender rod of black ore, sharpened to a needle point. Another followed with a shallow dish filled with the same dark liquid as the basin.
The Mistress crouched beside Leon.
Close.
Too close.
He smelled cold stone… dying roses… and something metallic he could not name.
"Show me," she said.
Leon understood.
His hand moved without permission.
From within his rags, he drew the shard he had taken from the vein the night before. It had grown warm against his skin—almost feverish.
When he opened his palm, violet light leaked between his fingers.
The kneeling figures stirred.
A low murmur rose behind the bone masks—reverence twisted with hunger.
The Mistress did not flinch.
She closed her pale fingers around the shard.
For a heartbeat, their skin touched.
Her flesh was cold as glacier ice.
She studied the fragment slowly.
"You woke it early," she murmured. "Most take months to draw even a splinter."
Her eyes flicked to Leon's ruined legs.
"You were chosen before you arrived."
She turned the shard, violet light painting her cheekbones.
"Pain makes the best conduits," she said softly. "Hunger. Despair."
"Broken things remember best."
She handed the shard to the masked figure with the rod.
He knelt.
Pressed the needle-point against Leon's chest—
—directly over his heart.
Leon tensed.
The Mistress leaned close.
"Do not fight," she whispered. "Let it see you."
—SSSSK—
The needle pierced skin.
Barely deep.
Enough.
Blood welled.
The shard flared.
Violet light surged up the rod like liquid fire, raced down the needle, and entered Leon's chest.
—BOOM—
Leon convulsed.
Not from pain alone—
—but from memory that was not his.
Visions tore through him:
A tower of mirrored glass collapsing in slow arcs of refracted light.
Voices screaming in a language made of breaking stone.
A woman with star-filled eyes reaching through shadow—toward someone else—her fingers burning black as they touched a wall of living darkness.
Blood raining upward.
Gravity screaming in denial.
A name—
Mueor.
Spoken not in fear.
But in love.
In grief.
In final, unbearable resolve.
—SNAP—
The vision vanished.
Leon gasped, back arching off the stone. Blood streamed from the tiny wound, tracing a thin line down his chest.
Where it touched the altar—
—the liquid in the basin stirred.
Rippled.
Something beneath it shifted.
The Mistress watched.
Satisfied.
"Good," she whispered. "Very good."
She stood.
"Return him to the vein," she commanded. "Let him cut."
"Let him feed it what it has already tasted."
The cutters dragged Leon away.
His body felt… light.
As though part of him remained behind, bleeding quietly into the basin.
As they pulled him down the stair, her voice followed one last time.
"Thirty-Seven."
Leon twisted his head upward.
"When it calls again," the Mistress said calmly, "answer faster."
"The mountain grows impatient."
The stair swallowed him.
—CLANG—
Back in the gallery, they dropped him beside his bench.
Claire was already there, chisel in hand.
She glanced at the blood on his chest.
Then at his face.
"You lived," she said.
Flat.
No relief.
No surprise.
Leon dragged himself upright. His fingers closed around the chisel they'd left behind.
It felt heavier.
Warmer.
He looked at the vein.
The fracture he'd made the night before had widened—a crack no longer than his forearm, but deep.
Inside it, violet light pulsed.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Like breathing.
Leon raised the chisel.
The instant metal touched stone—
—the whispering returned.
Not in his head.
In his hands.
In the marrow of his arms.
In the ruin of his legs.
Cut.
Feed.
Remember.
Leon brought the chisel down.
—CRACK—
The black ore parted cleanly.
A single perfect shard fell into his palm.
Warm.
Alive.
His.
And deep within Blackwind Mountain—
Something ancient turned its gaze fully upon him for the first time.
It was pleased.