The sound was gone, but something colder had settled in its place. The murmuring students faded into the background as Zel's mind reeled. There was a collapse near Mount Celaine. Near his father's expedition.
Larisen should've been home by now. His investigation wasn't meant to take more than a few hours, but Zel knew too well that punctuality was not his father's strong suit. The dark inside a cavern wasn't so different from nightfall, enough to make anyone lose track of time.
Zel's feet were stuck fast, the cold sinking in deeper by the second. His father could be out there, stuck behind a rockfall or buried under the snow. Or he could be at the butcher, picking out the largest rack of ribs on offer. Or he could be at home, already stirring a pot of stew over the stove. The uncertainty was paralyzing.
Nearby, someone cried out. "Avalanche!"
His legs moved, and he took the stairs two at a time. At the bottom, he turned right, away from the village and toward the path to Mount Celaine.
Someone grabbed his shoulder. He lurched to a stop.
"Zel?" It was Raighem's voice.
Zel spun around, swatting Raighem's arm away from him. Raighem lowered his brows in response, his face a mix of confusion and concern.
"Where are you off to?"
Zel gritted his teeth. "Home."
"Your home is that way," Raighem said, gesturing back toward the lights of the town. He stepped around Zel, blocking his path. "We all just heard something collapse. It's getting dark, and the mountain is unstable. I can't let you run straight into danger."
"I just—"
Zel opened his mouth, then closed it. He didn't know how to lie his way out of this one, to insist that he needed to examine Mount Celaine for reasons unrelated to his father's expedition. He shook his head to clear it. It didn't matter. He wasn't going to let Raighem stop him.
In one motion, he ducked around Raighem and ran hard. His boots sprayed snow in his wake, muffling the instructor's startled shout. He kept going. The night air was growing so cold that each breath brought a sharp pain to his lungs. His shoulder ached where Raighem had gripped it. Still, he kept going.
This wasn't like him. Zel never ran like this, unless for drills. When he sprinted past the scattered spectators, their heads whipped to watch him go. This was why, only moments after he disappeared into the woods, other footsteps began to follow. A ripple of worry passed through the onlookers. Someone might be trapped. Someone might be hurt. Within minutes, half the village was trailing behind him, their handlamps flashing in the dark.
Zel didn't look back. If he did, he might see Raighem catching up.
The path wound through a thinning stretch of coniferous forest. As the snowfall eased, moonlight slipped through the branches in uneven patches, lighting the trail in silver and shadow. Rocks and roots jutted through the ice-crusted ground. Zel's boots slipped more than once, but he didn't slow down. Wind hissed between the trees with a low whistle. Everything was too quiet after the noise from before, like the mountains were holding their breath.
Zel tried to control his own. Keep going. Don't let them catch up. Don't let them find him first.
But his heart was louder than his thoughts, and when he rounded a bend and spotted a small red flag in the snow, trampled and half-buried, something inside him shivered. It was one of Larisen's survey markers.
He stopped just long enough to stare, then he ran harder.
He reached the base of Mount Celaine winded, heart pounding in his ears. The forest gave way to jagged stone and uneven ground, but there was no sign of a collapse. No obvious path of destruction or scattered tools. Just darkness pressing in from all sides, broken only by the glint of snow.
Still, Zel dropped to his knees and started digging. He clawed at the drifts with bare hands, turning over loose rock and packed snow wherever he thought he saw a footprint. He found nothing. Gravel stung his palms and cold bit into his fingers.
Voices echoed behind him as the others began to arrive. First a few, then more, until the silence fractured with muttered questions. Most didn't know what they were looking for. Some students treated it like an adventure, yelling out guesses about an avalanche or a secret tunnel revealed by erosion. Someone cursed as they stumbled.
Zel stood, breathing hard. His arms ached. He didn't know where else to search. What if he'd imagined the whole thing? What if Larisen had taken a different path home and was sitting by the fire right now, wondering why the village was empty? The panic that had carried him this far began to flicker out.
A hand fell on his shoulder, gentler than Raighem's had been. Zel turned. It was Anduic.
"Zel." The old man's breath was short, clearly rattled from the three-mile journey down the trail. "Tell me. What are you looking for?"
Zel looked into his granddad's eyes and realized that the lie wouldn't come this time. He didn't know why he ever bothered. There was no official rule keeping people from Mount Celaine, only an unspoken agreement, old as Belvair itself. It was considered off-limits, too steep and unstable. And yet the moment someone shouted "avalanche," and Zel took off, half the town had followed. If it was truly as dangerous as everyone claimed, wouldn't they have stayed away?
Zel was tired and cold. He wanted to go home. So when his granddad squeezed his shoulder, prompting, he relented.
"Dad's expedition. It wasn't in the foothills, it was here. I don't remember which cavern. I thought he might've gotten caught in some collapse, but now I can't find him."
Anduic released him and gave a nod. "Understood. We'll help you look." He raised his voice to the crowd. "Spread out. Look for signs of a recent collapse. Call if you find anything."
The townsfolk moved hesitantly at first, their voices uncertain as they called out.
"Larisen?"
"Anyone see footprints?"
"Larisen!"
The search spread unevenly across the slope, voices scattering with the wind. Some climbed higher while others circled back toward the tree line, scanning the undergrowth with their handlamps. A few people began digging with gloved hands, brushing aside powdery snow to uncover nothing at all.
Zel lingered near the edge of the group, eyes scanning but not seeing. What if he was wrong? He imagined walking through the door to the house, finding Larisen at the table. The look on his face when he told his father the whole town was searching for him.
He glanced back toward the path, the thought half-forming. He could still check. If he left now, maybe he'd—
Someone yelled up ahead.
A ripple passed through the group, voices rising as a cluster formed near a slope of freshly fallen stone. Zel froze. The mound stood higher than he'd searched before, tucked behind a ridge where the snowfall hadn't fully reached.
Anduic ambled after them as quickly as his old joints could manage. Zel followed, feet heavy, body barely cooperating.
He saw the outstretched hand first. The rest came slowly into focus. Partially buried limbs, a tangle of cloth and blood and rock. His father's sample case, crushed, its contents spilling onto the ground. The colors gleamed with an eerie cheer, too vivid against the blood-darkened snow.
Zel's knees nearly gave out. His lungs pulled for air, but each breath was shallow and useless. He could still hear his father's voice from that morning.
I'll see you later.
The sounds around him dimmed, voices slipping in and out of hearing. A memory flickered, Larisen's laughter bouncing off cavern walls the first time he brought Zel to see aetheric crystals in the flesh. The clink of a mineral shard being set gently on their kitchen table.
Then there was nothing except the blur of cold and noise and light.
· ─ · ✶ · ─ ·
Zel didn't pass out, but he wished he had. Frostbitten unconsciousness was preferable to the thunderous silence that greeted him at the doorstep of his house. Anything was. A numb, knotted part of him wished to return to the mountain where he could at least watch his father be removed from the rubble. Instead, Anduic had banished him back to a house dull and empty.
He tried to recall how he got here. Just moments ago, he was at the base of Mount Celaine. Or had it been hours? Time blurred as the snowfall resumed. He'd seen his father's minerals sprayed across the bloodied snow, then his balance tipped back. Everything withdrew, and he was suddenly far, far away from the wind and the mountain and the swarm of townsfolk working to pull Larisen's broken corpse from the rubble. He would've floated away into the inky sky if someone hadn't tugged him from the wreckage.
He'd blinked. Anduic held him out at arms-length. His gaze had been firm, but his jaw trembled, as if struggling to form the words.
"Go home. I'll meet you there."
Zel couldn't remember if he'd nodded or protested or sank to his knees. All he knew was that he was home now, and he was alone.
He stepped inside without taking off his shoes. Larisen's scarf hung on the hook by the door, exactly where it had always been. The kettle was still out on the stove. Zel didn't know what he expected, but it wasn't this. Not everything exactly the same as he'd left it.
Vaguely, he thought he should make dinner. Take off his coat and set up the guest room for his granddad. Move his hands so his heart wouldn't melt through his ribcage and fall to the floor, at least not in front of Anduic.
Instead, he glanced from the table, still scattered with Larisen's discarded notes, to the photo on the mantel with those three grinning faces. His acute hatred for those smiles was matched only by his longing for them. Chores could wait.
He pulled the household glyphboard from its spot on the counter and placed it on the kitchen table, along with a sheet of paper and the adjoining glyphink pen. It was a flat device a touch larger than the paper, and it would transmit a scan of his written message to anyone he wished. Right now, there were only two people he could think of. He switched it on, then sketched the glyphs for the recipients' respective channels at the top of the board. His fingers quivered with the effort, but muscle memory persisted. He'd written these glyphs often enough not to need the old channel stamps his father kept in a drawer.
Had kept.
The glyphboard's crystal indicator light blinked, awaiting further input. Zel placed the fresh sheet of paper in front of him, then stared and stared until its edges blurred against the grain of the dark wood beneath it. For a time, the tick, tick, tick of the wall clock filled his head, louder than thought. A full minute passed. Then, at last, he began to write.
It took everything in him to squeeze out those first few sentences. His handwriting, usually meticulous, was jagged and rushed.
Rio, Therren,
I'm writing to you both because something has happened. I know you aren't planning to return to Belvair until the 27th, but I'd like you to come sooner than that for the funeral. I think it will be on the 25th or 26th. Hopefully in the afternon
Zel stopped at the misspelling. He stared at It for a heartbeat, then crossed out the entire sentence. His eyes drifted to a tiny cracked geode across the table. The small note beside it read: For A to label.
It distantly occurred to him that he hadn't specified whose funeral his friends would be attending. He picked up the pen and began once more.
I'm sorry. It's my dad. There was an accident. Rockfall near Celaine. He got crushed. He's gone.
Those last two words tore open something within him. His eyes welled, and they multiplied. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. Zel had reached his limit. The sign-off of his letter became agony. Each stroke of the pen scraped raw the small parts of him that still held feeling.
Please come back.
– A
He fed the letter into the scanner tray and watched as his writing began to glow faintly. The ink shimmered. As the aether activated, the page rose on a cushion of light.
The glyphboard flared and pulsed. Light split the page apart, word by word, until something hollow tugged in his chest. For a heartbeat, he imagined his own body unraveling the same way. The cold walls around him fell away. He wasn't sitting at the table anymore, he was the pulse streaking through channels of light. He was being sent, carried forward, away from this house, this quiet, this ruin of a day.
Then the light dimmed. The message was sent. He was still here. The tears fell freely, plopping like rainwater onto his paper plea.