The mountain grew lonelier the higher they climbed. Pines clung to narrow shelves, their roots like grasping fingers splitting the stone. The air thinned, touched by the sharp bite of iron as though the rocks themselves bled. Ira led without meaning to, each step certain though the path was treacherous. Sometimes he paused at a fork, tilting his head as if listening to a voice the others could not hear. Other times he turned without hesitation, guiding them along ledges that looked too frail to bear even a sparrow's weight.
Zadie noticed. She watched the way his eyes narrowed just before the trail curved, the way his breath stilled as though aligning with some hidden rhythm. Rust noticed too, though his silence carried suspicion rather than awe.
By dusk the shadows had thickened, and mist rolled from the valley below. It wasn't the soft silver haze of morning fog, but a heavier shroud that clung low to the stones. The air grew sour, tinged with rot. Ira stopped dead, one hand raised in warning.
A sound scraped through the fog—a chittering like teeth grinding bone. Then came the smell: iron and decay.
They emerged not like hunters, but like mistakes of nature dragging themselves back into the world. Their limbs were too long, jointed wrong, bending backward with unnatural grace. Their skin was pale as candle wax, veins blackened and pulsing beneath the surface. Each face was a vertical split, a maw lined with needle-fine teeth that clicked restlessly, dripping strands of clear saliva onto the stones.
Four at first, crawling low, their hands clutching the ground like talons. Behind them the mist quivered, promising more.
Zadie's hand trembled on her hilt, though her stance was firm. "What in all the hells are those?"
Rust's voice was low, almost reverent in its unease. "Hollowborn." He spat the word like it left a taste in his mouth. "Stories say they were once men—wanderers who broke vows, who sold truth for survival, who gave up what made them whole. When the mountain takes them, it spits them back out… empty."
His eyes didn't leave the crawling forms. "Not ghosts. Not beasts. Something caught between. Their flesh remembers hunger, but their souls are ash. Old folk call them oath-broken—condemned to wander until the Mountains swallow them for good."
Zadie's jaw tightened. "You sound like you've seen them."
"Not seen. Heard." Rust's mouth twitched, though his tone lacked humor. "Tavern whispers. Broken prayers. Men who swore never to climb again because the sound of them—those teeth—followed them down the slopes." He flicked a glance at Ira, his voice sharpening. "Funny thing, though. You don't look surprised."
But Ira was already moving. He studied the slope above, then shifted his stance with quiet certainty. "Circle wide. Don't let them close."
Rust blinked. "And how do you—"
The question snapped in two. From the cliff face above, another Hollowborn dropped, its body twisting mid-air like a broken marionette. Ira was there before it landed, blade slicing clean through its neck. Black ichor sprayed, hissing as it struck the stone.
The others shrieked, a sound like bone saws chewing through marrow. They surged forward, claws scraping sparks from the rock.
Zadie met the first, her blade flashing in an arc that caught it across the chest. It staggered but did not fall, its wound seething with tar-like blood. Rust slipped into the mist, vanishing and reappearing at another's flank, his knives biting deep into sinew. But Ira held the center.
The creatures moved in fits and spasms, their motions grotesque, as if their bodies remembered hunger but not how to walk as men. To anyone else, their lunges were chaos. To Ira, they were a pattern written in flesh. He saw the tremor in their shoulders before the strike, the shift of weight in their hips before the leap.
He flowed through them like a blade through water, parrying one claw and turning it into a thrust that severed a throat, sidestepping another just as it pounced, letting its momentum carry it into his waiting strike. His eyes glimmered—not only with instinct, but with something deeper, something mapped.
The Hollowborn shrieked louder as they fell. Their bodies didn't crumple like men but collapsed in convulsions, their flesh turning brittle, crumbling into ash where ichor struck the ground. It was as if they had no right to remain in the world once slain.
Zadie struggled, her arms shaking as her blade stuck in the chest of another. The thing writhed toward her, maw splitting open wide enough to crack its skull in half. But Ira was already there. His sword severed the creature's arm, then its jaw, before Zadie could even gasp.
She stumbled, chest heaving, terror and relief battling in her eyes. Ira steadied her with one hand, his grip firm, grounding. His touch lingered a heartbeat longer than needed, thumb brushing unconsciously against her sleeve as if to remind her she wasn't alone.
"You did well," he said softly, voice steady despite the storm around them.
Her gaze clung to his, some of the fear ebbing. For that moment, she didn't see the guarded wanderer who always kept secrets. She saw someone fierce enough to shield her, yet gentle enough to anchor her when she faltered.
The last Hollowborn collapsed under Rust's knives, convulsing before its husk burned away into ash. Silence returned, heavy and broken only by their ragged breaths.
Rust stepped from the mist, wiping his blades clean. His eyes fixed on Ira, sharp with suspicion. "Convenient, that Instinct of yours," he murmured. "Almost as if you knew the script before the play began."
Ira met his stare, unflinching. His silence was answer enough, though his grip on the hilt tightened.
Rust pressed, a mocking edge to the words. " But Instinct doesn't let men predict monsters dropping out of the sky."
Zadie cut in sharply. "Enough. He saved us. Leave it."
Rust only smiled thinly, but the look in his eyes promised the question was far from buried.
They walked on. The mist thinned, but the weight of the Hollowborn lingered, as if the stones themselves remembered their passage. Rust muttered under his breath, almost too low to hear: "Oath-broken. If they're here, it means the mountain's watching closer than it should be."
Zadie drifted nearer to Ira, her steps aligning with his. She glanced at him often, as if making sure he remained steady, though perhaps also because she felt steadier at his side. And Ira himself—though his body still ached and his secrets pressed heavy against his chest—walked with a newfound gravity. He no longer drifted half in thought, as he once had; his steps were purposeful, his vigilance constant. The map pulsed faintly beneath his tunic, warm as a heartbeat, and though he shared nothing of it, his every action bore its weight.
By the time the spire of the chapel pierced the horizon—black stone stabbing at the sky like a wound—He felt it not just as a sight but as a summons. The Trial of Spirit awaited, and with it, truths neither blade nor instinct alone could answer.