The silence was a weight. It pressed down on Yingluo's shoulders, a physical thing that stole the breath from her lungs. After the endless screaming of the mountain, this quiet was a lie. A predator holding its breath.
She pushed herself up. Every muscle screamed. Her body was a sack of bruises, a map of every fall, every desperate scramble. The air she sucked in was thin and sharp, like inhaling shattered glass. It smelled of frost and sterile stone. The smell of a tomb that had never known a body.
Gao Lian was already on her feet. A silhouette of pure defiance against the endless black. Her knife was out, her knuckles white. She wasn't just looking at the horizon; she was daring it to move.
The boy. He was just… gone. Hollowed out. The mountain had reached inside him and scooped out everything that made him a child, leaving only a small, trembling shell. He rocked, his gaze fixed on nothing.
