The climb started as a road and turned into a punishment.
For the first few hours, Mornspire was just an uphill track—rutted, rocky, snaking between low pines. The air thinned by degrees, like someone slowly tightening a belt around Kairn's ribs.
He kept his breaths even.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Barra set a relentless pace, not quite a march, not quite a jog.
"You're breathing wrong," Joren said mildly after the second hour.
"How many ways are there to breathe?" Fen demanded.
"Enough that one of them won't get you killed up here," Joren said. "Short and shallow. Don't try to fill your lungs. They won't."
Kairn adjusted.
His body complained.
His Brand hummed.
Mornspire's pull sharpened with every step.
By midday, the road had devolved into a narrow path carved into the side of the mountain, with a drop on one side and a wall of stone on the other.
Wind knifed along the cliff, stealing heat.
It wasn't normal wind.
It had *voices* in it.
Half-formed, like the Choir trying to learn a new language.
"…hold…"
"…yield…"
"…rest…"
Lysa's fingers started tapping as soon as she heard it.
She didn't wait for Kairn's nod.
Her rhythm fell into the wind like stones into a stream, breaking the current.
Da-dum-dum.
Da-dum-dum.
The whispered words stuttered, lost cohesion.
Kairn grunted.
"He's testing," he said. "No full song yet. Just seeing what sticks."
"I'd like to stick my knife in his throat," Fen said.
"Soon," Kairn said.
The path doubled back on itself, zigzagging.
Above, the peak was a jagged crown of rock. Near its top, Kairn could see the faint outlines of old structures—low walls, a squat stone building, tall poles like skeletal trees.
Signal stones.
Weather-poles.
The King's new bones.
His thread coiled thickest there, a knot that made Kairn's skin crawl even at this distance.
He didn't need **Web Map** to feel it now.
It was in the air.
In the stone.
Joren stopped at a narrow section where the path was barely wide enough for one person.
"From here, we go single file," he said. "Don't look down. Don't look up. Look at the heels in front of you and don't think about how far you'll fall if you trip."
Fen peered over the edge anyway.
Clouds moved lazily below them.
His face went a little gray.
"Noted," he said.
They moved on.
Kairn went second, behind Joren.
Barra behind him.
Lysa after Barra.
Fen last, grumbling.
The King's presence pressed harder.
The air shimmered.
For a heartbeat, the path ahead looked like the mine tunnel.
Then like the tower walkway.
Then like the ribs of the dragon.
Memory traps.
He blinked and saw stone and sky again.
"Don't trust your eyes," he called back quietly. "He's painting over them."
"Useful tip," Fen said faintly.
The first attack wasn't subtle.
The wind died.
All at once.
Sound emptied.
The only noise was the crunch of boots on stone.
Then the world *dropped*.
Kairn's stomach lurched.
The path under his feet seemed to vanish, leaving him stepping into nothing.
His body tried to flail.
His Brand screamed.
He clung to Joren's pack with one hand and the stone wall with the other purely on reflex.
"Hold!" Barra barked behind him.
Lysa's beat slammed against his spine.
Da-dum.
Da-dum.
He forced himself to look down.
Stone.
The path was still there.
His ears caught up.
The "drop" had been an illusion—vertigo shoved through his senses like a shove between the shoulder blades.
The King laughed in the wind.
Kairn snarled back.
"Cheap," he spat.
"Effective, if you don't have friends shouting at you," Joren said calmly. "Step."
They stepped.
The air thickened.
Kairn's lungs burned.
He knew the signs of his own body failing.
This was not that.
This was *pressure*.
The King's thread coiled tighter around his chest, trying to squeeze.
Chains with no metal.
Obligations.
Promised safety.
*Stop. Kneel. Breathe when I say.*
He saw the mine.
He heard the King's old commands.
He heard the web-voices in his head.
He heard the dragon roaring back.
He heard Lysa on the ribs: "This is your beat, not his."
He chose.
He tore the pressure to shreds with his Brand, flaring just enough ash-fire through his veins to burn the false commands without cooking his own lungs.
His chest loosened.
He heard Joren gasp.
Barra wheezed a curse.
Lysa hissed.
Behind, Fen swore creatively.
"He's going to kill us before we even see a wall," Fen said. "New tactic: don't die on the stairs."
"We're on a mountain, not stairs," Joren said.
"Pedantic," Fen snapped.
The path widened a little, enough to let them breathe without feeling like they were walking the edge of a knife.
Kairn's head spun.
He forced himself to check **Web Map**.
Bad idea.
The whole peak lit up, the King's knot blazing, threads running down into the rock under his feet, up into the sky overhead.
He saw the rough shape of a Gate—half-formed, like an eye forced open against its will.
He saw Choir-smears gathering there.
He saw…
His own face.
For an instant, in the web's reflection, he saw himself in the center of that Gate, chains running into his chest, the King's voice using his mouth.
He ripped himself out of the vision.
His foot slipped.
The world tilted.
There was nothing under him but air.
He fell.
A hand slammed around his wrist.
Joren.
The climber had dropped his own center of gravity and anchored himself to a jut of rock with his other arm, muscles corded.
"Got you," Joren grunted.
Kairn dangled, boots scraping the cliff, wind clawing at his coat.
The King surged toward the opening in his guard.
*This is easier,* the whisper came, all silk and inevitability. *Let go. Fall. I will catch what remains of you and make it clean.*
Lysa's fingers clamped on his sleeve, adding her weight to Joren's anchor, pulling him sideways toward stone.
"Don't you dare," she snarled.
He bared his teeth.
"I'm not that easy to pick up," he spat at the empty air.
He scrabbled with his boots.
Rock.
Fingers.
Grip.
Together, Joren and Lysa hauled him back onto the path, dragging him onto rough stone.
He lay there for a second, chest heaving, ash-eye burning, the King's laughter echoing in his skull.
Barra crouched, shoving a waterskin at his face.
"Drink," Barra ordered.
He obeyed.
The water was warm from being pressed against someone's side.
It tasted like sweat and leather and stone.
Real.
"You good?" Lysa demanded.
"Define 'good,'" he croaked.
"Still you?" she pressed.
"Yes," he said.
"Then good enough," she said.
Fen peered over them.
"You realize you just gave me rights to insult you about falling off things for at least a year," he said.
"Assuming we live that long," Kairn said.
"Optimism," Fen said. "I like it."
They moved on.
Slower.
More careful.
The King kept pushing.
He used vertigo.
He used illusions.
Once, he made a boulder higher up look like it was starting to fall; Joren had to shout "fake!" to keep Fen from diving into a much worse position.
Once, he whispered in Kairn's ear using Lysa's voice.
*Stop. I'm tired. Let's go back.*
Kairn almost turned.
The Greenfold-mark in his chest flared.
Leaves in his veins.
Roots in his spine.
Greenfold *snarled*.
This mountain was stone, not hers, but the King was trespassing in a place she did not like his kind.
Her shove helped him shrug the fake-Lysa voice away.
"You need new tricks," Kairn muttered.
"Don't say that," Fen hissed. "He'll take it as a challenge."
By the time they reached the last shoulder before the peak, Kairn's legs shook, his lungs burned, and his mind felt like someone had run a rasp over it.
The plateau spread ahead—a relatively flat expanse of broken stone leading to the remains of an old signal-station.
Low walls.
A squat central building.
Tall poles with cracked crystals or metal cages at their tops.
All of it wrapped in the King's web.
The thread here wasn't thin.
It was a net, pulsing, woven through every stone, every pole, every grain of dust.
Choir whispered in the air in a dozen half-voices.
This was where the Gate was growing.
Kairn's Brand flared on its own.
The Null stirred.
The dragon coiled, eager.
The engine hummed, fascinated.
"Welcome," the King said.
Not in his head.
Out loud.
The air over the central building shimmered.
A figure stepped out of the shimmer.
It wasn't the King's true form.
He had none in this sky.
But he'd learned from Emberwatch and Greenfold.
This avatar was tighter.
Sharper.
It looked like Kairn.
Not exactly.
The angles were wrong.
The eyes were too bright.
The Brand-mark was a chain, not ash-heat.
Behind it, faint and flickering, tower-walls and web-lines crawled up into the sky like scaffolding drawn in light.
Lysa swore softly.
Fen's hand went to his knives.
Barra's grip tightened on his spear.
Joren spat.
"Ugly," he said.
The King tilted Kairn's stolen head.
*Little bite,* he said. *You climbed very far just to fall into my hand again.*
Kairn laughed.
It sounded cracked.
"I've been in your hands before," he said. "You have terrible grip."
He stepped forward.
The path behind him was steep.
The plateau ahead was a throat.
One step.
Two.
The air thickened.
The King's web pressed.
Chains without metal.
Promises without end.
Kairn's heart hammered.
He could feel his own limits fraying.
He knew two things at once:
If he turned back now, Mornspire would fall, sooner or later.
If he stepped into that net, he might not step out whole.
He stepped anyway.