1
The footprint is massive.
I’m crouched in the snow, my gloved fingers hovering over the depression, not quite daring to touch. Ace drops his pack beside me with a heavy thud that makes me flinch.
“Could be a bear,” he says, which is exactly what someone who looks like Ace would say. Practical. Rational.Wrong.
“Look at the toes.” I lean closer, breath fogging in the cold. “They’re too long. And no claw marks.” I trace the shape in the air above it. “The heel’s too deep, too.”
Ace crouches beside me, close enough that I catch a whiff of his scent even through the mountain air: clean sweat, soap, and musk. He studies the print with those blue eyes that made me double-take when we met at the airport three days ago.
See, when YetiHunter21 agreed to split costs for this trip, I pictured someone like me. An academic. A nerd. Not a guy with biceps the size of my head and a jawline carved from granite. His eyes match the sky above us, a bright, brilliant, blinding color. He could have stepped out of a Calvin Klein ad, except instead of a swimsuit, he wears a parka and hiking pants.
“How fresh?” Ace asks, and I force myself to focus on the footprint instead of him.
“Very. See how crisp the edges are?” I pull out my phone with shaking hands. “No wind erosion yet. Maybe an hour old. Two at most.”
Ace goes still. “So it could still be close.”
“Yeah.” My heart hammers. “It could be really close.”
He’s not saying anything, just looking at the treeline with this intense focus that makes me feel like I should be doing something more useful than kneeling in the snow. This is what I’ve been waiting for my whole life, actual evidence, and I’m worried about looking competent in front of some guy I met on the internet.
I’ve been obsessed with yetis since I first read about them in a picture book. I used to lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling, imagining the snowy peaks of the Himalayas and the windswept passes where yetis make their homes. The fact that other people call them a myth only pushes me harder.
It made me choose anthropology as my major. I’ve spent hours studying grainy footage, reading witness accounts, tracing patterns no one else sees. Now, in my last year of college, thanks to an obscure forum for cryptozoologists, I might actually have a chance to find one. To prove that I haven’t wasted my time chasing fairytales.
“There’s another one.” Ace points up the slope.
I follow his gesture. Another massive print, right where the trees start, and the snow has been disturbed. Branches snapped off and scattered, and a thick tree trunk has been overturned, roots exposed.
I scramble to my feet, nearly losing my balance. The trees ahead of us are dark against the snow, and the footprints lead straight into the shadows.
“We should follow them,” I say, already moving toward the treeline. “Before we lose the light.”
“Hold up.” Ace grabs my arm, and I freeze. His grip is firm through my jacket. “We need to be smart about this. If something that big is close, we don’t want to corner it.”
I want to argue, but he’s right. Of course he’s right. Guys like Ace are always captains, always leaders, the kind of people who give orders and expect them to be followed. He has that easy confidence, like the world naturally arranges itself around him.
But for Ace, this is just an adventure, a thrill, not the culmination of years spent in libraries and basements poring over blurry videos. I don’t care about the danger. This is what I came here to do.
I take a slow breath and force myself to sound reasonable. “Fine. But we’re not turning back. Not when we’rethisclose.”
“Didn’t say we were.” He adjusts his pack straps. “Just saying we move carefully. We follow the prints. And if we see it, we stop. No closer than fifty yards, all right? That thing could rip us apart before we even knew what hit us.”
One thing I love about Ace is that he takes this seriously. He doesn’t doubt the existence of yetis, as everyone else does. He treats this like a real expedition and understands how huge a find it could be.
“Right.” I take another steadying breath. “Okay. Let’s go.”
I pull out my notebook and document each print as we find it. One, two, three... I mark the GPS coordinates and take photos. This is evidence. Real, tangible evidence. I need to catalog every single one.
We pick our way into the woods, Ace in front, me behind, his broad shoulders blocking my view. I want to run ahead, to chase the trail of broken branches and torn earth, but I make myself move slowly, stopping at each massive impression.
My ears strain to catch any sound. A crash of falling branches. A growl.
But the forest is eerily silent. Even the wind sweeping down from the peaks has fallen away, leaving the world hushed and still. Sunlight filters through the trees in a soft, ghostly glow.
Ace stops so abruptly that I run into him. His back is solid muscle, and I bounce off like I’ve hit a wall. Heat rushes to my face.
