Sita fumbles with her pack, managing to rip open a pouch of heat packs. We shove them into our gloves, into our boots, and drop them down our clothes. The warmth is fleeting, fragile, but it keeps us from freezing solid.
The wind roars and roars, and we have no choice but to wait it out. What I wouldn’t give to be in a hot spring again with Eryon. Minutes stretch into eternity. My body stiffens from stillness,my muscles locking against the cold. I press my forehead against my knees, breathing through the panic rising in my chest. What if this storm doesn’t pass? What if we’re trapped here? What if I can’t save him?
The questions are suffocating, but I force myself to stay calm. The mountain may be testing us, but we won’t fail. We can’t. There simply is no other option.
Finally, after what feels like forever, the wind dies down. The storm retreats as quickly as it arrived, leaving the world eerily still.
Sita is the first to move. She brushes the snow off and turns to me, breathless. “Dahlia, are you okay?”
I nod, though my joints are stiff as I push myself upright.
We stand and survey the damage. The bright sun staring down from an azure blue sky turns the landscape into a sparkling winter scene from a travel brochure. Despite the beauty, my stomach drops as I realize the trail is gone. The snow has shifted so much that the path ahead is unrecognizable. Panic gnaws at the edges of my resolve, and if the tears wouldn’t freeze to my face, I would cry.
Why is doing the right thing so damn hard? I’m trying to save Eryon, save the land, and the mountain is testing me. Hell this whole damn life has been testing me. Where is Ben’s test? Where is the fucking universal balance that Eryon is supposed to keep? When will I finally get what I deserve? Because Ben sure as shit isn’t.
I look to Sita, hoping she can figure out where to go from here. She’s already scanning the landscape, her sharp eyes darting from ridge to ridge, cataloging landmarks. I see a plan forming behind her sharp eyes.
“Didi, look!” she exclaims, pointing ahead.
I follow her gaze, my breath catching. There, partially uncovered by the shifting snow, are two massive boulders standing side by side. They form a narrow passage between them, like agateway. Excitement hums through my veins like electricity, erasing the creeping despair.
The sentinel stones.
We had been looking for the landmark, but without this storm I doubted we’d have found them. We would have just stuck to the trail. But here they are, standing before us, as if they had been waiting here all this time. Maybe the mountain wasn’t testing us, but helping us.
I can’t take the time to overthink it. We shift our course, cutting a new path to the boulders. The way down is steep, treacherous. Snow slips beneath our boots, and we slide more than we walk, half-running, half-falling through the drifts. My heart pounds, exhilarated despite the danger.
It feels right. As if the mountain itself is leading me forward, not just toward fate, but to him. My Eryon.
When we reach the landmark, we pause, both of us staring up in silent awe. They’re enormous, towering high above our heads. Their placement is too precise, too deliberate. My fingers brush over the weathered sacred stones.
As we step between them, I feel it. A shift, like crossing an invisible threshold. The air changes, thickening with something old and waiting. It feels like coming home.
As we walk through, I turn to glance back at the stones one last time and that’s when I see it. My breath catches as I see writing scratched into the rock.
At first, the markings are faint, almost lost in the stone’s natural grooves. But as the sun dips lower, its golden light strikes the surface at just the right angle, highlighting not just the carving themselves but a dark shadow pressed into the cuts —and the word reveals itself.
My pulse stutters. I know these letters. They are not fully familiar, but I recognize their shape, their weight.
“Sita,” I gasp, pointing. “Can you read that?”
She steps closer to me, squinting at the carving above ourheads too high for a human to reach. Her lips move soundlessly as she pieces it together, mouthing different possibilities before settling on one.
“I don’t know this language,” she says slowly. “But it looks close to some words I do recognize. If I’m reading it correctly, I think it starts with Sru?—?”
A shockwave ripples through me and my lips curve into a smile as my heart leaps. “Sruhnar.”
She looks at me with wide eyes and then back to the carving, “Yes, that fits. But what is it?”
He carved my name into a rock. It’s a gesture so simple, yet so profound. His way of marking our connection, like two lovers carving their initials into a tree. My spirits surge, and I’m suddenly re-energized. Without thinking, I break into a run, laughing, with Sita hot on my heels.
“My name,” I call back over my shoulder.
She shouts after me, but I barely hear her over the bounding of my own pulse and my laughter. The air burns in my lungs, but I don’t stop. Every step is one more step closer to him.
Gradually my pace slows with the fading light as the sun sinks lower. The excitement lingers, but reality creeps back in. We still don’t know how far we’ve come. Or how much further we have to go.
The wind whispers through the stones, brushing over my skin with a chill that has nothing to do with the cold. I hate to stop when every instinct screams at me to keep going. But the darkness is relentless.
