The wind snatched my breath the moment I stepped onto the ridge, as if the world had slapped a hand over my mouth. Gravel skittered under my boots and vanished over the edge with a faint, insulting tick-tick-tick, falling into a depth so wide it seemed to erase sound before it could reach the bottom.

Below, the valley boiled.

Cloud-shadow and sunlight wrestled across the land in huge, moving fists. One moment the rocks were dull and elderly; the next they flared silver, as if the mountain had briefly revealed its bones. A river cut through the centre—violent, foaming, bright as torn foil—then disappeared under a shelf of black stone like a secret swallowed mid-sentence.

To my left, the cliff dropped in a clean vertical line, a sudden decision. To my right, the slope fell away in slow folds of scree and stubborn grass, as if the land could not decide whether to soften or break. Farther out, jagged peaks rose like broken teeth, their tips sheared into pale shards. Snow clung there in thin, reluctant streaks, not beautiful so much as exhausted—old wounds that refused to heal.

Thunder rolled, but not from the sky.

It came from the glacier.