The loading bay slled like cold tal and rain kept out by will. A small quadcopter crouched on the pad, all rotors and ribs - ten seats plus a narrow bench bolted at a rude angle by soone who believed in efficiency more than comfort. Its hull bore old scratches across the Neoshima mark, as if journeys had already argued with it.
Saffi jogged alongside the cargo cradle with a checklist and a look that said she’d morized three other lists just in case. She wasn’t coming, but that didn’t stop her from orbiting Raizen.
"Seal kits" she rattled. "Thermal tabs, dual anchors, spares. Raizen - your harness stays at ho. It’s not stable enough to wear."
"I know that much. And please, do not change or modify anything." he replied.
Alteea’s face flickered alive, hair pinned up like a dare. "Good morning disasters, if I can use Kori’s term" she chid. "Don’t try anything with Luminite. Don’t try to interfere with the professionals. If you see a vein that looks like a lie, tell . If you see a vein that looks off, also tell . I’ll be in your comms."
"If I can’t lick Luminite, can I at least lick the snow?" Obi asked, already halfway up the ramp. "Purely for science?"
"You can lick a battery" Alteea said sweetly. "I recomnd the nine-volt, it tastes like regret."
Feris hopped the last three steps into the craft with the joy of soone who believed gravity could be negotiated. She slapped the bulkhead twice like sealing a pact. "Mountains are just big walls" she declared. "I like walls. They fall down when you hit hard enough."
Ichiro checked straps. "Don’t ask the mountain to fall" he said. "That’s my job."
Lynea sat by the door and watched the horizon sharpen. Arashi took the window and judged the wind like it was an opponent he ant to flatter into compliance.
"Breathe where you can" she said. "Not where the mountain wants you to."
He nodded. He could do that. Probably.
The rotors spun up. The quadcopter lifted, then climbed like it had rembered how. Neoshima fell away in silver slices - the petals dimming out of caution or dignity, with the city now only a thought.
Past the rim, the mountains rose. Shining lines ran under the ice like veins under skin, thin lines of soft blue that flashed and were gone, then flashed again, too clean in places, too dim in others.
"Signal good" Alteea said from the slate. "I can see your ugly faces. Soone smile."
Obi leaned into the lens, all teeth. "It’s the cold making handso."
"Then stay cold" she said.
They rode a seam between cloud and mountain. The engine’s hum settled into a frequency you could forget until silence made it obvious. Wind scratched the hull. They touched down on a pad carved into a ledge that had learned to be an airport out of sheer stubbornness. Tents were set down below. A crane reached to the sky. Second-years clustered near the pad in a little group that didn’t want to be a group at all. Their uniforms hung wrong at the shoulders. Eyes black-rimd like the mountain had applied its own kohl. They should have looked older - they just looked thinner.
The ramp clanged. Cold put its hand over Raizen’s mouth and then let him have breath back. The air slled a bit salty and clean.
"Finally" soone said, and the word sounded both like welco and insult. A tall boy with a crushed lanyard waved them toward a stack of crates. "Don’t stay past dark. You won’t like dark here..."
"I don’t like daylight either" Obi offered. "It shows my pores."
No one laughed.
A girl with chapped lips fumbled a spanner. It rang against stone longer than physics wanted it to. She blinked hard, like bargaining with tears.
Hikari stepped forward with the kind of voice you lend a friend’s bird so it will land. "Any incidents?"
"Not incidents" the girl said. She touched the inside of her wrist like counting. "Miscounts."
"Miscounts?" Ichiro asked.
"We did the ridge walk twice" another second-year said dully. "Except we didn’t. The markers -" He shook his head, forced a smile that had not been taught to him by joy. "It’s nothing. It’s just tiring."
A third, the one with a scar at the ear, stared at the snow. "I swear I saw it" she whispered to soone else, too low to be a report but too honest to be dismissed. "Just... there. And then it wasn’t."
Keahi surveyed the ridge lines like they were edges and she was a whetstone. "Any Nyx signs?"
"Tracks that don’t hold a shape" the tall boy said. "Sound where wind isn’t. And the vein -" He gestured toward a low cut in the slope where scaffolding chewed into rock. "Sotis it looks and acts wrong. Sotis it looks and acts pretty. I hate when it does that."
"Pretty is a trap" Feris said lightly, and grinned like she’d punch a song if it tried to seduce her.
"Pack it up!" a supervisor shouted at the second-years, and relief flickered across their faces with the sha you get for feeling it. They moved in jolts. A thermal blanket sloughed to the ground and remained there. No one seed to want to pick it up.
Alteea’s voice skated into Raizen’s ear on a private channel. "That hum – Luminite. If you can record it, do. If you can’t, at least don’t make friends with it."
"Alright" he said. He adjusted the strap across his chest. The absence of the Prototype’s weight felt like a limb he wasn’t allowed to move.
Esen peered at a wind sock behaving badly. "Why is that pointing upstream?"
"Because wind has opinions" Arashi said. He was watching the snow beyond the outpost where a smooth drift bulged, then eased, then bulged again. His jaw angled. "And so does the ground, apparently..."
Obi hopped down from the ramp and did an enthusiastic little twirl, arms wide. "Hello, mounts! We co in peace, snacks, and bad decisions."
Feris clapped once. "Race to the far marker?"
"No" three voices said at the sa ti (Hikari, Ichiro, Lynea), and she pouted like she’d been politely denied a cri.
Raizen moved to shoulder a coil and felt a hand tug at his sleeve, hard. He turned.
Oren stood there - the shield guy from the arena, second-year with a reputation for being impossible to move once he chose a square of earth. The skin under his eyes had gone the color of old paper.
"Walk" Oren said, and didn’t wait for agreent, tugging Raizen behind a stack of crates where the wind muted the world down to a different pitch.
"Hey" Raizen said. Up close, Oren’s pupils looked wider than the day deserved. "You good?"
Oren shook his head once, the kind of no you don’t show in public. He leaned in close enough that Raizen could see the stubble he hadn’t had ti to bully into order.
"Listen" Oren said, low. "Sothing’s wrong here."
"Define wrong" Raizen said, defaulting to the shape of a question because the alternative was letting the wrong define itself.
Oren’s mouth twitched. "Don’t be cute." His hand tightened and then rembered itself and let go. "It’s not the cold. It’s not the height. It’s... like this place has a mory, and it’s trying to force you in it."
Raizen waited.
"We did the switchback with three markers" Oren said. "I counted them. I count everything. At the top, there were still three markers ahead." His laugh was too strangled to be called a laugh. "I counted again, right? Three beca two, and then beca four. What I’m saying is... Be hella careful."
Raizen could have said a dozen careful things. He tried the truest small one. "Thank you."
Oren nodded once like he had perford a duty. Then he yanked Raizen forward with sudden force, startling him because tired boys like him don’t usually move fast. Then his grip eased. For a heartbeat the old confidence returned to his mouth, clearing the exhaustion into sothing that looked like the person he’d been before the mountains decided to make him new.
"Sothing’s not right with this place" he said again, each word placed like a stone. "I know it."
The call to board rose. Engines woke. The second-years began to climb the ramp like people stepping into a promise with reservations.
Raizen rejoined the others. Keahi was checking buckles no one had asked her to check. Hikari stood very still, eyes half-closed, as if she was already regretting coming to this place.
Obi jumped up and bumped Raizen with an elbow. "So" he said, in a voice too bright. "What did Big Shield say?"
"That he counts" Raizen said.
"And?"
"And that counting may not help."
"Great" Obi said. "I’m excellent at not helping."
Sowhere beneath them, the Luminite gave a pulse you could feel in your teeth if you let the feeling find you. It was almost pretty, but it didn’t really feel like a gift.
Raizen looked toward the path that switched up into the white and thought about third markers and ropes tied to people.
The quadcopter’s rotors flared. Snow lifted in thin veils. The second-years vanished into the craft in twos and threes, exhaustion boarding in place of them. The ramp rose. The door sealed. For a mont, through the cockpit glass, Oren’s face hung there, fixed on so point just past Raizen’s shoulder, as if he could still see the thing that made him scared.
Sowhere up-slope, beyond the small camp, wind moved against itself and the sound it made was the kind of sound you only recognize as a warning when it’s already too late.
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