"Our house was already gone when we got there," Kylie said.
She said it the way Winters had said his things — without the architecture of grief, just the fact of it. The mountain received the words the same way it received the wind, without reaction, without adjustment.
They were moving again. The ten-minute rest had become fifteen when nobody stood up at the ten-minute mark, and Winters had let it run without comment. Now the group was back in motion, the path steeper than before, the air thinner in the way that altitude made air thin — still breathable, still functional, but requiring more of each breath than the same breath had required an hour ago.
"Not destroyed," Kiyandra said, picking up from her twin without a gap. "Gone. The structure was still standing but everything that had made it a home was — absent. Burnt out. You know when a fire has been through a room and taken everything combustible and left only what wouldn't burn?"
"Yes," said Levi.
"It was like that but with chi," Kylie said. "Our parents' chi was everywhere in that house. Six years of it, in the walls and the furniture and the floor from all the training sessions they watched us do in the yard. Chi leaves traces. It doesn't disappear when someone does." She paused. "What was left of theirs was cold. Not Winters-cold. Just — spent. The way a fire is cold when it's been out long enough."
"We knew before we went inside," Kiyandra said.
A rest stop — a flat shelf of rock wide enough for all five of them, Winters calling the halt without ceremony. He stood at the edge looking up at the remaining ascent while the others sat. The Frappuccino came out. He drank it looking at the mountain and the mountain looked back.
"There was another chi," Kylie continued, sitting with her legs extended and her hands in her lap. "Mixed in with theirs. Something we'd never felt before. Strong. Old. Structured differently from anything our sensei had taught us to recognise." She looked at her hands. "We know now what it was. A demon's chi. The partial possession leaves a signature. But at thirteen we just knew it was wrong — the specific wrongness of something that didn't belong in our home and had been there anyway."
"That was when it started," Kiyandra said. "The fluctuation."
"Our chi does that," Kylie said, to Levi and Priscilla. "When we're emotionally destabilised it fluctuates — the output becomes irregular, the control loosens. Our sensei had drilled us on managing it for six years. It didn't matter. What we were feeling was bigger than the drilling."
"A rogue saw us," Kiyandra said. "In the street outside. He was moving through the town with the rest of them — directing myths, keeping the chaos organised. He saw our chi fluctuating and he read it as vulnerability." A pause. "He sent three myths at us."
The wind crossed the shelf and kept going. Below them the valley was a white rectangle framed by the mountain's lower ridges, the footprints they'd made on the way up already indistinguishable from the surrounding snow.
"What happened next," Kylie said, "I don't fully remember. Not because I wasn't conscious. Because I wasn't — present. Not in the way I usually am." She looked at Kiyandra. "We were both like that."
"A trance," Kiyandra said. "That's the word we came to use for it later. At the time there was no word for it because there was no observation happening, just the thing itself." She paused. "Our chi stopped fluctuating. It found each other instead — mine found hers, hers found mine — and everything we'd trained for six years condensed into something we hadn't trained for and couldn't have."
"We moved as one," Kylie said simply.
"Not coordinated," Kiyandra said. "Coordinated is when you know what your partner is going to do and you plan around it. This was different. There was no planning. There was just — no gap between us. No blindspot. No weak point. The myths attacked and we responded and there was no moment where one of us was exposed because the other was already there."
"All three went down," Kylie said. "We don't know how long it took. When we came back to ourselves they were down and the rogue was gone."
"He'd been watching," Kiyandra said. "We could tell from where he'd been standing. He'd watched the whole thing and then he'd left." She said it without satisfaction, just the observation. "He made a calculation and the calculation came out against engaging."
Levi thought about what that looked like from the outside. Two thirteen-year-olds in a trance state, chi unified, no blind spots between them, moving through three myths with the specific efficiency of something that had stopped being two people and become one thing. He thought about the rogue watching that and making the sensible choice.
"Then Winters found us," Kylie said.
✦ ✦ ✦
They moved again after the second rest. The path narrowed and the rock on either side rose in walls that compressed the route into something close and specific, the mountain deciding this was the passage and there was no other.
"The town was quiet by then," Winters said, from the front. He said it without turning, the way he said things he'd decided to say and had been waiting for the right moment. "The attack was over. The Rogues and the myths were gone. There was just — what they'd left."
He stepped around a section of ice-covered rock and kept moving.
"I found the twins outside their house. I had Neve with me by then." He paused. "She wouldn't let go of my jacket. Six years old, everything she'd known gone in an hour. I wasn't going to make her let go."
Kylie made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh and wasn't quite not. "She was holding on so tight the fabric was stretched," she said. "I remember that."
"She calmed down when she saw us," Kiyandra said. "A little. Enough."
"I said we should go to Frostilia," Winters said. "It was the nearest city large enough to have infrastructure. Resources. The kind of place that could absorb three teenagers and a child without asking too many questions." A pause. "The twins didn't argue."
"We would have gone anywhere Winters said," Kylie said. "That hasn't changed."
The matter-of-factness of it landed simply, the way the twins delivered most things. Levi glanced at Kiyandra. She was looking at the path ahead with the expression of someone who had said the true thing and saw no reason to elaborate on it.
"The road to Frostilia was bad," Winters said. "Blizzard conditions through the countryside. Deep snow. I cleared the path as we went — ice magic has uses beyond combat when you understand the material." He said it without pride, just the practical fact of it. "Neve slept on my back for most of it. She was exhausted."
"How far was it?" Priscilla asked.
"Two days' walk," Winters said. "In those conditions, closer to three."
"We didn't talk much," Kiyandra said. "On the road. There wasn't much to say."
"There was everything to say," Kylie said. "We just didn't have words for any of it yet."
✦ ✦ ✦
They were an hour from the summit when Winters spoke again.
"Nearing Frostilia," he said. "There was a city about four hours out. We could see it from the road — lights, structure, a functioning settlement. We went toward it because Neve needed water and warmth and I needed to dress the twins' injuries properly." He paused. "The city had just been attacked."
The path crested a small ridge and descended briefly before rising again more steeply. Priscilla's voice came from behind Levi — right, ice shelf — and the group shifted without breaking stride.
"Myths and Rogues again," Winters said. "They'd moved through the city and left the same way they'd left our town. We came in from the south road and the city was still settling — the attack had been an hour before, the people coming out of shelters, the MKs doing damage assessment." He was quiet for a moment. "And then the portal opened."
Nobody spoke.
"He came through from the north end of the main street," Winters said. "Fenrir. I knew who he was. Our sensei had made sure we knew all the legendary class myths — their abilities, their behaviours, their classification codes. Code Black. One of the eight." He stepped over a collapsed section of path with the same unhurried precision he brought to every obstacle. "He was passing through. The city wasn't his target, just a route. But he saw us on the main street and he stopped."
"Why?" Levi asked.
"I don't know," Winters said. "Curiosity, maybe. Or the specific interest a predator has in something that looks like prey but is reading wrong." A pause. "He looked at me the way the Rogue leader had looked at me. Like I wasn't relevant."
The wind came down off the upper face and hit them full on. Levi leaned into it.
"I told the twins to take Neve and run," Winters said. "They didn't want to."
"We didn't," Kylie confirmed, from behind him.
"I told them again," Winters said. "They went."
He was quiet for long enough that the path bent and straightened and bent again before he continued.
"The situation was what it was," he said. "Underdeveloped ability. No training for legendary class. Three days out from everything. I didn't have a plan beyond buying them enough time to get clear." He said it the way he said most things — without drama, just the accurate accounting of a person who had looked at the situation and understood it. "So I triggered the Curse again."
"In the street," Priscilla said.
"In the street. In a city full of civilians who'd just been through an attack." He paused. "I tried to contain it. I don't know how well I managed that. The Curse at that stage wasn't something I could direct precisely — it was more like standing in the way of something and hoping it went where I pointed it." A brief silence. "Fenrir felt it. I could tell because he stopped moving like something that had never needed to consider its options and started moving like something that was considering them."
"He charged anyway," Levi said.
"He charged anyway," Winters confirmed. "Which I respected, in the way you respect something for being consistent with its nature." The path steepened sharply. "We fought. I won't describe it as a real fight — it wasn't. He was legendary class and I was thirteen years old with an ability I'd only fully accessed twice. But the Curse was running and the cold was working in my favour and I understand ice in ways that most opponents don't account for."
He stopped walking.
Not a rest stop — a pause, the kind that had something specific in it. He looked up at the path ahead for a moment, then continued.
"I left a scar on his face," he said. "Left side. I don't know exactly how — the Curse was directing more than I was at that point. But the ice found something. A gap, or a moment, or whatever it is that allows a thirteen-year-old to mark a legendary class myth." A pause. "Then his claws found me."
The group went very still despite still moving.
"Three across the chest," Winters said. "Through the coat, through the underlayer, through everything. Deep enough that stopping the bleeding by conventional means wasn't an option." He said it with the same flatness he'd brought to the whole account. "So I froze it."
"You froze the wound," Priscilla said.
"Ice over the cuts. Sealed the blood in place. It's not healing — it's just preventing the immediate consequence of the wound long enough to address the actual problem later." He paused. "It worked. The bleeding stopped. I could move. I got out of range and the Curse did the rest — the cold following me, which meant following him if he pursued, which apparently wasn't a calculation that appealed to him."
"He retreated," Levi said.
"He retreated," Winters confirmed. "I found the twins and Neve on the south road. Neve had fallen asleep again. The twins were—" He paused. "The twins were the twins."
"We were furious," Kylie said.
"Understandably," Winters said.
"You had ice over open wounds on your chest and you told us you were fine," Kiyandra said.
"I was functional," Winters said. "Which is adjacent to fine."
"It is not adjacent to fine," said Kylie.
"We argued about this for approximately the entire remaining journey to Frostilia," Kiyandra said, to Levi and Priscilla, with the tone of someone reporting a historical fact.
"He refused to let us look at it," Kylie said.
"I let Neve look at it," Winters said. "She'd woken up. She was concerned."
"She was six," Kiyandra said.
"She was very thorough about it for six," Winters said. "She told me it looked bad."
"It did look bad," Kylie said.
"I know," said Winters. "But we made it to Frostilia."
✦ ✦ ✦
The summit came without announcement — the path simply levelled and the mountain was below them on all sides and the sky was closer and clearer than it had been for three days of climbing and Levi stood in it for a moment and breathed.
The group spread out along the ridge, each of them taking the specific stillness of people who had arrived somewhere after significant effort and were allowing themselves the moment of arrival. Priscilla had her eyes closed. The twins stood side by side looking at the descent ahead. Winters had his iced coffee.
Nobody said anything for a while.
Then Levi looked at Winters. "The scar," he said. "Fenrir still has it."
Winters looked at him over the rim of the cup. "Does he."
"Volume one," Levi said. "Fenrir was in Olympus. I didn't fight him — Melissa did. But I saw him." He paused. "Left side of his face. A scar."
Something moved in Winters' expression that wasn't quite satisfaction and wasn't quite anything else. He looked out at the descent ahead.
"Good," he said.
He took a sip of his coffee.
Then Priscilla said: "There."
She was pointing — not at the descent, not at the sky, but at the mountain face to the north-east, where the rock rose in a section that had always been there and that Levi now realised he'd been looking at without seeing. It wasn't natural. The surfaces were too specific, the lines too deliberate — not the geometry of rock shaped by weather but the geometry of rock shaped by intent. Vast and patient and old, the way things were old when they had been here long enough to become part of the landscape, carved deep into the mountain face in patterns that suggested a structure behind them, something enormous and internal and waiting.
"That's it," Winters said.
They stood on the ridge and looked at the Syndicate of Knowledge carved into the mountain and the Syndicate of Knowledge looked back at them with the indifference of something that had been waiting long enough that a few more minutes didn't matter.
"How do we get in?" Priscilla asked.
"You'll see," Winters said, and started down the ridge toward it.