The wind on their faces was cold. It was a simple description; there was really no other way to describe it. Noboru wiped his hand across his cheek and felt the frost on his face, a small stinging pain, not painful but noticeable, a sharp but simple cold.
Markus trekked up with him. He was used to the cold, of course, and paid it no attention. The snow under his boots simply made way as he walked, and from behind walked Amber, the snow falling over her white hair. She brushed it out just for more to fall in place.
The walk up the mountain was long. Noboru glanced back down and saw the long path they had walked, but looked forward and saw the long path they still had yet to take. He listened to the sounds of birds and rustling leaves. It may sound strange, but that was his love. Noboru loved sound; he loved music. As a child, he was always a fussy kid. His mother would sing him songs when he ran around the castle, and it always calmed him down. Even now, in this cold wasteland, the small sounds helped him relax.
"Wrrrao-whhh!"
Markus spun round. "What on earth was that?"
The noise came out again, but louder and more high-pitched, causing the group to drop to their knees apart from Killerblade, who simply handled the noise, and Domanic, who got rid of his ears made of sand and ran, scaling a tree to get a good look around. "I don't see anything close by."
Killerblade glanced around, eyes twitching at the sound. She heard similar sounds, but this one was especially annoying her. The trees shook with each wail, the snow falling faster.
Jamie, finally being able to compose himself, clasped his hand over his mouth and his other over an ear. Parting his fingers slightly and making a small gap between his lips, he shot out a loud static sound.
Noboru slammed into the ground, rolling around while clutching his ears, while Markus fell to his knees and clasped his skull, ice forming around his body in an attempt to drown out the sound, while Amber and Sarah both fell. Even Killerblade stumbled.
Jamie focused, and with his control he edited his frequency until it cancelled out the wailing. Pure silence. Killerblade was the first to stabilise. Domanic jumped down, his ears reforming, as Markus smashed his way out of his ice shell. Noboru lay groaning on the ground while Sarah sat up, dazed. Amber lay completely still, knocked out, and Jamie kept on one knee, hands over his mouth and ear, as they all refocused.
The silence that followed Jamie's cancellation was thick. It pressed against their ears like fresh snow. No birds now. No wind through branches. Just the soft crunch of their own breathing and the distant pop of ice shifting on higher rocks.
Noboru pushed himself up first, palms stinging against the frozen ground. His head still rang, a faint afterimage of the wail sitting behind his eyes. He glanced at Amber, she was stirring now, eyelashes fluttering white against white skin, and then at the others. Everyone looked shaken in their own way, except Killerblade, who already had her blade half-drawn, scanning the treeline as if the sound might try again.
"Thanks," Noboru muttered toward Jamie.
Jamie only nodded once, removing his hands from his face. His lips were chapped, cracked at the corners from the cold and the strain of holding the counter-frequency so long.
They started walking again, slower this time. The path narrowed, forcing them into single file. Markus took point, his shoulders cutting the wind. Noboru followed, then Amber, Sarah, Jamie, Domanic, and Killerblade at the rear. No one spoke for a long stretch. The mountain seemed to demand quiet.
After what felt like hours, the trees began to thin. The ground grew rockier, less snow and more bare stone patched with lichen that looked almost black in the weak light. Noboru noticed the change in sound first, the way their footsteps no longer muffled into powder but clicked and scraped. He liked the new rhythm, the small percussion of boot on rock. It grounded him.
Then another sound arrived.
Not a wail this time. Lower. Wetter. A gurgling rasp, like someone trying to breathe through a throat full of mud. It came from off the path, maybe thirty paces to their left, behind a cluster of crooked pines.
Markus stopped. Raised a hand.
Everyone froze.
The gurgle rose, fell, rose again, then stopped abruptly. A wet thump followed, heavy enough that Noboru felt it in his chest.
Killerblade moved before anyone else. She slipped past them like smoke, blade now fully drawn, the edge catching what little daylight remained and throwing it back in thin silver lines. The rest followed more cautiously, stepping high over roots, trying not to snap twigs and trip or fall.
They found it in a small clearing where the snow was thin on rocks.
The creature lay on its side in a shallow crater of crushed snow and pine needles. At first glance it might have been a deer, long legs, slender neck, but the proportions were wrong. The limbs bent too many times, joints in places joints should not be. Its hide was not fur but something smooth and iridescent, like oil on water, now split open along the ribs in a long, surgical line. No blood. Just pale fluid that had already frozen into delicate white threads.
Noboru stared. His stomach turned slowly.
"What… is that?" Sarah whispered.
No one answered right away.
Domanic crouched, careful not to touch. He tilted his head, sand shifting faintly in his ears as he listened to the silence around the corpse. "It's fresh. Still warm underneath the frost."
Markus knelt beside the thing's head. The eyes were open—huge, milky, no pupils. One of them had been punctured; a thin silver filament, finer than spider silk, trailed from the socket and disappeared into the snow.
He reached out, hesitated, then pinched the thread between gloved fingers and tugged gently. It came free with almost no resistance, glittering as it caught the light. When he let go, it drifted back to the ground and lay perfectly still.
"Same as the noises," Killerblade said quietly. "Clean cuts. No tearing. Something very sharp. Very precise."
Jamie stepped closer, frowning. "No tracks around it. Nothing leading in or out."
Amber hugged her arms to her chest. Snowflakes had collected on her lashes again. "It screamed like it was in pain. But… this doesn't look like it fought."
Noboru looked at the silver string again. Barely noticeable unless you knew to look. He felt a prickle along his spine, not fear, more so, a memory, the little girl in his arms as he fell from that building, the man who had saved them, and looking back, he could've sworn he saw silver strings back then.
They left the clearing without another word.
The path climbed steeper after that. Switchbacks carved into the rock face. The air grew thinner; each breath pulled less oxygen, left more ache in the lungs. Noboru focused on the sounds again—the scrape of boots, the soft hiss of wind through narrow gaps in stone, his own heartbeat thumping steady against his ribs. It kept him calm.
Another sound came maybe an hour later.
This one was different. A series of short clicks—like fingernails tapping glass—followed by a long, descending whine that ended in a gurgle. It echoed off the cliff walls, making it hard to place.
Domanic pointed upward. "Higher. Maybe two hundred feet."
No one argued. They climbed.
The source was wedged between two boulders near the edge of a drop. Another creature, smaller than the first. This one reminded Noboru of a fox, but stretched, limbs too long, muzzle narrowed to a sharp point. Its belly had been opened the same way—perfect midline incision, no ragged edges. The same pale fluid, frozen now into brittle lace. And again, those silver threads, one looped loosely around a foreleg, another trailing from the mouth like a dropped stitch.
Sarah crouched this time. She reached out, then pulled back, small flames dancing across her fingertips. "Look at the cuts. They're so… even. Like someone measured."
"Or something," Jamie corrected.
Killerblade scanned the boulders above them. "No blood trail. No sign of a struggle. Whatever did this didn't chase. It waited."
Markus rubbed his jaw. "Ambush predator. But why leave them displayed?"
"Not displayed," Noboru said quietly. He had been staring at the silver strings. "Marked. Or… tagged."
The word hung there.
Amber shivered. "Like samples."
No one liked that idea. They moved on faster.
The third find came near dusk.
The light had turned the snow a bruised purple. The path had flattened into a wide shelf of rock, a natural ledge overlooking a steep drop. Wind howled through the gap below, carrying faint echoes of distant avalanches.
They found the creature hanging half off the ledge, hind legs still on stone, front half dangling into nothing. Its body was split from throat to pelvis. The same clean work. The same absence of mess. This one was larger, bulkier, almost bear-like but with too many vertebrae showing along its spine. One silver thread was knotted—deliberately—around the base of its tail. Another lay across its open chest like a necklace.
Noboru felt cold deeper than the mountain cold.
Jamie spoke first, voice low. "Three now. All different. All killed the same way."
Domanic traced a finger along the rock near the body. "Still no tracks. Nothing. It's like they just… appeared here already dead."
Killerblade sheathed her blade with a soft click. "Or whatever did this doesn't leave footprints."
Sarah looked up the remaining slope. The peak was closer now, a black silhouette against the dying sky. "We're being watched."
Markus grunted. "Or hunted."
Noboru didn't answer. He was listening.
The wind had changed. Beneath its steady moan came something else—faint, almost lost. A single, perfect note. High. Clear. Then gone.
He turned his head slowly, trying to catch it again.
Nothing.
But he knew it had been there.
Amber noticed him tense. "What?"
He shook his head. "Just… the mountain talking."
She didn't look convinced.
They pressed on.
Night came quickly on the mountain. The temperature dropped hard. Markus conjured small orbs of pale blue ice that floated ahead of them, casting cold light on the path. The glow made the snow look alive, shifting and glittering. Sarah had tried to form a light but the harsh winds blew her out, to put more power into it would waste energy.
Another sound drifted up—not close, but close enough.
A low, bubbling keen. Almost like laughter, if laughter could drown.
They didn't stop this time. They simply walked toward it.
The fourth creature lay sprawled across the trail itself, blocking their way. Bird-like, but enormous—wings folded wrong, feathers that shimmered like metal. Its chest cavity had been cracked open like a cage, ribs splayed neatly to either side. No gore. Just that same pale fluid, now crusted. Silver threads crisscrossed the exposed bones in a pattern too regular to be random. Almost decorative.
Jamie exhaled through his teeth. "This one was still alive when it happened. Look at the way the ribs are bent outward. It tried to breathe."
Amber covered her mouth.
Killerblade stepped over the body without looking down. "Keep moving. Whatever this is, it's ahead of us."
Markus paused, staring at the silver threads. "Question is… why show us? If it was the dragon, then we would've seen a trail by now no?"
No one had an answer.
They stepped around the corpse and kept climbing.
The sounds kept coming—never the same twice, always a little farther up, always a little stranger. Each time they found another body. Each time the cuts were cleaner, the silver threads more intricate. One creature had threads woven through its eyes. Another had them spiraling down its throat. A third had a single thread piercing the base of its skull, trailing off into the snow like a leash that had been cut.
Noboru stopped counting after the seventh.
His ears hurt from listening so hard. Every snap of a branch, every shift of snow, every distant crack of ice—he chased them all, trying to find the note beneath the noise. The one that didn't belong.
Near the top, the path opened into a wide basin. The peak loomed above them, close enough to touch. Snow had stopped falling; the sky was clear and black, stars sharp as knife points.
No wind here. Just stillness.
Then the final sound.
Soft. Almost gentle. A single, sustained tone—pure, resonant, like a tuning fork struck once and left to sing.
It came from the center of the basin.
They approached slowly.
In the middle of the snowfield lay the last creature. Smaller than the others. Almost delicate. Its body was untouched—no cuts, no opened chest. Just those silver threads, dozens of them now, radiating outward from its still form like the spokes of a wheel. They stretched across the snow, thin and gleaming, anchoring into the ground at perfect intervals.
The tone came from inside it.
Noboru felt it in his teeth.
Jamie whispered, "It's still alive."
The creature's chest rose once—shallow, trembling—then fell still.
The tone faded.
Silence returned.
Killerblade drew her blade again.
Markus formed ice around his fists.
Noboru took one step forward, then another.
He knelt beside the creature.
Up close, he could see the threads weren't just lying on the snow. They were sinking into it, disappearing beneath the surface like roots.
He reached out—slowly—and brushed one with his fingertip.
It was cold. Not mountain cold. Something colder. Something waiting.
The thread twitched.
Just once.