Consciousness returned like a slap.
Cold. Sharp. Unwelcome.
Levi opened his eyes to a vaulted ceiling of rusted iron, chains hanging in drooping arcs above him. Water dripped from their corroded links in slow, deliberate plinks.
**[SFX: *plink… plink… plink…*]**
The sound echoed too long, too hollow, as if the chamber itself were breathing through a punctured lung.
He lay on wet stone that drank the heat from his back. The cold seeped in immediately, intimate and invasive. The air smelled of mineral tang and old blood—the kind that had soaked in and never washed out.
He didn't sit up in a panic.
Panic wasted energy, and Levi had spent the last year of his life learning how to greet bad news without theatrics.
Instead, he catalogued.
Breath: shallow, controlled.
Heartbeat: fast, but steady.
Pain: present, but distant. Not *his* pain.
Limbs—
He flexed his fingers.
They were wrong.
Too small. Too light. Knuckles delicate, skin smooth where it should've been thin and veined. When he pushed himself upright, the world tilted oddly.
Lower center of gravity.
Shorter reach.
Lighter mass.
He felt like a coat hanger someone had draped flesh over.
A shallow puddle nearby reflected dim bluish light from narrow slits high in the walls. Levi crawled toward it, palms stinging on cold stone, and stared down.
A stranger stared back.
Mid-teens. Maybe younger.
A narrow jaw. Greasy black hair plastered to a pale forehead. Eyes too large for the skull—dark, wary, already tired. The body beneath the gaze was built for slipping through cracks, not surviving hardship. Ragged gray robes hung loose on a frame that looked one missed meal away from collapse. Rust-colored stains mottled the fabric.
He reached out.
The boy in the water reached back.
"Well," Levi said.
The voice that came out was high, thin, cracked in the middle like glass under pressure.
"…that's new."
He almost laughed.
Almost.
The sound caught in his throat and came out as a dry huff.
He had spent months watching his own body rot in slow motion—organs failing, muscle wasting, strength leaking away one breath at a time.
Now even that wreckage had been taken from him.
Replaced with this.
Congratulations, Levi.
You traded terminal illness for budget economy class.
He stood carefully, testing balance. The body wobbled but held. The robes had pockets—two shallow ones at the hips. Empty. No shoes. Bare feet on stone so cold it felt sharp.
The chamber was circular, perhaps forty feet across. Chains hung from the ceiling like dead vines. Rusted grates lined the walls. One massive gate dominated the far side, iron-black and sealed.
Then the voice arrived.
It didn't echo.
It didn't come from above or below.
It simply *existed*.
Cold. Vast. Genderless.
Like a glacier speaking through a cathedral.
"Welcome, chosen of the Midnight Spell. You have been granted a vessel suited to the trials ahead. Survive Blackwind Mountain, and power shall be yours. Fail, and oblivion claims you."
Levi tilted his head slightly.
The voice paused.
Waiting for screaming.
Begging.
Denial.
"Questions?" Levi asked the empty air. "Or is this the part where I'm supposed to hyperventilate and make bad decisions?"
Silence.
He shrugged. "Fair. I've dated worse communicators."
The gate groaned open on its own.
**[SFX: *GROOOAN—KRAAAANG*]**
Icy wind blasted into the chamber, stealing breath and heat alike. Beyond the gate lay a courtyard of black ice beneath an alien sky—too pale, too clean. The sun above was wrong. Too sharp around the edges. Like it had been cut out instead of born.
Levi walked forward without hurry.
The next disaster wasn't going anywhere.
---
The courtyard was already occupied.
Thirty-seven others, by his count.
All wrapped in identical gray robes. All young. All thin. All shivering beneath the too-blue sun. Some cried openly. One man knelt retching, bile freezing as it hit the ice. Most simply stared—at their hands, at each other, at nothing—faces slack with the dawning realization that the rules of reality had been rewritten without their consent.
Eight guards ringed them.
Tall. Broad. Encased in dark armor that looked *grown*, not forged—organic curves of matte black edged with frost. Spears rested easily in their hands, tips glimmering like obsidian glass.
One stood apart.
Taller. Heavier.
His helm was shaped like a snarling hound, muzzle elongated, teeth bared in metal. Authority radiated from him without effort.
Levi drifted toward the edge of the huddle, posture small, gaze lowered.
Invisibility was a skill.
He'd learned it in hospital corridors and soup kitchen lines. People didn't look at the quiet ones.
He observed.
Armor joints—elbows, knees—showed hairline fractures where ice had crept in. One guard favored his right leg. Old injury. The hound-helmed leader's visor slit was narrow—limited peripheral vision.
Good to know.
Beyond the courtyard walls rose the mountain.
Blackwind.
A jagged spine of stone and ice tearing into a sky choked with boiling clouds. Wind screamed down its slopes in visible sheets, flinging snow like shrapnel. The path upward was a single switchback trail—narrow, exposed, merciless.
The hound-helmed guard stepped forward.
His voice boomed, amplified unnaturally.
"Form line. March begins now. Reach the summit by nightfall—"
A pause.
"—or do not reach it at all."
No one moved.
A woman near the front sobbed harder.
Levi noted the intent.
They wouldn't carry the weak.
They wouldn't slow the pace.
Attrition was the point.
Someone shoved him from behind as the group finally lurched into motion. He stumbled, recovered, and found himself at the very back of the line.
Smallest.
Frailest.
Most disposable.
Exactly where they expected him to die.
Perfect.
He let two stronger figures push past him—a broad-shouldered man, a tall woman with a jaw set in stubborn defiance. Front-runners always burned first.
Levi stayed near the rear, three paces from the last guard. Close enough to avoid suspicion. Far enough to think.
The wind hit the moment they left the courtyard's shelter.
**[SFX: *WOOOOOOO—*]**
It clawed through the robes like hands of ice, cutting straight to bone. The line stretched along the switchback—thirty-eight fragile bodies leaning into a living gale.
Levi kept his head down.
His eyes stayed up.
He watched feet.
How the strong planted wide, wasting energy fighting the wind.
How the inner edge crumbled under careless steps.
He adjusted his gait.
Short strides.
Low center.
Letting the wind push instead of resisting.
Like sailing—if sailing involved freezing to death.
Twenty minutes in, the first one fell.
A boy slipped on black ice and vanished over the edge without a sound.
No scream.
No impact.
The guards didn't even glance over.
Levi filed it away.
Hazards: ice patches.
Wind gusts synced to the mountain's breath.
Loose scree on the outer edge.
Then he noticed something else.
When his palm pressed against the robe over his chest, there was warmth. Faint, almost imaginary—but real. Some enchantment, maybe. Minimal insulation.
Not much.
But hoardable.
The climb continued. Air thinned. Lungs burned. The courtyard shrank into a toy far below, the iron chamber already forgotten.
Levi's legs screamed.
The body was weak—but fresh.
No organ failure.
No months-long exhaustion baked into the bones.
It complained.
But it obeyed.
A small smile curved his lips, stolen by the wind.
Back home, he had been dying by inches.
Here—
He was merely cold.
Progress.
The wind shifted violently. A gust slammed into the front of the line. Someone screamed as bodies staggered sideways.
Levi dropped low, using a larger man as a windbreak. He counted heartbeats.
One.
Two.
Three.
The gust passed.
He rose and kept walking.
One step at a time.
One observation at a time.
The mountain wanted to kill him.
Fine.
He had years of practice outlasting things that wanted him dead.
And this time—
This time, the body was new.