The wind arrived howling with the cold not as weather but as a presence.
It poured over the mountain's spine in violent waves, shredding loose snow into the air until it became a white mist that moved like smoke.
The darkness wasn't calm up here. It was restless which crawled, shook and screamed through every crack in the rock.
A single headlamp cut through it. Trembling and shaking with the winds but slow and steady with purpose.
Below the light, a man climbed.Unbroken and definitely alive.A lone figure moving upward on a wall of ice, shoulders hunched, breathing hard through a frosted mask.
His steps were slow and deliberate.Each one chosen like a word that couldn't be taken back.
The beam of his lamp skated over jagged stone and glassy ice. It found a fixed rope, old and stiff, snapping in the wind like it wanted to tear free and run away.
He clipped into it anyway.His gloved fingers moved with practiced economy, quick and cold-smart.
There was no hesitation in the motion,only the quiet understanding that hesitation was how mountains ate people.
His breath was the loudest thing in the world right now , a hard inhale - a sharp hiss and a ragged exhale.
The oxygen tank on his back rattled faintly with each step, a fragile mechanical heartbeat trying to keep pace with the real one hammering behind his ribs.
Frost had formed around the edges of his goggles as the corners of his eyelashes glittered white with cold temperature.
His face looked like it had been carved out of fatigue.
And yet there was a smile.
Not a warm smile.
Not a happy one.
A small, defiant curve of the mouth beneath the mask, like he was daring the mountain to try harder.
"Fourth time huh," he muttered, voice ruined by cold and thin air. "This bastard really makes one work hard for it."
The wind slammed into him like a slap.His boots skidded half a breath on the ice before his axe bit into the slope and stopped him.
He leaned into it, shoulder pressed forward, posture tight and grounded like he was holding the whole world in place with one hand, and maybe he was ? Because where he stood now, mistake would cause him only one thing and that ... Was death.
For a second he didn't move, not because he was scared, No ,he had conquered fear long ago when his only guardian died.He paused because he was listening.
The mountain made a thousand noises.
Wind, rope, ice, distant cracking sounds that might've been shifting snow or might've been something worse,but the one sound he listened for was inside himself:
'Are you still here?'
His heartbeat answered fast,violent and alive.
He pushed on.
Above him the ridge rose like a blade, cruel and narrow, disappearing into black sky. Below him there was nothing solid, only emptiness and the faint shape of clouds far beneath, like the world had been erased.
People talked about K2 with reverence, like it was a temple.But he had never thought it deserved worship.
It deserved respect,
yes,
Like fire deserved respect. Like a loaded gun deserved respect. Like a wild animal deserved respect right before it ripped you open.
But worship?
No.
K2 didn't give blessings.it collected payments, as deaths.
His legs burned with every step, muscles screaming inside layered fabric, and he treated it like background noise.
Pain was normal and familiar. Pain was honest and pain was a companion that didn't lie.
He'd climbed and bled before. He'd watched other mountains try to intimidate him and fail.
But K2 wasn't trying to intimidate him.
It was simply waiting.
And he hated that about it.
He hated the way it didn't have to prove anything because it already had.
Three times, it had denied him. Turned his ambition into a lesson.
Three times, he'd come back anyway.
Not for glory or applause,
No.
Nobody cared enough to clap in this kind of cold.
He'd come back because the mountain had told him he couldn't and there were few things in the world that lit a fire in him faster than that.
He climbed higher.
The sky stayed dark, but the darkness began to thin, slowly, reluctantly, as if dawn didn't want to show its face here. A line of pale color appeared far away, faint as a bruise. The stars began to fade, retreating like witnesses who didn't want to be present for what was coming.
The slope steepened. The ice turned slick and hard, blue beneath his lamp. His crampons scraped against it with a sound that made the spine tense and he kept moving.
Step.
Breathe.
Step.
Breathe.
His mind tried to drift, tried to slide into the easy place where exhaustion felt like warmth and closing your eyes felt like mercy. But he didn't let it,he'd always been a man who could talk his way through disaster with a grin, like misfortune was just another bar fight to dance out of.
That was who he was.
Joseph andrios , an orphan raised by his grandfather untill he was 18 years old. And then he left him too.
The only thing remains with him is his teaching and advise " A Man does not yield even in the face of death " and he had followed it like his life depended on it.
He was not fearless, just… shameless and unwilling to act like fear had authority.
He checked the rope again, as the line looked worse the higher he climbed, frayed and stiff with ice, like it had been frozen in place for years.
He didn't trust it, but he touched it anyway, one quick tug, one quick assessment.
Then he spoke to it softly, like he was addressing a lazy crewmate.
"Hold onto me just until I'm done, and then you can break all you want."
The wind howled like laughter.
Hours passed or maybe it was minutes.Time didn't exist up here the way it did down there.
Up here, time was measured in the ache of joints, the sting of lungs, the way the mind began to bargain.
At some point his thighs stopped burning and went numb, his fingers stopped hurting and became distant, as if they belonged to someone else.
He moved anyway, a man climbing on stubbornness and habit and something dangerously close to pride.
Then the angle eased slightly. Enough for him to feel it and enough for him to lift his head.
And there it was,
Not a sign or a flag.
The ridge ahead brightened as dawn spilled across it, pale gold bleeding into the snow like firelight.
The final stretch.
The summit wasn't a place so much as a promise. It hovered ahead of him like a point drawn onto the sky.
A childish, ridiculous goal that had consumed years.
His breath caught.
Not from altitude, but from the sudden, violent thought:
'I'm actually going to do it.'
He laughed, and it came out harsh and broken through the mask.
Of course he laughed.
What else was there to do?
He climbed the last meters as the sun rose, and the world transformed into something almost holy. The clouds below him looked like an endless sea, soft and glowing, and far off in the distance other peaks pierced through like islands.
For a moment, K2 looked beautiful,and beauty was the mountain's final trick.
He stepped onto the summit.
The wind hit him at full force, but for one heartbeat it didn't feel like an attack. It felt like the mountain acknowledging his presence the only way it knew how.
By trying to push him away even at the finish line.
He stood there anyway.
Alone.
Unbroken.
Unyielding.
And very much Alive .
At the top of the Savage Mountain, his chest heaved and the mask hissed.
The oxygen tank gave a faint metallic rattle.
His goggles reflected the sunrise, turning his eyes into something unreal.
He lifted one shaking hand and gave the sky a lazy salute, like he'd just cheated death at cards and was enjoying the moment before the next round.
"Fourth time," he whispered. "Took you long enough."
The mountain waited half a second, then it moved.
A gust came out of nowhere.
Violent, sharp and wrong.
Like someone had swung a door open in the middle of a storm.
It hit him from the side and stole his balance in one clean motion.His boot slipped and body tilted.
And suddenly the summit wasn't victory anymore.
It was a ledge.
He threw himself downward instinctively, dropping hard to one knee, ice axe snapping forward. The pick struck the slope and bit deep. For one moment it held. For one moment he felt that insane burst of hope that comes right before the worst things happen.
His teeth clenched,eyes narrowed behind the goggles.
"No," he growled, low and feral. "Not today."
The ice beneath the axe cracked.
Not a small crack.
A deep, sickening fracture, like bone splitting inside a body that had reached its limit.
The axe ripped free.
His stomach dropped.
Gravity took him without emotion.He slid fast, too fast as his body scraped the slope, snow and ice exploding around him.
He tried to roll into control, tried to dig in his heels, tried to jam the axe again, but the surface was hard and polished. There was nothing to grab.
He slammed into rock, Pain detonated through his ribs,the world flashed white.
His oxygen mask tore loose, and the cold air punched into his lungs like shattered glass.
He coughed once, wet and sour as he tasted blood immediately.Everything became sound and impact.
The crack of ice.
The scrape of metal.
The guttural noise his own throat made when it couldn't decide whether to curse or scream.
He caught sight of the ridge above him for a fraction of a second, sunlit, calm, almost peaceful, as if nothing had happened.
As if the savage mountain wasn't swallowing him alive.
He spun as his hand flailed and his glove brushed the fixed rope.
He grabbed onto it,not gracefully or heroically. But like a drowning man grabbing the edge of a boat.
The rope snapped tight.his body jerked so violently it nearly dislocated his shoulder.
For a single heartbeat, a single miraculous, impossible heartbeat,
it held.
His breath burst out as a laugh that wasn't joy, but disbelief.
"Yes," he rasped.
The rope snapped.
'Fate is cruel & luck was never his thing'. This was the a sudden thought his mind generated in that split second.
The sound was loud and final, like a gunshot in the thin air.
His hand flew open and he fell again.
But this time there was no scrambling, or bargaining. Only the brutal speed of the drop and the cold certainty settling in his bones like stone.
He hit snow and bounced, he hit a rock again.
His vision broke into shards,sky, ice, sky, ice, until the world became a spinning blur of blue and white.
Somewhere in the chaos, the thought rose in him, calm as a truth he'd always known:
'So this is how it ends.'
Not with fear or regret, but with that same stubborn pride that had carried him here in the first place.
He had won.
He'd touched the summit. But the mountain had simply decided it wasn't enough.
His body kept sliding, slower now, friction dragging him to a stop in a shallow pocket of snow that cradled him like a grave. The wind roared above him, and the sky was impossibly bright.
He tried to breathe again but his lungs refused.
The air was too thin.
Too cold.
And definitely too late.
He blinked once, his eyelids felt heavy, like they were made of iron.
A voice drifted up from memory, gentle and trembling.
"Please… be careful."
His grandfather's voice.
He almost smiled.
The world dimmed at the edges, not like sleep but like a curtain being pulled.
His heartbeat slowed, not because he wanted it, but because the body always makes the final decision.
The last thing he saw was the sky above K2.
So blue it looked unreal.
So beautiful it felt insulting.
And then ....nothing.
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[ A/N : If you like the chapter then please drop some power stones and comment your thoughts .]