Page 128 of Cursed Shadows 4

The panic heaves my chest with weighted breaths. My nails dig so hard into the rocks that some snap clean off.

I don’t feel the pain that should sear my fingers—I’m too numb, too frozen by the rumblings of the mountain.

I’m so tucked in on myself that my chin presses to my shoulder and I turn my wide, wet eyes on the litalf…

But he is nowhere in sight.

Not anymore.

I look down to the trembling crevasse. Rocks and gravel bounce off of it.

And I see that the litalf didn’t fall through the cracks to the underground caves and rivers. He landed on the hard rock itself, and now, his limbs are bent and crooked and splayed around his bloody body.

The hum of the mountain threw him off.

Like it’s trying to throw me off.

Still, that debris crumbles from the wall and rains down on me. A knock catches me at the temple, enough to draw blood.

I wince and cringe into the rocks.

“What the fuck is going on?” My screech should be carried away in the sharp winds, a whistle that passes too quickly. “Heeeellp!”

Dare hears my shriek, some distance back, still on the ground. He hasn’t reached the crevasse yet, and his voice is wrought with tension, with supressed grunts and the clash of metal as he shouts back at me—

“Just fucking go, Nari!”

That’s what I do.

I move.

Every muscle in my body bolts to my bones, an instinct to go rigid against this mountainside, to cling to the stone and rock with all my might. But I fight the urge and, with a guttural groan, reach my hand up to the next trembling boulder—

I climb.

And climb.

And climb.

Some distance down, the song of blades whirs through the frost.

I clench my teeth as thezinggrows nearer.

I don’t need to look down to know that it’s another litalf, gaining on me, using blades to scale the crevasse.

The shouts of battle draw closer, and I am certain that the warriors have started to climb.

I throw the thoughts of them from my mind.

It’s me I have to worry about.

It’s my life I aim to protect above all others.

So I slap my hand onto the crusty corner of a glacier ledge. Frost slips against the raw flesh of my hands, but the nails I have left dig into the crevices.

Drawing on every ounce of upper body strength I have left, I lift my weight up onto the ledge and stretch out my leg—I dig my heel into the slippery ice.

And hold.

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