Chapter 4 The Fourth Day

POV: Thessaly Vance

I shoved past Kester and ran.

The trail to the north face cut through camp fast if you knew the shortcut, and I did, boots slamming dirt, lungs burning before I even cleared the mess tent. Someone was on the wall with a stolen rope. Someone who'd cut mine the night before. I didn't have a plan past getting there before whoever it was finished whatever they'd started.

Kester caught up to me at the ridge overlook, breathing hard, and grabbed my sleeve before I could scramble down the loose scree toward the base.

"Wait. Look first."

I looked.

Nobody was on the wall.

The base of the north face sat empty, gray rock catching the first gray light of morning, not a single climber, not a single rope hanging where it shouldn't be. I stood there gasping, waiting for my racing heart to catch up with what my eyes were telling me, and found nothing except an empty mountain and my own reflection in Kester's face, just as confused as mine.

"You said someone was already up there."

"I saw movement." His jaw tightened. "Near the ledge. I swear it."

"Then where did they go?"

He didn't have an answer, and for the first time since I'd met him, that scared me worse than if he had. A stranger who knew impossible things was unsettling. A stranger who was starting to be wrong about them felt like standing on ice right before it cracks.

I went to Aldous anyway, missing rope and all, because somebody had to answer for two attempts on my life in the space of one night, and I wasn't leaving his office until I got something better than bad luck.

He listened to the whole thing from behind his desk, hands folded, nodding along like a man humoring a child's nightmare.

"A missing rope," he repeated, once I'd finished. "And a shadow on the wall that turned out to be nothing."

"It's nothing. Two ropes in one night, Mr. Wrey. Mine gets cut, and then another one disappears off the rack completely."

"Inventory's tricky this time of season. Gear gets moved around, borrowed, mislabeled." He spread his hands like the whole thing was a shrug given words. "I'll admit, your medic friend has quite the imagination for a man who's only been on staff a few weeks."

Something in that sentence snagged. "A few weeks?"

"Mm. Started right before you arrived, if memory serves." Aldous's smile didn't waver, but his eyes stayed flat, watching me carefully now in a way that made my skin crawl worse than any cut rope had. "Between the two of you, I've had more excitement this week than the whole rest of the season combined. Nerves before a big climb do strange things to people, Miss Vance. To medics too, apparently."

"He's not imagining anything."

"Of course not." He stood, ending the conversation the way powerful men always do, without ever raising their voice. "Get some rest. You've got a mountain waiting for you."

I walked out shaking with a fury I didn't have anywhere to put.

I found Kester by the supply tent an hour later, restocking a first aid kit like the whole night hadn't happened, like his hands weren't moving just a little too fast, a little too precise, the careful motion of someone trying hard to look calm.

"He thinks you're unstable," I said, no greeting, no warm-up. "He as good as told me you're some anxious new hire who's been here what, three weeks, imagining shadows on empty walls."

Kester's hands went still over the kit.

"Is that true?"

"Define true."

"Have you been here three weeks?"

"Yes."

"Then how do you know things about me that nobody could learn in three weeks? My father's habits. My summit window. Last night you knew my name before I said it out loud, Kester. I want a real answer. Not a warning. Not a half-sentence you cut off right before it means something. A real answer, right now, or I walk away and let Aldous think whatever he wants about both of us."

He set the kit down slowly. When he looked up, something had changed in his face, some wall finally cracking open, and for the first time since the wall gave way under my hand, he looked less like a stranger keeping secrets and more like a man exhausted from carrying something too heavy for one person alone.

"Ask me the real question," he said quietly. "Not around it. Straight."

My heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my throat. "How do you know about the fourth day?"

He didn't look away this time.

"Because I've already lived it."

The words hit me strange, sideways, like a sentence in a language I almost understood. "That's not an answer, that's a riddle."

"It's not a riddle. It's the truth, and I know exactly how insane it sounds coming out of my mouth." His voice stayed low, steady, stripped of every ounce of that careful calm from before. "I've seen the fourth day of your summit window, Thessaly. I've watched it happen. More than once."

"Watched what happen."

His throat worked like the next words cost him something physical to say out loud.

"You don't survive it."

The world tilted. I actually put a hand out to the supply tent pole to steady myself, because my legs had gone strange and distant underneath me, and Kester didn't move to catch me, just stood there letting me absorb the full weight of what he'd finally said, like he understood there was nothing gentle left to soften it with.

"You're lying," I whispered, without any real conviction behind it.

"I wish I was."

"People don't watch things happen more than once, Kester. That's not how any of this works."

"I know how it sounds." His eyes were wet again, same as that night by the wall, same raw fear underneath the calm exterior he clearly worked so hard to keep up. "I've asked myself the same thing every single time. I don't have an explanation that makes sense in any normal way. I just know what I've seen. I know exactly how it goes. I know what you say right before it happens, I know which pitch, I know the weather, I know."

He stopped himself.

"You know what?" I pushed. "Finish it."

"I know what it sounds like when you scream."

Nobody said anything for a long moment. The wind picked up around the supply tent, snapping the loose canvas edge against its pole, and somewhere behind us camp was waking up to breakfast smells and ordinary morning noise, completely unaware that six feet away a man had just told me, plainly, that he'd already watched me die.

"Then stop it," I said, voice cracking. "If you know how it happens, if you've seen it enough times to know what I sound like when I, then tell me exactly what to avoid. Tell me everything. Right now."

Kester opened his mouth.

And every radio clipped to every belt within earshot crackled at once, one single burst of static followed by Aldous's voice, tight and urgent in a way I'd never heard from him before.

"All available staff to the north face immediately. We have a climber down."

Kester's whole body went rigid, the color draining out of his face for the third time in one day, and this time when he looked at me, it wasn't fear on his face.

It was recognition.

"That's it," he said, barely above a whisper. "That's how it starts. That's exactly how it started every single time before."