For some reason, preparation felt like hope.
Xavier hated how much he embraced the delusion that he was guaranteed to live if he tried hard enough—it was the type of thinking that embraced laziness.
As if he was a protagonist in a story, and any token effort, would lead the world to respond with exaggerated kindness toward his plight.
But at the same time, he knew it was a kind of survival mechanism.
Often, it was the man who deluded himself the best who made it furthest in life—but delusion clashed with reality at every turn.
Thus, when he started preparing, he did so at a slower pace than he could truly manage, checking everything twice, trice, and then a fourth time.
It started to feel like delay—like admitting that if he rushed, he would die.
Any thought about death was one too many given his situation, so he began packing in earnest.
He started with anything that could be called food, which was a generous definition at best; the edible vines—dried now, brittle but reliable.
The mold he tolerated in small amounts.
And the fish.
The fish were rare gifts, hurled upward by chance and gravity—silver bodies flung from the tons of falling water when a jagged rock broke off due to erosion.
They often landed bruises and stunned on stone ledges near the cave mouth.
Xavier could never predict when it would happen, but when it did, he would always start with the fish's eyeballs—he read somewhere once that they were good sources of water.
The previous night was particularly stormy, so he managed to stock up on fishes—sometimes, after the thunder of the falls surged just a little louder, there would be several fishes, flopping, dying or already still.
He smoked them.
Though, he was sure he never did it the right way.
There were little resources to make a fire, and being in a cave didn't add to the air-rich environment necessary for a fire.
Thus, he used patience and heat.
Flat stones warmed over days near hot-air cracks; fish laid thin, salted with mineral scraped from the cave's wall.
Covered loosely with leaves to keep insects away; diced unknown, round fruits laid between thin slices, adding flavoring that wasn't particularly flavorful.
Xavier let time accomplish the rest.
By the end, the smoked fish smelled awful but they were ultimately edible; he wrapped them in a vine fiber, tucking them deep into his makeshift pack.
The pack itself took days to make.
Vines braided until his fingers blistered.
Blisters ignored.
Strips of cloth torn from what remained of his clothes, wrapped around his palms for protection—threaded around his fingers, thicker around his forefingers, lighter around his ring finger.
A crude frame of stone slats lashed together—weight distributed across his shoulders, not his spine.
Every knot tested.
Every knot tested again.
Xavier even included a dense, woven rope extending from the pack, snaking under his shirt, ending by peeking just out of his collar—should anything unexpected happen, his teeth would be his last line of defense.
Climbing came naturally—but his technique improved by leaps and bounds.
He learned to tap stone before trusting it.
A knuckle. A heel.
A pebble dropped and listened to.
Hollow meant death.
Solid meant maybe.
This was not just a climb, this was survival! Survival meant he needed a plan—a route.
When he was finally ready, he stood at the edge again—not to grieve this time, not to scream—but to measure.
The branches below swayed gently, deceptively fragile, but alive. Roots clawed from the cliff face like fingers begging to be used—those were the ones you didn't use. The best ones always remained hidden, sticking to the cliff face like a clingy lover.
Xavier aimed.
Wrapped the pack tight around his torso and legs so it wouldn't swing. Looped vines over his shoulder. Took one last breath of the cave's stale, familiar air—moist his lips with a few licks of his tongue.
Then he stepped off.
Not a jump. Never a jump.
A controlled fall.
Xavier leaned forward until gravity made the decision for him, until the mountain accepted his weight and dared him to argue back.
The mountain did not rise gently; it shed men the way other places shed snow. Its rock faces were dry, fractured, stripped bare by wind that never rested and cold that never forgot.
There were no forgiving slopes here—only ledges that pretended to be stable and cracks that punished faith.
Everywhere near the waterfall's path was a plunge, so he had to plan a twisting, spiraling path downward.
His boot slid first.
Not far—just enough to steal his breath and remind him that the margin between movement and death was the width of a thought.
He corrected instinctively, heel grinding sideways, knee bent low to keep his center of gravity close to the wall.
His fingers searched blindly until they found a root—thin, half-dead, but anchored deep enough to argue with gravity.
Terror was his best friend, and though he had no qualms about the height, the endless simulations of falling running in the back of his mind was a human condition.
Then came the branch.
It was scrubby, twisted, the kind of vegetation that survived here out of spite. His foot caught it awkwardly, shin slamming into bark, pain exploding white-hot up his leg so violently he cried out before he could stop himself.
For one frozen second, he was sure it would snap.
It didn't.
The branch bowed, creaked, screamed—but held.
Momentum carried him outward anyway, body swinging like a pendulum over empty air.
The world tilted.
The roar of the falls vanished beneath the rush of blood in his ears. His hands burned as bark shredded through the cloth wrapped around his palms.
He locked his knees, every muscle bracing, and waited—counting heartbeats—until the swing slowed, until physics remembered him again.
Only then did he move.
Down.
Always down.
...…
For hours, Xavier tested every foothold before committing weight.
Toe first.
Then heel.
Then the rest of him. Loose shale sloughed away constantly, rattling down the face, vanishing into depth with no sound of impact.
From his last fall, he learned the rock on this mountain was deceptive—sun-bleached and dry, but brittle beneath the surface, ready to crumble if trusted too quickly.
Like my last relationship. His mind shot to Wolsi, sadness raging through him.
He shook it off… literally, and he slipped more times than he could count following that one, reckless, action.
Sometimes inches.
Sometimes a foot.
Once, nearly a full body length—saved only because his elbow jammed into a crack hard enough to numb his arm completely.
He hung there, gasping, teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached, until sensation crept back in pins and needles.
The first day bled out of him without ceremony.
He descended until his shoulders trembled uncontrollably, until his forearms refused commands and his fingers locked into claws.
When he could no longer trust himself to move, he tied in—three knots, spaced carefully, redundant on purpose.
He wedged his boots against a narrow shelf barely wider than his foot and leaned his helmetless head against the stone.
The mountain was cold even in daylight.
Wind howled through gullies like something alive, tugging at his clothes, whispering invitations to let go. He pressed his forehead to the rock and breathed through the pain, through the shaking, through the quiet terror that crept in once motion stopped.
He had moved maybe a few hundred feet.
The mountain rose thousands more above him.
Below, there was still so much empty space.
And yet—against reason, against exhaustion—he was still here.
Still clinging.
Still going down.
If this isn't superhuman, I don't know what is!
Xavier ate in small bites.
Forced himself to chew slowly, even as hunger raged.
Drank by cupping his hands and leaning sideways into the mist of the falls, swallowing grit and cold and life all at once.
When he slept, it was in fragments.
When he woke, he looked down.
And realized he still had so far to go.
The second day was worse.
Pain became a map.
He learned which movements to avoid, which muscles could still be trusted. He slid where he could—sitting back, heels digging into the rock, hands breaking his descent.
Where the stone turned slick with spray, he waited for night, when cold stiffened the surface just enough to make it honest.
He talked to himself.
Counted grips.
Counted breaths.
Named things to stay real.
Stone. Vine. Water. Hand.
Time stretched thin, then snapped.
An hour felt like a lifetime. A lifetime condensed into the space between heartbeats when his grip slipped and caught again.
Near the end of that day, he was close.
Not safe. Never safe.
But closer than he had been since the fall.
He tied himself off once more, chest heaving, vision narrowing, and laughed—a weak, cracked sound torn from him by sheer disbelief.
He had done it.
Almost.
Below him, the ground waited. Not kindly. Not cruelly. Just there.
He rested. Ate. Drank.
And prepared himself to finish what gravity had started.
...…
When night came, Xavier tied himself in—three anchors, two redundancies. If one failed, the other would tighten into the previous knot, then around his body, and if that knot failed, the next would tear into him just enough to cause pain.
Even in unconsciousness, he would feel it—when it came to survival, he found, pain was often a friend.
The knots were seated where they wouldn't cut circulation, loops wide enough to shift with his breathing; he tested each one by leaning back slowly, letting his full weight settle into the system.
It held.
The ledge was barely generous enough to sit, but it was solid—honest stone, not the treacherous shale he'd learned to distrust. Trust came in small doses, especially at night, so he couldn't help but pat the ledge a couple of times.
To him, it was a dog—trusty companion of deep isolation.
For the first time in days, nothing immediately demanded him. He was safe. He was whole, and he had made a friend for the umpteen time that day.
The wind softened with his emotion.
The cold remained, but it felt cleaner now, less hostile.
Below him, the mountain fell away in long, slanted shadows, and above, the sky stretched wide and patient.
He allowed himself a small, private thought: This is working. Not hope exactly—hope was dangerous—but the quiet sense that the world had stopped actively trying to kill him.
For a moment, he allowed himself to feel special.
He ate slowly, rationing the last of the smoked fish, chewing until his jaw ached.
Water followed, cold and metallic from the falls. When he finally leaned back against the rock and closed his eyes, sleep came without negotiation.
Or something like sleep—it was a deep shallowness, stirring at every wind whisper but drifting back at the microsecond of a lack of threat detection.
Then—he stood somewhere that was not the mountain.
Somewhere warm, humming softly, as if the air itself carried a current.
He saw himself from a distance—older, taller, eighteen maybe. Blonde hair catching light that did not come from any sun. His eyes glowed gold, steady and terrible in their calm.
Power clung to him like a second skin.
Opposite him stood a figure dressed in absolute white, fabric so clean it seemed unreal, edges too sharp to belong to cloth. Ruby-red eyes regarded him without warmth or cruelty—only attention.
Too old to care, too burdened with purpose to fade away—the thought came unbidden.
They spoke, though Xavier couldn't hear the words.
Then, together, they turned.
Far away, something bright flared against the horizon—a light that did not belong.
The older version of him stiffened. The white-clad figure's posture changed, tension snapping into place like a drawn wire.
The dream fractured.
Pain dragged him back.
At first, it was small.
A prickling itch along his side, easy to dismiss—he scratched once, then twice. Then forgot about it. He shifted, half-asleep, tightening a knot without opening his eyes. The sensation worsened—burning now, sharp, multiplying.
He inhaled sharply, languidly opening his eyes and looked down.
They were everywhere.
Leafcutter ants—thick-bodied, relentless, the kind that grew to the size of a pinkie finger—swarmed along the vines and fibers that held him.
Their mandibles worked in tireless rhythm, sawing through strands he had trusted with his life.
Some had already reached him, biting into exposed skin, tiny razors slicing again and again. Blood welled. Panic surged.
His body was trained to recognize immediate threats in the dead of night, but not death by a thousand cuts of inconvenience.
"No—no, no—"
He thrashed, swatting wildly, crushing dozens only for more to surge forward. His movements made it worse—weight shifting, tension redistributing.
A vine snapped with a dry, final sound.
Xavier clawed at the knots, fingers slipping, numb and shaking. Another strand parted. He felt the system fail—not all at once, but in pieces, contingencies collapsing one by one.
The ledge groaned beneath him.
And then the mountain let go.
The world dropped.
Air tore from his lungs as the last vine gave way, the night exploding into motion and noise and terror. His scream vanished into the void as he fell—hope, dream, preparation—snapped clean in a single, merciless moment.
And the ants… the ants—still bit!