Falling was not a single act.
It was a series of 'it's not you, it's me', 'I cheated because you didn't care about me', 'I was only flirting babe'.
Xavier didn't know why, but such thoughts ran rampant in his mind as he plunged to his death—every betrayal ever whispering their excuses, demanding his forgiveness.
Even at the edge of death, they were still asking for understanding.
HE DID NOT WANT TO UNDERSTAND! —not anymore.
Just as friends had betrayed, his ropes, the endless branches and vines, just inches from his reach, was betraying him now.
He thought it would be the end.
There was no other way to take it—he couldn't fly, and there was nothing left to hold on to… but he had prepared for the worst, and that preparation would do him well.
The first tug came hard enough to rip the breath from his lungs—his knotted-vine system, strained past mercy, snapped one anchor and redirected the rest.
The remaining vines caught just long enough to swing him outward, away from the wall, into open air. His body arced like a pendulum, weightless for a fraction of a second before gravity reclaimed him with interest.
Then the line failed.
The sound was small. Almost polite.
A dry tchk that meant everything was over. Worse, he was further away from survival than ever before.
He dropped—only to be caught again, violently, as a vine snagged under his arm and yanked him sideways.
His shoulder screamed.
His ribs slammed into stone.
Once. Then again.
Each impact knocked something loose inside him—air, orientation, dignity.
The mountain did not care which—he did not care which.
At some point, pain became a welcome thing—a sign that survival was not the infinite distance his blurring vision saw it as.
Anyone else would have panicked here.
Anyone else would have wasted breath on terror, limbs on flailing, mind on the injustice of it—he, too, had fallen victim to such actions, but the closer he came to death, the calmer he became.
Panic was efficient that way—it killed quickly. But there was hope for him yet.
Xavier sunk into an unusual calm.
Not because he was brave.
Because something in him refused to be finished—it was something that rose from the depth of his oblivion, from memories of killing his first pet, crying himself to sleep, then having the sympathy beaten out of him for a week.
Something had cracked in him then… and it served him well now.
A vine tightened beneath his shirt, burning across skin already raw—he recalled the final contingency.
He felt it slipping.
He remembered it—remembered the weight he'd packed into his system, the extra length he'd woven in days ago without knowing why.
Instinct reached before thought—fear of heights guiding him.
He bit.
The vine tore against his teeth, fibers shredding, sap flooding his mouth with a bitter, green taste.
Pain detonated up his jaw.
Something cracked—sharp, unmistakable—but he didn't let go.
He clamped down harder, cheek splitting against his molars, warm wetness filling his mouth that had nothing to do with the plant.
It slowed him.
Not stopped. Never stopped. But slowed—enough.
His body swung again, pendulum shortening, momentum bleeding away in fractions of survival.
He slammed into the wall a third time, shoulder-first, then managed—somehow—to get his feet under him.
Soles scraped uselessly before finding a sliver of stone, barely wide enough to exist.
He pressed into it, flattening his body as if trying to sink into stone with some fantastical power.
Chest heaving.
Jaw locked.
Vine clenched between his teeth like an animal refusing to release a kill—though all the blood was his own.
His hands found a sharp rock by feel alone. Skin peeled. Nails bent.
One slipped, then corrected.
He shifted his weight inch by inch, using pain as feedback, as instruction.
This is wrong.
This will kill me.
Adjust this part.
The vine snapped free from his mouth with a wet sound.
Xavier gasped, nearly retching as air tore back into his lungs—he had forgotten how to breathe, a mistake rookies would make during intense exercise.
He spat blood and sap into the void and laughed once—thin, broken, almost hysterical.
He was still alive.
Barely.
Hopelessness crept in then—not dramatic, not loud.
It arrived quietly, in the way his arms trembled uncontrollably, in the way his vision narrowed and pulsed. He clung to the wall, forehead pressed to stone, and thought—not for the first time—how disgusting survival really was.
There was nothing noble about this.
The pee running down his leg was testament of this.
Valuable water being lost.
He smelled like blood and sweat and rot. His mouth tasted wrong. His body hurt in places he didn't have words for anymore.
He had bitten a plant like an animal and been rewarded for it.
Any line between him and the cave he'd crawled out of was gone—it was like losing a second home.
This was what living looked like now.
And still—he did not let go.
He tied himself off again, hands working from memory, from repetition carved into muscle. The vines this time was limited but strangely, there was a greater certainty in his actions now.
He imagined, it was like being bullied for the first time. There was fear, uncertainty, but after the first ass-whooping, the others became easier to endure—eventually, fighting back became a joy, especially when there was nothing left to lose.
The knots, this time, were ugly. Functional.
One failed immediately. He corrected without comment.
Another held.
Then another.
He leaned back slowly, testing, trusting nothing.
The mountain loomed around him, vast and indifferent.
It did not roar. It did not threaten. It simply existed, and that was worse.
There was no enemy to curse, no will to defy. Only gravity and time and the slow erosion of resolve.
Xavier rested his head against the rock and closed his eyes for three breaths. Not to sleep. Never sleep. Just to gather what remained of himself.
Anyone else would have slipped.
Anyone else would have bled out, or frozen, or simply decided it wasn't worth the effort anymore. Not because they were weak—but because the mountain was very good at teaching people when to stop.
Xavier learned something else instead.
That survival was not clean.
Not heroic.
Not fair.
It was biting down until your teeth broke.
It was using pain as a tool.
It was continuing not because you believed you'd make it—but because stopping felt worse.
When he opened his eyes—could've been an hour later, or a couple of minutes later—he began moving again.
Down.
With a broken body that wouldn't remind him of how broken it was until he deigned to stop—so he couldn't.
...…
Another day, another struggle.
But progress was being made. Slow but sure.
It was around sunrise when it happened—hardly the first time it happened, but this time, it had grown with an annoying frequency.
Had he been well-rested, a bit more focused on himself instead of the prospective fall, Xavier would have realized the incongruity a little earlier.
The moment did not arrive with clarity or music or revelation.
At first, it presented itself as small, stubborn logistics—his bag woven from fine vines kept slipping down his shoulders, again and again.,
There was a quiet irritation to it.
Ironic, Xavier's thought. Once bitten, twice shy. So every issue was treated with the gravitas of something that could lead to his death.
Little did he know how right he was.
He tightened the woven vines with shaking hands, fingers numb from the climb, so he had to grasp with three times the necessary strength.
He took a moment to breathe, allowing the bag to settle closer to his spine; he tested it once, then twice. It held and he continued forward in satisfaction.
For a while.
He descended another stretch—controlled falls, deliberate slips, boots scraping for purchase that barely existed. A couple of his rolls, ill-timed, led to injures atop injures, but with death around every corner, what was a strained ligament or two.
Not that that was as bad as his injures were.
His shoulder screamed every time he reached overhead, the joint loose and traitorous, popping half out of place with a wet, grinding sensation that made his vision spark.
He swallowed the sound that wanted to escape him and kept moving.
Then the bag shifted again—the vines were loosening from the inside-out.
"I have to tighten the weaves tonight," he breathed.
Just that.
A plea that he would make it to the night, like he had countless times before.
He hauled himself against the wall, chest pressed to stone, and retightened everything. Knot over knot.
Pull.
Test.
Pull again.
He forced his breathing slow, counted heartbeats, felt something dangerously close to optimism flicker in his chest. I can do this. Not I will survive. Just—I can do the next part.
That was how he'd been living for months.
One part. One motion. One breath that didn't end.
He pushed off again, and managed two vines, swings, a small jump to another ledge, and a slow, agonizing slide down an incline.
That was when he felt it—he had just stabilized himself at the bottom of the incline.
Movement—not the sway of the bag, not gravity's familiar tug.
Something alive.
Something deliberate.
A slow, sinuous shift against his lower back, brushing the fabric from the inside like a—it could only be one thing, loathe as Xavier was to admit it.
He froze—whether something shattered in him at that moment, or it was already broken and he merely reduced it to dust, was debatable.
But he could feel it—something deep inside had… gone?
He didn't even realize the tears falling from his eyes, nor the fact that his mouth curled in a unnatural grin.
Every muscle locked so hard it hurt. His breath stalled halfway in his chest.
The mountain seemed to lean closer, listening—as if paying attention just for this singular moment. As if this was the peak entertainment of its countless millennia.
Don't panic, he told himself, and for once the thought wasn't hollow.
Panic would get him killed. Panic would make him move wrong.
He lifted one hand from the rock—slowly, so slowly his arm shook under the effort—and reached back over his shoulder.
The joint protested viciously, a flash of white pain as it slipped out and back in again. He bit down hard enough to taste copper.
His fingers brushed the bag.
It twitched.
Something inside it shifted upward.
"No," he whispered again, voice barely sound.
The fabric bulged. A dark shape rose, coiling with terrifying patience.
His heart slammed so hard he thought it might dislodge his ribs. He tried to move faster then—instinct finally overriding discipline—but he was already too late.
The snake struck.
It came out of the bag like a released spring, fangs darting toward his neck with the precision of a … well, snake.
Pain detonated— he screamed, the sound ripped raw from his throat, and his hand flew up on reflex, intercepting the snake just short of his neck.
But he had merely diverted the attack to his shoulder.
It was the equivalent of a dozen injections simultaneously thrust into a butt-cheek.
Xavier grabbed the snake an instant later.
Crushed.
His fingers closed around its head and he squeezed with everything he had left.
Bone gave way, splintering into his palm, but that was the least of the pain.
Venom spilled warm and slick over his knuckles, soaking into cuts and torn skin, flooding pathways that were already compromised.
The numbness started immediately—both his shoulder and hand.
"Fuck—fuck—" His words slurred together, tongue heavy, lips refusing precision.
He tore the dead snake free and hurled it out into the mist, watched it vanish without a sound, as if the mountain itself had swallowed the evidence.
Then his legs buckled.
His vision tunneled, edges darkening, colors bleeding together.
He lunged for the knot that anchored him to the wall, fingers clumsy and traitorous, but sensation was already draining from his hands.
The rope blurred.
The rock swayed.
He dropped to his knees.
Something inside him finally broke—not cleanly, not dramatically.
It cracked like rotten wood, splintering inward.
All the careful compartmentalization, all the discipline and counting and micro-goals collapsed at once.
"Why?" he sobbed, the word mangled, barely recognizable. "Why—why you—why now?"
His head lolled back.
Tears streamed down his face, mixing with blood and snot and saliva, soaking into his collar.
He laughed once—high and wrong—and then started crying harder, the sound devolving into a broken, animal keening.
"Fuck you," he slurred at the sky.
At the mountain.
At whatever watched and never answered. "Fuck you, God. Fuck you for watchin'. For makin' me do all this—"
He beat a numb fist against his chest, missed, struck stone instead.
"Wolsi—" Her name came out twisted, ugly. "You—you left. You all leave. Everyone fuckin' leaves."
His thoughts unraveled, sentences collapsing before they could finish. His parents surfaced then, not as memories but as accusations.
As absences.
He never knew such resentment existed within the depths of his heart but the more he thought about it, the more he realized—of course it did.
He hated his father. He hated his mother. He loved his grandfather just as much as he hated the man. And that was why Wolsi had been so important—she was his first love, not just as a lover but perhaps, the first thing he was truly allowed to love in his life.
These emotions were never meant to be confronted. But this version of him—bleeding, feral, reduced to chewing vines and spiders and praying to rocks—wanted to vent before death.
"People are shit," he babbled. "All of 'em. Lie and take and laugh. Fight wars and dig holes and call it history. Call it progress. Stupid ass grandfather!"
His jaw trembled violently.
He bit down on his tongue—not reflex, but intention. Hard. Pain flared briefly, distant and unsatisfying.
He pressed harder, trying to tear, trying to end it faster before the venom could drag it out into something slower and crueler.
But his mouth wouldn't cooperate. His body had already stopped listening.
He gagged instead, choking on blood and spit, a broken sound tearing from his chest that didn't resemble language at all.
He rocked back and forth, humming nonsense under his breath, syllables slipping and repeating like a damaged recording.
"Awarara… awar—" He didn't know what it meant. It felt important anyway.
His arms went slack.
The ledge tilted.
Xavier tried to lean back, to trust the knot, to let the system take his weight—but his balance was gone. His body listed sideways, numb and uncoordinated, a marionette with its strings cut.
For a moment—a single, suspended heartbeat—he saw the world clearly again.
Mist rising. Rock falling away. The long, hungry distance below.
Then he tipped.
The mountain took him.
Xavier disappeared into the white roar beneath, swallowed whole by the depths, his last sound lost to the falling water and the endless, indifferent air.