The light of the sixth day did not break over the horizon; it bled through a shroud of heavy, iron-gray clouds that promised a change in the mountain's temperament.
Kaelen Thorne woke not to the sound of the wind, but to the sound of his own heart—a wet, heavy thudding that seemed to echo in the hollow, aching cavities of his chest. He was no longer in the basalt fissure or beneath the white tree. He had crawled into a shallow depression behind a cluster of wind-scoured boulders, huddling in the lee of the stone to escape the frost that had turned the plateau into a sheet of black glass.
He tried to move, and the world dissolved into a smear of gray and red. His ribs were no longer just a source of sharp pain; they had become a dull, radiating agony that made every inhalation feel like he was drawing in a lungful of crushed stone. The "fire-rash" had retreated from his face, leaving the skin there raw, pink, and peeling—exposing new tissue that felt like it was being flayed by the touch of the freezing air.
"Get up," he croaked. The sound of his own voice was alien—thin, reedy, and stripped of the youth it should have possessed. It was the voice of a man who had been screaming in silence for years.
He rolled onto his stomach, his left arm twitching with a newfound, frantic energy. The "presence" was restless. Ever since the hallucination on the plateau, the cold knot in his spine had been vibrating with a low-frequency hum that made his teeth ache. It wasn't just dormant anymore; it was hungry. It was as if the battle with his own mind had cracked the shell Umi had built, and now the spirit was reaching out, searching for the raw materials to stabilize a vessel that was rapidly falling apart.
Kael dragged himself out of the depression, his right hand clutching a jagged piece of obsidian he had kept as a makeshift knife. He looked out over the tundra that stretched toward the western cliffs. The ground here was a mixture of frozen mud and stunted, yellowed grass that looked like the hair of a corpse.
He needed salt. His body was craving it with a ferocity that made his mouth water even as his stomach cramped in protest.
He remembered Vane talking about the "Licks"—natural deposits of mineral salt that the mountain goats and elk frequented. If he could find one, he could replenish the minerals his blood was screaming for, and perhaps find a trail that led to lower ground.
The walk—if it could be called that—was a masterpiece of suffering. Kael didn't walk so much as he leaned into the wind and let his weight carry him forward until his legs gave out. Then he would crawl until the skin on his knees tore, and he would force himself up again.
Left foot—cold. Right foot—heat.
The rhythm was still there, but it was becoming distorted. The fire in his chest felt like a heavy, molten stone, pulling him toward the right, while the spirit-mark on his spine felt like a counterweight made of lead. He was a man made of two different gravities, and they were trying to pull him apart.
By midday, the sky began to spit a fine, crystalline sleet. It wasn't snow; it was needles of ice that stung his raw face and soaked through his tattered tunic. Kael found a game trail—a narrow path of packed earth that wound between the basalt pillars. He followed it, his eyes fixed on the ground, searching for the tell-tale white crust of a mineral deposit.
He found it near the edge of a frozen sulfur spring. The air here smelled of rotten eggs and ancient earth, a scent that would have made him gag a week ago, but now only signaled the presence of life-saving minerals. The salt lick was a pale, grayish mound of earth, pitted with the tongue-marks of a dozen different animals.
Kael collapsed beside it. He didn't care about the smell. He didn't care about the filth. He reached out with his right hand, scratching a handful of the mineral-rich dirt and shoving it into his mouth.
It was bitter, sharp, and tasted of stone, but as the salt hit his tongue, he felt a sudden, electric jolt travel through his nervous system. His nerves, frayed by six days of starvation and trauma, seemed to fire all at once.
Then, he felt the Shiver.
He reached out his left hand—the one that had been dead for so long—and pressed it against the damp earth near the sulfur spring. The blue mark on his spine didn't just pulse; it screamed. Kael's back arched, his head snapping back as a torrent of sensation flooded his left side. It wasn't just water this time. The sulfur, the salt, the deep, mineral-rich moisture of the spring—it was all being drawn into him. He could see it—tiny, silver-blue veins of light traveling up his arm, disappearing beneath the sleeve of his tunic.
The "presence" was feeding. It was drinking the mountain's blood to repair the cracks in Kael's bones. He lay there for a long time, his face pressed into the salt-earth, his body trembling with the intensity of the absorption. He felt his left arm warming up—not with fire, but with the prickly, painful heat of blood finally returning to a limb. He could flex his fingers. He could feel the texture of the dirt. He could feel the weight of the element itself.
But as the spirit fed, the fire in his chest reacted violently.
Fire and Water. Salt and Heat.
A sudden, agonizing cramp seized his stomach. Kael rolled onto his side, retching as his body struggled to process the sudden influx of minerals and spiritual energy. He coughed up a thick, gray sludge—a mixture of the salt-earth and the internal waste his body was trying to purge.
"Too much," he wheezed, his eyes streaming with tears that froze on his cheeks. "Too... much..."
He lay in the sleet, his body a battlefield. The fire-rash on his neck began to glow a dull, angry orange, meeting the blue light of the spirit-mark at the base of his skull. The two forces were clashing again, and Kael was the anvil they were striking.
He looked up at the sky. The clouds were thickening, turning a deep, bruised purple. The blizzard was coming. He had to find shelter. He couldn't stay by the spring; the sulfur fumes would kill him in his sleep, and the open tundra offered no protection from the wind.
He forced himself up, his limbs feeling heavy and strange. His left side was no longer dead, but it felt... fluid, as if the bones had been replaced by pressurized water. When he moved his left arm, it didn't swing like a limb; it flowed with a frightening, alien grace.
As he walked toward a cluster of jagged rocks half a mile to the west, he saw a movement in the corner of his eye. The mountain-cat. It was the same one from the river. It wasn't stalking him from the shadows anymore; it was walking parallel to him, twenty yards away, its tail twitching with a rhythmic, calculated patience. It knew. It knew he was failing.
Kael stopped. He turned to face the cat, his right hand igniting. The flame was small, a guttering candle-flicker in the rising wind. "Go away," he croaked.
The cat didn't snarl. It just sat down in the snow, watching him with a terrifying, silent focus. It was waiting for the fire to go out. Kael felt a sudden, sharp spike of rage—not the explosive anger of his father, but a cold, predatory rage. He reached down and grabbed a handful of the slushy, salt-heavy snow at his feet.
He squeezed it. He felt the "presence" in his spine lean into his arm. The snow in his hand didn't melt; it turned to a jagged, razor-sharp shard of black ice, infused with the sulfur of the spring. He flung the shard at the cat. The beast dodged with fluid ease, but it stood up, its amber eyes narrowing.
Kael didn't wait. He turned and ran toward the rocks just as the first true gust of the blizzard hit. He saw a narrow opening between two slabs of granite—a crack deep enough to provide cover. He dived inside, his left shoulder slamming into the stone.
The cave was dark and smelled of dry earth and old bones. Kael scrambled deep into the shadows, his right hand held out like a shield. He looked at the floor of the cave. In the flickering light of his palm, he saw a pile of bones. Not animal bones. Small, human-sized ribs. A cracked skull. A tattered, red-and-gold tunic of the Fire Nation.
He wasn't the first "rat" to find this hole.
Kael reached out and touched the tattered fabric. It was cold. So cold. "Day six," he whispered, his voice disappearing into the roar of the wind outside. He curled into a ball beside the bones of the unknown child. He didn't feel horror. He only felt a deep, crushing sense of kinship.
I will not let you be bones, the presence in his spine seemed to pulse.
But as Kael drifted into a fitful, feverish sleep, he could still hear the cat howling in the storm—a reminder that the mountain never truly lets go of what it claims. He was a Thorne. And a Thorne didn't die in a hole. Not today.