The fabric of the tent beat in rhythm beneath the gusts, like a funeral drum.

  Outside, the wind roared through the South Col, skimming the hard snow in spectral streaks.

  Inside, it was -25°C. Maybe -30. Impossible to know.

  Lucanis’s digital thermometer had frozen two days earlier.

  He pulled his zipper up to his chin, wedged inside his goose-down jacket, close to Ed.

  The red light of his headlamp skimmed the inner walls of the tent, creating ghostlike shadows.

  Ed, lying in his sleeping bag, barely trembled. His breathing was ragged.

  The regulator of his oxygen mask lay beside him, silent. The cylinder had been empty since the afternoon. Lucanis had tried to share his own, but Ed had refused. Refused outright.

  He knew it was over.

  A dark red puddle had formed beneath his cheek. He had vomited blood after their last push upward.

  “Here, try again…” Lucanis murmured, holding out a soft energy paste, half-thawed.

  But Ed weakly turned his face away.

  “Keep it for yourself, kid. You’ll need it up there.”

  His voice was hoarse, strangled. His lips were purple, split.

  He was still wearing his insulated gloves, but his fingers were probably already necrotic. He no longer moved them.

  Lucanis remained frozen for a moment, the ration bar in his hand.

  Outside, a stronger gust than the others made the tent snap like a sail. He clenched his teeth.

  The wind was blowing over 80 km/h. He knew it.

  And at this altitude, 7,950 meters, only a quarter of the oxygen present at sea level remained.

  It was the death zone, as they called it. Above it, the body began to destroy itself, cell by cell.

  He reached toward Ed to adjust his hood. It was soaked. Frost had formed in his eyebrows.

  “We can still go down… Tomorrow. I’ll carry you if I have to.”

  Ed pulled a grimace.

  An ironic, frozen smile.

  “If you want us both to die, go ahead. But that’d be stupid.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Listen. I’ve done Annapurna, I’ve seen what it is to cling too late. It’s not a race. t’s a slow bleed.”

  Lucanis looked at him. His face twisted. Not fear. Frustration. Powerlessness.

  He looked away.

  In a corner of the tent, he thought he saw a crouched silhouette.

  Black, gleaming eyes staring at him. A vague, childlike shape.

  He blinked several times, but the thing remained there, motionless, barely breathing.

  He shut his eyes tight, then reopened them. Nothing. Just the cold. Just Ed.

  He had read that hypoxia caused hallucinations.

  He hadn’t had any. Until now.

  Ed, meanwhile, was whispering incomprehensible things, barely audible.

  “They’re there… in the snow… They… whisper…”

  Lucanis leaned closer.

  “What?”

  Ed turned his eyes toward him. Empty. As if they were looking through him.

  “You’ll see them too… when you’re at the end… when you’ve got no more thoughts… Just the white…”

  He choked on his own words, a coughing fit crushing his chest.

  Lucanis caught him in time. Blood flowed again onto the sleeping bag, crystallizing instantly.

  He laid him down gently, then, without a word, moved back inside the tent, back to the wind, knees against his chest.

  His crampons waited, hooked to the strap, beside his pack.

  Ice axe, rope, thermos, spare gloves… everything was ready.

  But he wasn’t.

  Not yet.

  Lucanis remained there, curled up in his down jacket, knees drawn to his chest.

  His fingers, numb despite the Gore-Tex gloves, barely stirred.

  He exhaled. A thick white vapor escaped his mouth, floating for a moment in the tent’s frozen darkness.

  He had been here for two months.

  Two months in this illusion — this reality?

  Two months climbing, adapting, surviving.

  Without bearings. Without familiar rules. Without a Trame.

  He thought of Althéa. Of her hard gaze.

  Of Kael, his terrible jokes.

  Were they alright?

  Were their Trials as brutal as this one?

  He hoped not. That they had been given a less hostile world.

  Less indifferent.

  He remembered the shock of waking up.

  That damned cold. The pack on his back. The rope tied to a stranger.

  And the mountain.

  In front of him. Immense. Inhuman.

  As if Soléandre had never existed. As if he had been born here, in ice and rock.

  He knew nothing at first.

  Nothing about crampons. About lanyards. About fixed ropes.

  Nothing about the ravages of altitude, about treacherous crevasses, about frost that bites to the bone.

  He had had to learn everything. Fast. Or die.

  And yet… despite everything…

  He looked at his gear. His coiled rope. His worn harness. His ice axe still wet with snow.

  There was a silence in his chest. A moment of pure lucidity.

  He was happy to be here.

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  Not in the comfortable sense of the word.

  But in the one that scratches deep in the gut.

  He felt alive.

  More than ever.

  The pain, the fear, the cold… all of it was real.

  No pretense. No politics. No mask.

  Here, you moved forward or you died.

  And it was strangely simple.

  He sighed again. The vapor rose, slow and heavy, like a cloud torn from his lungs.

  His gaze drifted toward Ed.

  The old climber no longer moved.

  His chest still rose, in small jerks, but the intervals stretched.

  His face was gray. The pool of blood had frozen, almost black.

  Lucanis stared at him for a long time.

  And bile rose in his throat.

  He could do nothing.

  Nothing to help him. Nothing to save him.

  And that helplessness made him sick.

  He looked away, disgusted. Not with Ed. With himself.

  A rough cough broke the silence.

  Lucanis jumped, then abruptly turned his head toward Ed.

  “…Lucanis…”

  The voice was almost a breath, swallowed by the wind howling outside.

  He rushed to his knees, leaning over the old man.

  “Rest, Ed. Don’t try to talk, alright? Save your breath.”

  But Ed slowly shook his head.

  His half-closed eyes shone with a troubled light, as if they were already seeing beyond the tent.

  “No… listen to me.”

  Lucanis hesitated, then leaned closer, his gloves rasping against the frozen fabric.

  Ed continued, between two whistling breaths:

  “You know… I’ve seen plenty… of climbers. Strong guys, tough, sure of themselves…

  But you, you’ve got something else…”

  He paused, spat a bit of blood into a handkerchief that froze instantly.

  “You don’t have the experience, or the reflexes, but… you’ve got that calm.

  You climb… like the mountain is waiting for you.

  Like it moves aside a little, just for your steps.”

  Lucanis tried to interrupt him.

  “Stop. Save your energy. We’ll talk down there, alright?”

  “No…” Ed weakly shook his head.

  “You have to listen to me. Up there, it won’t just be a climb.

  It’ll be… your fight.

  What you’re looking for… it’s not here, in this tent.

  It’s up there. On the ridge. Where there’s no more air, nothing left… but you.”

  His breathing grew broken, gasping. He coughed violently, blood splattering the inside of his sleeping bag.

  Lucanis placed a hand on his shoulder, panicked.

  “Ed, shut up, damn it! There’s no point talking!”

  But Ed was half smiling, his face livid.

  “Don’t cut me off, kid…

  You mustn’t die here. You hear me?

  You have to tame this mountain.

  Not endure it. Not flee from it.

  Conquer it.”

  He fumbled beneath his sleeping bag, his trembling fingers scraping the canvas.

  Lucanis tried to help him, but Ed shook his head and pulled out an object: his ice axe.

  An old aluminum shaft, worn, polished by years of ascents.

  The metal glimmered faintly in the red headlamp light.

  He held it out toward Lucanis, fingers clenched around it.

  “Take it.

  And when you reach the summit…

  Plant it up there. For me.”

  Lucanis remained frozen, unable to move.

  Then, slowly, he extended his hand, closing his fingers around the ice axe.

  The metal was frozen, almost painful.

  Ed exhaled, eyes half closed.

  “Promise me…”

  Lucanis gripped the ice axe tighter.

  “I promise.”

  A faint smile formed on Ed’s face.

  He tried to speak again, but a dry rattle cut through his throat.

  His chest lifted one last time… then fell.

  His eyes remained open, turned toward the tent’s ceiling.

  The wind outside rose again, louder, like a scream.

  Lucanis did not move.

  He remained there, on his knees, the ice axe in his hand, short of breath.

  The headlamp trembled slightly on his forehead, casting Ed’s frozen shadow onto the canvas wall.

  A tear ran down Lucanis’s cheek.

  It froze instantly.

  He did not feel it.

  He was already clutching Ed’s ice axe against himself until his knuckles turned white.

  His fingers trembled, but not from fear.

  From anger. From helplessness. From resolve.

  He inhaled slowly. The cold bit at his nostrils.

  Then, without a word, he stood.

  His movements were mechanical, precise:

  He grabbed his harness, fixed his carabiners, clipped his straps, checked his gear.

  Put on his crampons. Repositioned his pack.

  Slid the ice axe into his right hand.

  He turned toward Ed one last time.

  The face frozen in the half-dark, the gaze empty, the lips blue.

  A body in the eternal cold.

  Lucanis stared at him. No words. No farewell.

  The silence inside the tent was heavier than the wind outside.

  Two sharp taps on his temples.

  Just that.

  And he opened the tent.

  The night was total.

  Not a star. Not a moon.

  Only the gale.

  A raw wind lashed him the moment he stepped outside.

  His eyelashes froze instantly. His cheeks split under the bite of the air.

  The cold did not enter him: it was already there. In his flesh. In his bones. In his thoughts.

  Lucanis did not bend.

  He lowered his head, drove his left crampon into the slope, then the right.

  One step.

  Then another.

  The mountain did not sleep.

  It growled.

  Beneath the snow, beneath the rock, beneath the apparent silence.

  It kept watch. It judged.

  And it gave no gifts.

  Lucanis expected none.

  He climbed.

  Every gesture was an effort.

  Every movement was measured, steady, without grace.

  His short breath formed quick clouds before his mouth, like souls escaping.

  His fingers, despite the liners and the layers, were nothing but painful blocks.

  He no longer felt his feet. Nor his legs.

  But he climbed.

  The void around him was immense.

  There was no more up, no more down.

  Only the slope. And his own body.

  And that will, naked, raw, insane.

  He dropped a knee into the snow, caught his breath.

  Pain pierced beneath his ribs.

  He spat. A bit of blood.

  He stood again.

  One step.

  Another.

  The slope grew steeper.

  The gusts pushed him backward.

  His frostbite spread, black, numb.

  But he had never been more alive.

  Up there. Somewhere.

  The summit called him.

  Not gently.

  Not with promise.

  But with that mute, dry, implacable voice that said: Come, if you dare.

  And Lucanis dared.

  He kept moving forward.

  One step. Then another.

  Until he saw, through the frozen mist, the Hillary Step: that steep rock wall bordering the summit ridge.

  Lucanis smiled. A grin split by frost, harsh, almost animal.

  “There… that’s what you meant, Ed…”

  The wind howled. It no longer blew — it roared, crushing the ridge like a celestial hammer.

  But Lucanis straightened, fixed his gaze into the storm. His green eyes had become blades, piercing, cutting.

  He shouted:

  “TRY TO STOP ME NOW!”

  The wind struck him head-on.

  He almost lost his balance, but his crampons bit into the ice, his footing held.

  He moved forward.

  And the mountain bent.

  Not in retreat. Not in submission.

  But in a shortened breath. In a moment of respect.

  Lucanis dropped to all fours. Crawling, pulling, gasping.

  His body was nothing but a moving pain, an empty shell that refused to extinguish itself.

  And yet he advanced.

  The wind turned violet, then black.

  He felt nothing anymore. Not his fingers. Not his feet.

  His nose bled beneath the mask. His breath was a saw in his lungs.

  And then —

  The sky changed.

  The horizon became gold.

  Day was rising, slowly, like a silent blessing.

  The wind stopped.

  An unreal silence fell.

  Lucanis straightened, staggering, trembling.

  And before him…

  The summit.

  The curve of the world. The roof of the sky.

  He tore off his goggles, removed his mask.

  His eyes, reddened, burned by the cold, filled with light.

  White. Void. Absolute.

  He pulled out Ed’s ice axe, with a mutilated hand, and planted it in the snow, straight like a stele.

  “I did it.”

  He raised a fist to the sky.

  Then, suddenly, his body gave in.

  He fell to his knees. Vomited.

  His breathing broke apart.

  His fingers were gone. At least half of them, lost to frostbite.

  His toes? He no longer felt them.

  His nose? Cracked, black, frozen.

  But he didn’t care.

  The world stretched beneath him, calm and blinding. An ocean of light without shore.

  He lifted his eyes.

  And there, a fracture.

  Split in the air.

  Silent, vibrating.

  A passage.

  Lucanis remained frozen for a moment.

  Then, slowly, he looked one last time at the immensity of the world.

  The sea of clouds. The sharp peaks. The rising sun.

  And murmured, almost at peace:

  “I can go home now.”

  He stepped forward.

  Crossed the fracture.

  And everything disappeared.