The Thing at the Peak
I always thought the mountain looked wrong.
Not dangerous. Not tall. Just… wrong.
Like a scar that never healed.
From the relay city, it sat on the horizon like a thought you keep pushing away. Grey on grey. No snow cap. No birds. Even the clouds avoided its peak, bending around it like they knew better.
I used to think that was just legend exaggeration.
I was wrong.
We did not climb the mountain.
The mountain came to us.
It started with the spirits.
The first alarm rang at dawn. Not bells. Not horns. Magic. A pressure behind the eyes, like someone pressing a thumb into your skull. The watchtower mages dropped to one knee almost in sync, blood leaking from noses, ears, one from the corner of his eye.
Virex popped into existence on my shoulder, fur bristling.
"Ah," he said. "That is bad."
"Define bad," I muttered, already standing.
He flicked his tail. "Define catastrophic."
Outside, the sky shifted. Not darkened. Twisted. Colors bending the wrong way, like oil on water. Then they came.
Spirits are not ghosts. Anyone who tells you that is lying or stupid.
Ghosts remember being human.
Spirits do not remember anything.
They are shapes made of intent. Light folded into claws. Wind shaped like ribs. Some were barely visible, outlines where reality felt thin. Others were dense, almost solid, dragging frost and static through the air as they moved.
The city defenses activated immediately. Runes flared along the walls. Ballistae enchanted for anti-ethereal discharge locked into position.
None of it mattered.
The spirits were not attacking the city.
They were passing through.
Straight toward the mountain.
That was the moment everything stopped being theoretical.
I stood on the watchtower balcony, hands gripping the stone rail, and felt it. Not magic. Pressure. A pull, deep in the chest, like something was calling out in a language older than sound.
Virex was silent. That alone scared me.
"Elira," I said quietly. "You seeing this?"
She stood beside me, jaw tight, eyes reflecting the warped sky. She did not answer immediately.
"Yes," she said finally. "And it confirms it."
"Confirms what?"
She looked at me then. Really looked. Like she was deciding whether to lie one last time.
"The thing at the peak," she said. "It is not a shield."
The words hit harder than the spirits ever could.
Below us, a spirit the size of a cathedral spire drifted past the outer district, its presence causing stone to age and crack as it moved. People fled. Mages screamed orders. The city held, barely.
I swallowed. "You told me it protected the continent."
"I told you what the Empire tells everyone," Elira replied. No anger. Just exhaustion. "That it keeps the chaos contained. That the king's lineage maintains balance."
"And that's not true?"
"It is true," she said. "In the worst way."
The ground shook. Not an earthquake. A pulse. Like a heartbeat.
From the mountain.
I felt it then. Clear as thought.
The artifact was alive.
Not alive like a person. Alive like a star barely held together by its own gravity.
Virex finally spoke. His voice was softer now.
"You feel it, do you not?"
I nodded slowly. "It's… screaming."
"Yes," he said. "And so is everything else."
Elira leaned against the stone, breath shaky. "The artifact was never meant to control spirits. It was meant to anchor reality itself. A lynchpin. A fix for a world already breaking."
I stared at the mountain. "Then why are the spirits coming?"
"Because it broke first," she said.
Silence fell between us, filled only by distant chaos.
She continued. "Decades ago, the artifact overloaded. Not destroyed. It cannot be destroyed. It cracked. Reality around it fractured. The king intervened."
I turned slowly. "Intervened how."
"He bound himself to it."
The words felt heavy, like wet ash.
"He didn't sacrifice himself," I said. "He became part of the mechanism."
"Yes," Elira said. "Petrified, conscious, eternally maintaining balance that no longer holds."
Another pulse rolled through the air. Stronger this time. Several spirits screamed. The sound was not sound. It rattled my teeth anyway.
Virex curled his tail tightly. "The artifact is failing. The spirits are not invading. They are responding."
"To what?" I asked.
"To pain," he said. "To imbalance. To a wound in the world that will not close."
I laughed once. Short. Ugly. "So the demon king is a rock. The apocalypse is a maintenance issue. And the world is blaming the wrong enemy."
Elira looked away.
"Welcome to politics," she said.
A messenger burst onto the balcony, breathless. "The outer wards are destabilizing. Spirits are phasing through lower reality layers. Command wants you," he said, pointing at me before he could stop himself.
I blinked. "Me?"
Elira nodded. "You."
I stared at her. "This is the part where you tell me why."
She met my gaze. No deflection this time.
"Because you think sideways," she said. "Because you see patterns where others see doctrine. Because if the artifact collapses fully, every spirit on the continent will converge on that mountain and tear reality apart trying to fix it."
My mouth felt dry. "And you think I can stop that."
"No," she said. "I think you can tell us what not to do."
That was worse.
Virex hopped down from my shoulder and padded across the stone, looking unusually small.
"The artifact does not need power," he said. "It needs relief."
"Relief how," I asked.
"By no longer being the only thing holding the world together."
The implication hung there.
I looked back at the mountain. At the scar in the sky above it. At the spirits spiraling around its peak like moths to a dying flame.
"And if we free the king," I said slowly, "or shut the artifact down…"
"The world will change," Elira said. "Possibly end."
"And if we don't?"
She exhaled. "It will end anyway. Just slower. Messier."
Another alarm rang. This one deeper. Older.
The mountain pulsed again.
For a split second, I saw it. Not with my eyes. With something deeper.
A man trapped in stone, screaming without sound.
A machine made to save a world being forced to become its executioner.
Spirits not as enemies, but as immune response.
I closed my eyes.
So this was it.
Not a quest for godhood.
Not a heroic ascent.
A choice between bad and worse.
I opened my eyes and looked at Elira.
"You used me," I said.
"Yes," she replied quietly.
"And you're still doing it."
"Yes."
I nodded once. "Fine."
Her breath caught.
"But," I continued, "we stop pretending this is a war. We stop calling spirits enemies. And we stop treating the king like a symbol."
Virex's ears perked.
"We treat this like what it is," I said. "A system failure."
Elira stared at me, something like hope and terror mixing in her eyes.
"And your first move?" she asked.
I looked back at the mountain.
"We go there," I said. "Not to conquer it. Not to destroy it."
Another pulse shook the city.
"We go to listen."
Far away, at the peak, something answered.
And for the first time since I came to this world, I knew one thing for certain.
Whatever waited at the top of that mountain was not a god.
It was a mistake that refused to die.