—CRACK—
Pain arrived before consciousness.
It came in crushing waves—sharp, grinding, merciless—like a hammer smashing down on his legs again and again, shattering bone that no longer knew how to be whole. Each heartbeat sent fragments screaming against each other.
Leon tried to scream.
Only a rasp escaped.
His throat felt flayed raw. His mouth tasted of iron and ash.
He opened his eyes.
White.
Not the dull gray-white of Aethelgard's endless snowfall, but a blinding, crystalline white that seared through half-lowered lids. Wind roared nearby, alive and vicious, clawing at his face, tearing at the thin rags still clinging to his body.
This cold was different.
It didn't bite.
It devoured.
Leon lay on his side, cheek pressed against ice so hard it felt like stone. His arms were bound behind him with something coarse and frozen stiff—rope, sinew, maybe both. He tried to move his legs.
Nothing.
No twitch. No response.
Only pain—white-hot, nauseating—radiating from knees that refused to exist as anything but agony.
Panic surged.
He twisted instinctively.
—AGONY—
A groan ripped from his chest.
"Quiet, runt."
The voice was low and guttural, shaped by an accent Leon had never heard in the slums—harsh consonants grinding like stone on stone. A boot nudged his ribs, not enough to break them, but enough to steal his breath.
"Eyes open," the voice said. "Look at your new home."
Rough hands seized his hair and yanked his head up.
His vision swam.
Then cleared.
The mountain loomed.
Blackwind Mountain.
A blade of black stone thrust through the sky, its jagged spine tearing into storm-choked clouds. Its slopes were sheer, armored in blue-black ice beneath a bruised, swollen sky. Winds screamed through narrow passes, carrying shards of ice sharp enough to flay flesh in minutes.
No trees.
No birds.
Only snow.
Wind.
And the things that endured both.
People.
Figures moved along the narrow ledge where Leon had been dumped. They wore layered furs stitched with scraps of hide and metal. Faces wrapped tight against the gale. Chains clinked between them—rusted links binding ankle to ankle in groups of five or six.
Slaves.
Every one of them.
The man who had spoken crouched before Leon. Broad-shouldered. Hood trimmed with white fox fur. A pale scar ran from his left temple down to his jaw. His eyes were the color of dead ice.
Flat.
Empty.
"Name?" he asked.
Leon swallowed. His tongue felt swollen. "Leon."
The man grunted. "Not anymore." He stood. "You're Thirty-Seven. Remember it. Forget your old name fast, or the mountain will carve it out of you."
He gestured.
Two other slaves shuffled forward. One was missing three fingers on his left hand. They hauled Leon upright by his arms.
His legs dragged uselessly behind him.
—CRUNCH—
Bone grated on bone.
Something in his right knee was completely shattered. The left wasn't much better—his ankle bent at an angle that made his vision blur. Blood seeped, instantly freezing against his skin.
They propped him against a boulder. Wind tore at what little cloth he had left, ripping it away like paper. Exposed skin burned—
—then went numb.
The scarred man circled him slowly.
"Thin. Young. Useless legs." He spat into the snow. "Still breathing, though. That counts." His eyes narrowed. "The Mistress likes fresh offerings. Even broken ones."
Leon forced his teeth to stop chattering. "Where… am I?"
"Blackwind," the man said calmly. "Heart of the storm. Where old powers sleep and new ones wake screaming."
He crouched close enough that Leon could smell sour fur and old blood.
"You heard it, didn't you?" the man murmured. "The call. Mueor."
Leon flinched.
The basement.
The whispers.
The snow swallowing him whole.
The man's scar twisted into something like satisfaction. "Thought so. Every cripple, every half-dead wretch who ends up here heard it."
He stood. "The mountain chooses. Then it breaks. Then it uses."
A sharp nod.
"Lower galleries. Chain him with the cutters. If he dies overnight, drag the body to the east face. Feed the wind."
They dragged Leon away.
Ice and rock battered his shattered legs with every step. His nerves screamed. He bit down hard enough to taste blood, refusing to give them the sound they wanted.
The path descended into a narrow crevice. Wind funneled through it, shrieking like a living beast. Iron brackets lined the walls, holding torches that burned with unnatural blue flames.
No warmth.
Only light.
The crevice widened into a cavern—vast, rough-hewn, alive with sound.
CLANG—CLANG—CLANG—
Dozens of slaves worked stone benches, chisels biting into black veins running through the rock. Each strike made the ore shimmer faintly violet, like a buried heartbeat.
The air stank of sulfur and wet iron.
Leon was dumped near the back, beside a low bench.
A girl looked up.
She couldn't have been older than fourteen.
Her hands were wrapped in bloody rags. Her face was hollow, wind-burned—but her eyes were sharp. Awake. Watching.
Chains snapped around Leon's ankle, locked to a ring bolted into the stone. Short. Enough to sit. Enough to crawl.
Nothing more.
The guards left.
The girl studied him.
"You're new," she said quietly.
Leon nodded.
"Legs?" she asked.
"Broken."
She snorted softly. "Lucky. Some arrive worse." She tapped her temple. "Mind goes first sometimes."
She returned to her chisel, striking with steady rhythm.
After several blows, she spoke again without looking up.
"They call this the vein of Mueor. Black rock sings to some people. Makes them hear things."
CLANG.
"Makes them useful."
CLANG.
"Or disposable."
Leon stared at the ore. It pulsed faintly beneath stone, alive in a way that made his skin crawl.
"What… is it?" he rasped.
She shrugged. "Power. Curse. Same thing here."
She caught a falling shard, set it carefully into a basket.
"My name's Claire," she said. "Yours was?"
"Leon."
"Keep it in your head," Claire said softly. "Thirty-Seven out loud. They like obedience."
She glanced at his legs, then looked away. "They hate hope even more."
The cavern groaned.
Somewhere deeper in the mountain—
—Mooooo—
A low, mournful sound rose. Not wind. Not stone.
Mueor.
It was still there.
Inside Leon's skull.
Softer now.
Waiting.
He leaned his head back against the freezing rock and closed his eyes.
The mountain had chosen him.
And it had only just begun to break him.