The snow had changed.
It no longer fell gently or bitterly—it hovered, weightless and slow, like a memory still deciding whether to return.
Kael stood just beyond the monolith, Echo beside him, both silent. The sky overhead was strangely pale, not clouded, not clear. As if the mountain was waiting to see what he would do next.
He stepped forward.
The path sloped downward, steep but manageable. Not the trail he'd come up—this was older, hidden beneath frost and ash. A path carved long before maps were made.
Echo moved ahead, quiet and sure. Her mark still glowed faintly, like it remembered more than she was saying.
The first hour passed without incident.
Then the wind shifted.
And they weren't alone.
At first, he thought it was an illusion.
The shape that emerged from the fog had a human silhouette—tall, lean, dragging one foot slightly. The coat was shredded at the edges, the color faded, but something in the posture struck him.
It was familiar.
Too familiar.
Echo tensed. Her fur bristled.
"That's not him," she said before he could ask.
"But it looks—"
"It wears his shape," she said. "But this one never left."
The figure stepped closer.
Its face was pale, eyes sunken deep. But it smiled when it saw him.
"You opened the door."
The voice was distorted—Galen's tone, but slowed and cracked, like a recording half-corrupted by time.
Kael's chest tightened. "You're not my father."
"No," the thing agreed. "He moved on. I stayed. I listened."
The wind died.
"I remember everything."
Echo stepped between them, her voice calm. "You're an echo that grew teeth."
The figure tilted its head. "I'm what's left when you try to stay with the ones you lost. When you refuse to forget."
Its eyes locked on Kael.
"And now you carry memory, too."
He didn't move. Didn't speak. Just stared.
Because part of him wanted to believe.
What if this was Galen?
What if some piece of him had stayed?
But Echo's voice pressed gently into his thoughts.
"That's not memory. It's mimicry."
The thing's form flickered—just once. Its shadow twisted unnaturally. Its smile widened.
"Let me hold it for you."
Kael stepped back.
"I'm not giving it up."
"Why suffer alone?"
Echo moved before the thing could.
Light flared around her, silver and deep blue, wrapping like wind and gravity combined. She leapt toward the figure, fangs glowing—
Bite.
The moment Echo touched it, the illusion shattered.
The thing didn't bleed.
It cracked—like glass under pressure. Light poured from the wound, and a sound followed—not a scream, but a shatter. Like a soul breaking in reverse.
The thing staggered backward, features blurring, form bending.
"You still hear him," it hissed. "You'll come back."
"No," Kael said, steady now. "I'll carry him forward."
The fragment dissolved into the snow.
No trace.
No shadow.
Only silence again.
They walked the rest of the descent without words.
Only when the fog thinned and the forest returned did Kael finally speak.
"What was that?"
"A person," Echo said. "Once."
"And now?"
"A reflection that lost its source."
He looked down at her. "Is that what I'll become… if I hold on too tightly?"
"No," she said. "Because you chose to remember and move. That one only remembered."
When they reached the base of the ridge, the clouds above Mt. Silver began to break.
Sunlight touched the trees.
The first birdsong he'd heard in days chirped somewhere ahead.
He turned to look back—just once.
The summit stood tall, dark against the sky.
Still.
But no longer waiting.
They camped that night near a frozen lake, quiet and still. Kael sat by the fire, Galen's journal in his lap, flipping through the earlier pages.
There, scribbled in a corner of a margin:
"If something ever wears my voice—
Don't answer it.
I love you enough to leave."
He closed the journal slowly.
Then looked at Echo.
"You never asked me why I kept climbing."
Echo tilted her head.
He smiled faintly. "I wasn't looking for answers. Not really. I just didn't want to forget what he looked like."
"You don't have to," Echo said. "But now, you don't have to become him either."
He stared into the firelight.
For the first time in seven years… the silence didn't ache.