The wind came back mean.
Last night it died like someone hit mute. Now it wouldn't shut up. It whistled through the stone like it had teeth, laughing in a register just high enough to scratch something behind my eyes. I pressed both palms to my ears, but it didn't help. It wasn't just outside anymore.
It was in.
I kept seeing that last thing from the ridge. My shadow lifting an arm before I did. Waving. And the strip of smoked meat set out like a treat, no tracks around it, like the mountain had hands.
A flicker darted at the edge of my vision. Again. Always the edge. Always gone when I looked. My breath came fast, ragged, too loud in my own skull. The air felt thin. The cold chewed deeper than it should. I clenched my jaw until my molars ground like gravel.
The whispers started again.
A chorus of rotting breath and wet vowels. Somehow in my voice?
"you think a tag makes you real"
"think they'll remember you just because you finish?"
"the tag isn't a name, it's a barcode"
"a number they can track"
I stumbled back, spine hitting rock. Forced a laugh, hoarse and cracking.
"Really? This is your play? Whisper-horror mountain? Fucking original."
No answer. Just more scratching. Inside.
I screamed.
Just raw. My throat tore with it. I grabbed a fist-sized stone from the snow and slammed it into the cliff wall. Again. Again. Sparks jumped from the rock. Chips flew.
"You want in my head? Here's a shortcut."
I slammed my own head against the rock. Again. Blood now. My blood.
"You think you can break me?"
Another flicker. Closer this time. Too fast. Too real.
My pulse thundered. My hands shook. I wanted to run. Curl up. Bite through my tongue just to have one thing that was mine.
Instead I stayed.
"I chose this," I spat. "I picked the fight. I picked it."
The rage bubbled up fast, ugly. A cocktail of why me, fuck you, and I deserve this.
I saw Hagar's face. That smirk. That cold-eyed pity when he sent me off to this hell. Looked like he was giving a goddamned eulogy.
I swung the stone again. Missed the wall. Hit my knee instead. Stars exploded behind my eyes. Pain screamed, and I screamed with it.
"Stay the fuck out of my mind!"
I hated the System for building it.
Hated the world for feeding me to it.
Hated that smirking elf back at the Hub for actually looking at me.
Hated whatever smug divine presence had nudged me onto this path.
Hated Hagar for being right.
Hated myself for being weak enough to almost fall.
And god help me, I hated the bear for staying quiet.
I dropped the stone. Stared at my shaking hands.
They didn't look like mine anymore. Too rough. Too calloused.
The mountain pressed in tighter.
And I waited for something, anything, to break.
Nothing did.
No answer. No rescue. No Root-whispers offering comfort or claws.
Just the cold. Just the climb. Just me.
That mythical cumstain of a glitch better have something good waiting at the goddamned Universal Hub.
Because if I get there and all I find is more pretty lights and smug elf bullshit, I swear I'll burn the place down and piss on the exit node.
The wind stilled.
Not eased. Not faded.
Stopped.
Like the mountain itself was made to shut the fuck up.
My ears rang in the absence. My heartbeat filled the silence, slow and brutal like war drums.
boom
boom
BOOM
Inside.
Low and deep and awake.
My spine locked. My breath hitched.
Something stirred behind my ribs. No, under them. In the Root. In the place no System prompt could reach.
A pressure, old and patient, rising.
And I knew.
The bear was watching.
Not through eyes.
Through me.
It didn't speak. Didn't whisper wisdom or offer comfort.
It simply understood.
Knew the humiliation of being treated like less.
The ache of being othered, of being too wild, too much, too wrong.
The fury of watching others glide forward while you crawled through blood and dirt.
It didn't offer pity.
It matched my hate.
The Root pulsed.
And I saw it, not in vision, not in stats, but in truth.
A shape inside me. Hulking. Bristling. A mass of muscle and scars and hate.
Fur matted with old blood. Eyes rimmed in the rust of exhaustion and wrath. A beast of a thousand fights, none of them clean. A creature that refused to fall, not because it was noble, but because it would not fucking yield.
And it looked at me.
Saw me.
And nodded?
Not approval.
Recognition.
The thing inside me, the thing they tried to cut out, cage, medicate, erase.
It stayed.
It watched.
It waited.
And when I was lowest, it didn't take over. It probably could have, I don't know if I would've stopped it..
It stood up with me.
It didn't save me.
It stayed.
It remembered.
The Root flared.
A rush of molten air burst outward from my skin.
[ROOT RESONANCE — BERSARKR]
Status: Alignment — achieved: URSINE
Effect: Fear Aura — intensifying
Notice: Unpredictable user trajectory detected. Oversight review pending. 😊
My aura slammed outward.
Not screaming. Radiating.
It wasn't fury that made others flinch.
It was presence.
It was being seen by something that would not fall, no matter what you did.
The flickers stopped.
Whatever had been following, hiding in the cracks of sanity, recoiled.
Not from power.
From certainty.
Because now?
Now I wasn't alone.
I wasn't only me.
I was us.
The wind returned, but quieter.
The shadows backed off, but not gone.
My breath evened. Not calm. Still burning.
But grounded.
And the bear?
It settled into my bones like it belonged there. Not separate. Not in control. Just... aligned.
Hate for hate.
Rage for rage.
We would climb.
And if this mountain wanted to break us?
It better try harder.
I exhaled.
Not to calm down.
Just to let the hate settle into the right shape.
It didn't fade. It focused.
A blade honed by years of bleeding on the wrong side of power, and a beast that bled the same.
The bear didn't pull back.
It didn't need to.
We weren't fighting each other anymore.
We were standing side by side. Facing outward. Snarling at the world.
The twitch in my fingers eased. My nails, still dark and thick, looked less like claws now, more like what they were: tools for holding on. For surviving.
The hair on my arms stayed dense, rough, but less like fur. My shoulders? Still too wide for most doors.
But the rage wasn't leaking out of me anymore.
It fit.
I flexed one hand. Rolled my neck.
Still both beast and man.
But not a monster.
Not anymore.
Just someone who finally had backup, even if it came in the shape of a pissed-off, scarred-up spirit-bear welded into my soul.
I took a step forward.
The mountain groaned.
And I grinned.
"Yeah," I muttered. "We're coming, fuckers."
I kept climbing.
Slower now. Focused. Rage smoldering instead of burning wild. The bear in me curled into something massive and silent, watching through my eyes, lending weight to each step.
And that's when I felt it.
Like eyes I couldn't name, watching from angles that didn't exist.
I froze mid-step. Waited. Looked.
There.
High above, perched on a jagged outcropping of black stone, it sat.
A fox.
Or something shaped like one.
Fur like fresh snowfall. Clean. Perfect. But the flakes in the air didn't stick to it, didn't dare.
Its eyes caught the light wrong. No glow. No shine. Just too much white, like overexposed film. The grin on its muzzle stretched too wide, the lips not curling but peeling back, slow and deliberate, like someone rehearsing a smile without understanding it.
It stared at me.
Not like a predator sizing up prey.
Like an artist admiring a half-finished sculpture with his junk out and sculpted in great detail.
Then the System caught up.
[📘 SYSTEM NOTICE — UNREGISTERED PRESENCE DETECTED]
Entity Signature: [████ — CLASS ERROR]
Status: Currently Outside Active Classification Protocols
Interaction Risk: UNQUANTIFIED
Recommendation: Avoid engagement until entity can be safely categorized.
If exposure persists, please contact your local System Representative. 😊
Oh, that explains the flickers. The whispers. The slow itch behind my thoughts.
This wasn't environmental.
This wasn't madness.
This was it.
[🧠 MENTAL FORTITUDE CHECK — PASS]
External cognitive disruption detected and partially neutralized.
Source: [UNRECOGNIZED ENTITY — FOX DESIGNATION]
Cognitive Degradation Level: 3%
Status: Stabilizing
Reminder: Users experiencing persistent auditory hallucinations or symbolic overlays are advised to review the System Integration Wellness Guide [v2.9.1b] for grounding techniques. 🧘
The bear inside me shifted.
Recognition.
Ancient. Feral. A growl that vibrated behind my ribs.
The fox cocked its head.
Like it had heard the bear, and liked it. Almost coquettish?
"No," I whispered. "You don't get to smile at me like that."
My voice echoed too far. The cliffs stole it and threw it upward.
The fox blinked. Twice. Like static skipping.
Then it was gone.
No scamper. No leap. No scent.
Just absence.
Like it had never existed, except it had. I could feel it.
The rock where it had stood wasn't even dusted with snow. The frost refused to touch it.
I curled my fingers into fists.
"Finally," I muttered.
"Something I can fucking hate on purpose."
I was moving before I knew it.
No strategy. No plan.
Just motion, violent and fast, guided by anger and hate like a compass.
The bear didn't stop me. Didn't warn or growl.
It approved.
We weren't chasing prey. We were chasing violation. Something that had crawled into our skull and danced around like it owned the place.
I scaled the ledge where the fox had perched. The snow hadn't returned. The stone still bare. Still wrong.
There was a trail.
Not tracks.
Absences.
Flakes that didn't fall right. Wind that bent away. Frost that receded in a smooth, unnatural curve, like something beautiful had passed and the world stepped politely aside.
"You pale-ass fox-shaped mind diddler," I growled.
I followed.
Scrambling. Climbing. Slipping.
Didn't care.
The cold snapped at my face. The slope steepened. My cloak caught on a jutting rock and tore. Didn't register.
Because I saw it again.
Ahead. Far above.
Perched like a crown atop a narrow ledge, tail flicking once. Slowly. Deliberately.
Smiling again. How the fuck does a fox smile like that?
"Don't fucking grin at me..."
It turned. Dissipated into the snow. No rush.
I leapt up a narrow chute. Hands bleeding on stone. Knees slamming into ice. My vision tunneling, not from exhaustion, but focus.
Less man, more gorilla reenacting Free Solo with blood instead of chalk.
I reached the ridge.
Nothing.
Just snow.
And that absence again. That smellless silence. That proof it had never needed to run, only to move differently.
"You coward. You think I won't drag your pretty little pelt back down this mountain and wear it as a goddamned loincloth? It will be my magnum opus of gear when I stroll around in the goddamned Universal Hub..."
The wind answered.
No. Not wind.
Laughter.
Soft. Like a pillow before it smothers you.
Behind me.
I turned.
There.
Just out of reach.
Balanced on a branch that had no business existing at this altitude. White fur rippling like mist. Eyes like empty sky.
It licked its paw.
Held the pose.
Then winked.
And vanished.
"OH, FUCK RIGHT OFF."
My voice echoed for real this time. Sharp and hard and alive.
My blood was singing.
Because now?
The climb had a target.
Not just survival.
Not just resistance.
A goal.
A grudge.
A hunt...
The trail was still there, the absences.
A twist of wind that bent wrong. Snow that refused to fall in one narrow ribbon of air. Ice that shimmered too smooth, too clean, like the mountain remembered the fox and stepped aside again.
I followed.
So did the bear.
We weren't just walking. We were hunting. United not by instinct, but by shared rage. A bastard twin flame of hate and spite and the refusal to yield.
The deeper I went, the more certain I became.
It wasn't just trying to escape.
It was guiding me.
Fuck that.
We climbed harder. Faster. Through cuts in the slope no sane mind would try. I dropped to all fours without thinking. Palms bleeding. Breaths ragged.
Then.
Nothing.
Gone.
The wrongness vanished. The air stopped warping. No sign of passage. Not even the echo of its presence.
Just a wall of snow, unbroken and uncaring.
The bear growled low inside me. Not angry. Confused.
Then the wind hit.
Like a freight train made of ice shards and malice.
No warning.
One second of stillness, then a scream from the peaks as the storm slammed down the slope. White surged across my vision, and the temperature plunged.
I staggered. Threw my weight against a rock outcrop before the gale could hurl me off the ridge.
Snow turned to knives.
Needles tore at my face. The wind found every crack in my cloak and tried to peel it from me.
I dropped to a crouch. Shielded my eyes.
Couldn't go forward. Couldn't go back. Couldn't even see.
But through it all I saw something.
A dark patch. Low. Half-hidden behind a lip of stone, no wider than a coffin turned sideways.
A cave.
Dark. Not inviting. Not warm.
But shelter.
I made for it, barely holding my footing. The wind howled louder as if trying to call me back, but I slipped into the opening and collapsed against the rock wall just inside.
Silence. Not total. The storm screamed just outside. But distant.
I exhaled.
Just inside the cave mouth. On the stone floor.
A single curl of snow... gently melting. Too perfect. Too placed.
Like someone had stood there a moment ago.
Like someone had waited.
I stared at it. Then at the wind outside. Then back at the mark.
Realization twisted in my gut like a gut-hook.
The fox had brought me here.
Not to help.
To play.
To toy with the angry animal it had let loose in its little snow-globe maze.
My fists clenched. My teeth bared.
I leaned back against the rock. Let the cold settle into my skin.
This wasn't over.
The hunt would continue.
It thinks it's playing. Let it.
I've ruined prettier things for less.
And when I catch it, it'll feel it in places civilized people don't talk about...