There was a humming; a frantic, high-pitched vibration that made the air shimmer. I turned toward the final stretch of the ascent. This wasn’t a chimney anymore. It was an exposed, jagged spine of quartz that led directly into the heart of the storm. The rock here was translucent, glowing with the violet pressure of the energy we stirred below.
As we climbed the final hundred feet, the mountain let out a groan that I felt in my bones. Another boom echoed from below — closer this time. The team Silas had rallied were reaching the primary seal of the lower gates. They were hammer-drilling into the foundation of my home.
“Hurry,” I urged, my claws dragging sparks from the frozen stone.
We reached the summit ridge, a narrow plateau where the wind whipped the snow into a blinding white ve
