The wind howled through the hollow mountains like a dying beast, carrying with it the echo of storms that never truly ceased. Raza sat near the dim glow of his small fire, watching the smoke curl upward into the cavern’s jagged ceiling. The flames painted his face in shifting shades of orange and shadow, revealing a man broken by solitude yet still burning with the stubborn will to survive.
It had been a month since the Yetis captured him. A month since the roaring avalanche and the chaos that had buried his hopes beneath snow and stone. Ram Babu, the Princess, the Thug—Kali—and that foreign devil, Arthur Carey… he hadn’t seen any of them since. He assumed they were all dead. And his own crew? Gone, every one of them. Perhaps crushed under the train wreck, perhaps frozen into statues some
