Priya's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The storm clears on the third day. Priya climbs back to the weather tower to check the damage reports, expecting to find the usual aftermath—broken trees, buried equipment, maybe a collapsed cabin or two. The wind still bites, but the sky is that hard blue that comes after violence. She stops halfway up the tower steps. The north face looks different. A massive section of the cliff has sheared away, exposing a vertical channel of blue ice she's never seen before—a chimney that cuts straight through the upper face like a jagged scar. Her pulse kicks up. The route is completely exposed now, no hidden overhangs blocking the way to the summit. She pulls out her binoculars and traces the line. Fresh icicles hang from the walls like daggers, and chunks of loose rock still cling to the edges where the storm tore everything apart. It's climbable. It's also a death trap. She watches a sheet of ice the size of a door peel away and crash down the face. The whole chimney could collapse with the next temperature shift. She should wait, let it settle, give the ice time to stabilize. But someone else might spot it first. She heads back to her cabin and checks her gear. The specialized rope she ordered still hasn't arrived. She has the same inadequate equipment that made her turn back last time. Her hands shake as she coils the stiff rope. This is the route she's been hunting for—unstable, unclimbed, exactly the kind of thing that should kill her. She clips the rope to her pack and walks toward the base of the chimney before she can talk herself out of it.