The mountain shrieked. A wall of white fury, hundreds of feet high, detached from the ridge. It swallowed the eastern horizon, a roaring, pulverizing force descending directly towards their meager cave opening. Vayra didn't pause for thought. “Up! *Into the chimney!*” she bellowed, her voice raw, pointing a rigid arm at the jagged stone seam in the cave’s rear wall that climbed into darkness. “Now! Every hand, every foot!” Loose chunks of shale and frost sprayed past the threshold, biting bare skin. Air compressed violently, driving the wind flat against their ribs. The roar intensified, now a physical force vibrating through bone. The clan stalled in a huddle, staring blankly at the descending white mass instead of the climb she demanded. “*Move!*” Vayra roared again, her voice cracking. She spun, grabbing the nearest laggard, a scrawny boy named Fenn, by the scruff of his collar. She shoved him towards the split stone, jarring him into motion, then turned on the rest. “Daskal! You first! Get to the top, *now*!” Daskal stumbled toward the split stone, scraping his nails against glazed granite. The ground bucked again. A massive tremor ripped through the cave, sending a shower of sharp ice shards from the ceiling. A section of the portal collapsed with a deafening crack, throwing up pulverized grit and drift-dust. The roar of the avalanche was now deafening, its cold breath preceding it, a monstrous wind ripping through the cave. Vayra ignored the collapsing entrance. Her focus remained on the ascent, shoving frozen backs and kicking heels to drive bodies upward. Bramor fell in behind her, wedging his massive frame beside the stone lip to hoist the smaller children upward with clipped grunts. Just as the slide slammed the cave threshold shut, sealing out the daylight, the last clan straggler scrambled into the chimney. They crowded hip-to-rib inside the chimney, hemmed in by frozen stone while grinding slabs shook the mountain. The entire mountain seemed to groan and shift. They climbed by feel, by desperate clawing, by the sheer force of Vayra’s will. After what felt like an eternity, the roar began to recede, replaced by the eerie, muffled silence of a world buried under snow. But their reprieve was short-lived. A sudden dry hum reverberated down the rock. Bowstrings, loosed from *above*. “Hold!” Vayra hissed, pressing herself flat against the icy rock face. A flint-tipped shaft whizzed past her ear, embedding itself with a sickening thwack into the ice just inches from Daskal’s head. He yelped, nearly losing his grip. Peering up through a thin gap overhead, Vayra saw them. Silhouetted against the pale, bruised sky, standing on a jagged outcrop far above their heads, were the Vorn. Yulica Vorn, unmistakable even at this distance, her fur-lined cloak flapping in the wind, a bow held taut in her hand. “They’re trying to funnel us into the crevasse below,” Bramor rumbled, his voice strained as he helped a child find a foot-hold. “The one that drops into the Gorok Maw.” Shafts rained down, forcing them higher along the slick, glacial chute, where the rock offered almost no toeholds. Daskal, still reeling from the near-miss, fumbled with his grip. His foot slid on a patch of black ice. He dropped with a sharp gasp, fingers raking uselessly across slick stone. Vayra reacted without thought. Her left hand, already aching with Frost-Blight, shot out. She seized Daskal’s wrist in an iron grip, her fingers locking around his bone. Frost-Blight flared through her sinew like broken glass, and bone grated audibly in her shoulder joint, yet she locked her grip. She *would not* let go. Daskal, dangling precariously, stared up at his mother’s face, raw with effort, streaked with dirt and fear, but utterly unyielding. “Climb, boy!” she snarled, her voice a strained rasp, every word a fresh stab of pain. “*Climb!*” With a brutal wrench, she hauled Daskal up. He scrambled frantically onto a stable foothold, staring at her bloodied sleeve with wide, stunned disbelief. She was bleeding. Her knuckles were split, and a thin trickle of crimson ran from beneath her collarbone, staining the front of her worn tunic. She didn’t even seem to notice. “We need footholds,” Vayra rasped, breath rasping in her throat. She reached for the discarded Ice-Stalker carcass they had been forced to drag with them – its sinew for ropes, its blood for warmth, its hide for protection. Now, its bones. She yanked a leg bone free, already gnawed clean, and with a series of precise, brutal strikes, began to knap it against a prominent rock. Chips of bone flew, forming a sharp, jagged point. She made another, and another. “Bramor, secure the others. Daskal, you’re with me. Drive these in.” Her voice was weak, but her command was absolute. She demonstrated, hammering a freshly knapped bone-piton into a hairline crack in the ice, testing it with her full weight. “We climb.” It was an impossible ascent. Driven by Vayra’s relentless commands and the constant threat of Vorn volleys, they scaled the sheer gauntlet. The crude bone stakes bit hard enough into frozen fissures to hold their weight. Vayra led, her movements agonizing, her body a canvas of fresh bruises and old aches. She pulled, she pushed, she clawed, and somehow, she found a way. Upward, always upward, until the missile fire ceased and only high wind screamed along the crest. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Vayra’s outstretched hand found a ledge. Not just a ledge, but an opening. A dark opening, barely wide enough for a person to crawl through. “Here!” she rasped, pulling herself onto the lip, her entire body screaming in protest. One by one, the Fenrost clan followed, tumbling exhausted into the cramped, cold space. It was a hidden cave, deep within the Spine of Ghorak, shielded from the wind and the Vorn. Moonlight, filtered through a high, narrow crevice, cast long, distorted shadows. They had escaped the avalanche, escaped the arrows. They were safe. But the safety was an illusion. As Vayra’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw them. Scattered across the frozen floor, half-buried in drifts of snow, were figures. Not living men, but frozen, skeletal remains. They wore the distinctive fur-lined tunics of the pathfinders. And clutched in the frozen, claw-like hand of the nearest corpse, was a map. The map. The only known chart to the geothermal sanctuary of Kylos’ Embrace. The scouts who had carried it were dead. All of them. And the cave was a tomb.

The Vertical Gauntlet