Chapter 6 – The Body Chosen by the Mountain

At dawn, the mountain climbs through me.

The living heart rooted behind my ribs sends stone branches along my spine. Each new inch the peak gains is taken from the empty spaces inside my bones. Aro sees the change and reaches for the tether.

I cut it.

Below us, the Eater of Horizons rises from cloud cover: a mouth wider than a valley, feeding on villages at the mountain’s base. Evacuation routes fail because someone has sold three different versions of my maps.

Someone is me.

Couriers open the letters I leaked for profit and discover false passes, hidden toll roads, and contradictory rescue orders. My reputation collapses across every signal mirror. Aro looks at the chaos, then at the heart inside me.

“You knew your routes would be sold twice.”

“I knew people pay more for possibilities than certainty.”

“People are dying inside those possibilities.”

The heart answers his anger by opening a memory. We see why Aro guarded me so closely: the monastery’s plan requires a human vessel to carry the mountain above the storm layer. At the summit, roots will grow through my body and turn me into the next peak.

Every time he protected my breathing, he preserved the sacrifice.

“Did you know?” I ask.

“Not when we began.”

“When?”

His silence becomes a downward gust.

The old wound of abandonment opens wider than the sky. I reject his oxygen, his balance, every offered hand. The mountain climbs another body-length and uses my pain as leverage.

Aro draws the iron piton that once cut a city’s anchors. He points it at the glowing heart beneath my sternum.

If he destroys it, the mountain falls and crushes the upper settlements. If he lets it root, I disappear and the lower valleys are abandoned to the Eater.

The storm holds its breath around us.

For the second time in his life, Aro must decide whether one body can be weighed against a city.