The Snowbound Peak's Curse
The mountain loomed like a spine of glass, jagged and indifferent, as if carved from a winter's sigh. Local guides whispered about the curse that gnaws at climbers who dare its crown, a debt paid not in gold but in memory—memories that refuse to thaw. I joined a small party, not for glory, but for the truth that lingers in frozen silence, the truth that refuses to admit it has been wrong for a long, long time.
We moved in measured, careful steps, our breaths fogging in eddies that looked almost alive. The first night, the wind spoke in a language of knives, and the. snow underfoot hummed a low, hollow tune as if the mountain itself were listening to every arrival. By the second dawn, the ledges wore a fresh layer of glittering frost that reflected our faces back at us—almost as if the peak had gathered our anxieties and pressed them into mirror-skin. One by one, our names appeared in the snow, not written by us but etched by something older than ice, something that knew us better than we knew ourselves.
On the fourth day, a single rope creaked under the weight of a memory. We found a cairn tucked into a crevice that should have been too narrow to hold a story, yet it held one: a weathered journal bound in peelings of leather, its pages ink-dark with words that described a climb exactly like ours—only the names had changed, as if the mountain kept a ledger of every soul it repelled. The journal warned us in short, abrupt phrases: stay, listen, do not forget. When we read aloud, the wind carried the letters away, scattering their meaning like frost dust in a window pane.
“The peak remembers the breath you did not release, the promise you did not keep, the life you left on the lower ridges,” the wind seemed to say, a voice that sounded old enough to have learned gravity from the stars.
Three warnings the ascent demanded
- Respect the hush between gusts; it is there that the mountain weighs your words.
- Do not trace your name in the snow—the ice will borrow it and never return it.
- Finish what you began or be finished by what you failed to say at the summit.
When the final stretch arrived, the world narrowed to a single blade of cold air, a white glare that stripped away color until only the story remained—the story of who we were when the mountain first watched us approach. A mist rose from the snow, curling around us like a tidal thread, and I felt a tug at the corners of my mind, as if the peak were tugging at the edge of a photograph and asking me to step into the frame I had always avoided. In that moment, I understood: the curse is not a monster but a mirror, a test to reveal what we choose to ignore when the world is at its most silent. We descended not with triumph but with revelation—that mountains remember, and they demand repayment in truths you vow never to tell. By the time the valley opened its arms again, I knew I would never be the same, because some winters never end; they simply move in beside you, breathing in your secrets and exhaling your fear. The Snowbound Peak keeps its ledger, and I, for better or worse, am forever inscribed.