We reached the summit without knowing it was the end.
There was no gate.
No structure waiting to be recognized.
Only absence.
At the peak, the mountain did not rise.
It opened.
A vast hollow carved into the stone.
Too wide.
Too deliberate to be called collapse.
It looked as though something had taken a bite from the world and left nothing behind.
I had expected a temple.
Something shaped.
Something made to be seen.
This was not that.
Cold air drifted from within the opening.
Not sharp.
Not biting.
Steady.
As if it did not belong to the surface.
The others began preparing without hesitation.
Tents raised.
Supplies reorganized.
Routine, even here.
I stood longer than I should have.
Looking into it.
Then it moved.
At first, I thought it was the light.
Or the mist shifting.
But the edges of the hollow changed.
Stone sliding against stone.
Smooth.
Controlled.
Black surfaces beneath the snow revealing themselves.
Obsidian.
The opening widened slowly,
like something waking without urgency.
The sound followed after.
Low.
Resonant.
Not quite the movement of rock.
Not entirely something alive.
Closer to a breath.
A deep, distant exhale that did not need air.
I did not step back.
I am not certain why.
The moment passed without conclusion.
The opening remained.
And then they appeared.
Dragonkin, emerging along the carved surfaces.
Their presence quieter than those below the mountain.
Covered.
Measured.
They did not gather.
They did not react.
They simply observed.
Or rather—
they observed one person.
The caravan master.
The rest of us remained… present.
But not acknowledged.
Not dismissed.
Not judged.
Just… unrequired.
It did not feel like rejection.
Only omission.
One of them approached.
Taller than the rest.
Scales dark, almost violet beneath the shifting light.
He stopped before the caravan master.
And inclined his head.
Only slightly.
“The Master of Short-lived has come,” he said.
“Elder Veyrakan awaits.”
The words were not loud.
But they carried.
No one else was addressed.
No one else needed to be.
I did not question it.
Not because I understood.
But because it no longer felt like something meant to be understood.
We had arrived.
Not at a place built for us.
But at something that had always been here,
waiting without intention.
And for the first time since leaving the desert,
I felt a sense of completion.
Not from knowing where I was.
But from no longer expecting it to resemble anything I knew.
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