The Summit That Feeds on Fear
In the first light, the mountain listened as if it were listening for a lie. Our boots struck the shale with a stubborn rhythm, rope knots trembled in the cold, and Kael, our guide, kept his gaze on the distant skyline rather than on us. He spoke rarely of the summit, and when he did, the words sounded half-forgotten, like promises the mountain had confiscated and rewritten. The locals called it the Summit That Feeds on Fear, a name earned by the way a single panic can ripple into rock and wind, becoming something hungry on the lip of the world.
We climbed anyway, step by careful step, counting breaths the way a priest counts beads. The air thinned until our hearts beat like drums inside thin skin, and the ridge narrowed into a seam of ice that could swallow a footstep whole. Voices faltered; the wind spoke in a language we pretended to understand. Then came the first sign: a small, deliberate footprint that did not belong to any of us, circling back toward the rope line as if the mountain itself was revisiting a memory it preferred we forget.
That night a tremor of fear woke us all. A crevasse groaned—not from cold or wind, but from a rumor of something watching from below. When Nico screamed, fear did not end there; it multiplied, becoming frost-formed silhouettes that drifted across the tent walls, like faces carved from ice and breath. He swore the walls learned his name and answered with a whisper that promised relief only if we admitted we were afraid. We admitted; we kept silent; we listened, and the hollow between our hearts grew quiet, almost content.
The mountain does not forget a fear; it stores it, then feeds on it at dusk, when the world grows soft and the ice remembers every whisper of panic.
- Whisper your fear first, then let it become a measured breath, not a scream.
- Do not name the danger aloud; the name is a spark that lights the snow.
- Offer your fear as a token, not a feast; the mountain prefers steady, not wild, appetites.
- Listen to the wind—if it repeats a name, respond with calm, not lament.
- When the summit nears, choose silence over shock, for silence weighs less on the scale of hunger.
At last we reached the shoulder where the ice turned glassy and the world fell away into a blind white. The summit loomed—a pale eye that opened and watched us approach. I learned something terrible in that moment: the ascent does not end with triumph, but with surrender. The summit does not bite; it feeds on fear until nothing remains but the quiet after the fall. I stepped onto the peak and heard the old hungry name in the snow, and for a heartbeat I did not breathe. Then I did, and with my breath went the mountain's appetite, not extinguished, but satisfied enough to let us pass. Or so I tell myself, as the wind remembers our memory and refuses to forget.