They thought the mountain was a silent enemy… until it began swallowing their names, one by one.
Aram ibn Shaddad’s footsteps no longer sounded the way they had at the beginning of the journey. The climb now devoured breath before it devoured distance, and the rocks pressed closer to their chests than the air itself Mount Kardon no longer content to watch them… but to test them.
Only five of his finest remained with him: Orim, Taymur, Rabin, Ghassan, and Hadeen.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡewfiTke5Jn
Men who were used to meeting death face-to-face on a battlefield… yet here they were facing something that raised no sword, shouted no war cry, and left no clear trace.
Every stone became a question.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0ThQbXE1vn
Every bend became an open mouth.
At midday, they reached a high rocky cleft an opening that offered the way forward like a broken map. Orim climbed first. He was the best among them at reading earth and shadow: he could smell a trap in a change of dust, sense a slope by the way grass leaned.
He reached the edge, lifted his hand to signal he saw no obvious movement… then half-turned as if to say something
And suddenly… he was gone.
No scream.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9fEDt0aNDg
No crash.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGdolu8be2s
Not even pebbles skittering down.
The men surged toward the edge. Aram was the first to run. He leaned forward, peering down yet the ravine was so deep it swallowed sight before it swallowed bodies. No body. No blood. No weapon. Only a thick silence… the kind that felt like a lock closing over a secret.
Taymur stared with narrowed eyes.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWIvLazJCsC
“This isn’t a fall… the ground here is flat. It’s like a stone shifted under his foot.”
Aram crouched where Orim had stood, extended his palm, and felt the rock. It seemed solid… until he noticed, just beneath the lip, the faint edge of another stone something like a tiny hinge, a hidden joint. He pressed lightly. The surface trembled barely then settled again.
He understood.
This wasn’t the mountain’s nature.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ0laFVrPkk
This was a hand that knew exactly where to place death.
Aram stood in silence for a long moment, then gathered three small stones and arranged them in a circle near the edge an old rite of the Tamran Clan for one whose body is lost and cannot be buried: a circle that “closes the road of the spirit” so it won’t linger. In the center, he placed one of Orim’s arrows and said softly, as though speaking to the earth itself:
“If you are alive… may it hide you from their eyes.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjoFleJVa4I
And if you are dead… then this is your grave in ours.”
No one spoke.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjuwjzMA9Cy
Even Wabbar softened his movement, as if he felt the weight of a name vanishing without warning.
They continued, but no one placed a foot before testing the ground.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgd0MVUdaCJ
Staves struck stone before feet did. Eyes searched ceilings before bodies passed. Breaths halted at every strange rock.
As night approached, they found a narrow hollow between two boulders good enough for shelter. They lit a small fire, shy and thin, nothing like the fires of their tribe. They sat around it like five shadows rather than five men.
Rabin tried to crack the silence with a pale smile.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEmF0yOoNfX
“If the tribe’s children could see us now… they’d say we’re afraid of stones.”
Aram lifted his gaze, and there was gratitude in his eyes gratitude that someone still tried to keep their spirits from hardening.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBhdoE66n1a
“A stone held by a human hand,” he said, “is more dangerous than a thousand swords.”
Ghassan stared into the fire.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAYdFbzZOJi
“But we won’t turn back. Even if the road eats us.”
Aram didn’t reply.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVl9NHWarAR
Inside him, another voice was speaking: Millya’s voice… the voice of “the shadow that is coming.”
When they moved the next day, they entered a narrow passage between two rock walls. The dust on the ground was too fine wrong for the mountain more like dust poured there to hide something.
Taymur stepped forward.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡd9SWtkGLye
“This is a trap… I’ll go first.”
Aram tried to stop him, but Taymur had already decided. He advanced carefully, testing the earth with the edges of his feet. Then Aram heard a tiny click two stones kissing.
Aram shouted:10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡz6WsSwFdgS
“Don’t move!”
But the warning came a heartbeat too late.
Arrows burst from pinprick slits in the walls hidden shafts you only saw after they had already cut the air. A rain of iron, all at once, as though the passage itself exhaled its kill.
Taymur tried to retreat an arrow took his thigh. Then his shoulder. Then a third sank into his chest.
His knees hit the ground. Yet he did not cry out like a man defeated he released a short breath, as if saying: Done.
Rabin and Ghassan lunged toward him. Aram stared at the wall, searching for the mind that built this. He caught the faint trace of a cut cord at one corner stone, and a small peg disguised beneath a thin veil of dust.
Aram knelt beside Taymur, lifted his head, and laid it against his own leg. Blood, hot and relentless, pooled into his palm.
Taymur whispered, his eyes still steady:10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrDqNVi2BL0
“I told you… if I fall… you stay.”
Aram squeezed his hand hard, his voice rough with pain:10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQeHu4kRo4M
“I never wanted anyone to fall in my place.”
Taymur smiled the smile of a man who had finished his duty.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1wmXvxgBjy
“But we chose… the road with you.”
Then his eyes cooled.
They buried him at the entrance to the passage, because turning back had become another kind of death. Ghassan planted Taymur’s spear above the grave the Tamran sign that a man wasn’t taken from behind, but fell while advancing.
They continued. Four.
With every turn, the road grew craftier.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeEHqBAJsza
Even jokes came out with fear in them, like apologies for still being alive.
Crossing a slanted ledge above a void, they moved single-file, clinging to rock teeth and shallow holds. Aram noticed a stone placed too neatly too deliberate like a marker.
Before he could call out, Rabin’s foot touched a section no one had tested.
A soft tap.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEqwppRaR3d
Then a boulder slid from above not random, but trained: it ran down a pre-cut groove.
Aram shouted:10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk6LEOjjT3Q
“Rabin! In now!”
Rabin threw himself toward the wall too late. The boulder slammed his shoulder and knocked him outward. His eyes met Aram’s for a single heartbeat too small for any word
Then he vanished into a long fall.
They never heard the impact.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaiWf1MVY81
Silence swallowed the sound the way it swallowed the man.
When they reached the far side, there was no grave.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB0RCdPkDKu
Only absence.
Aram approached a stone overlooking the abyss, pulled his dagger, and carved the Tamran mark into the rock’s face. He traced it with his fingers and said:
“This is your witness… higher than dirt.”
They continued. Three.
That night, the fire was smaller than their fear.
Hadeen tightened his cloak.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrLhJ4GC5tW
“I don’t like this silence… it feels like it’s breathing.”
Ghassan replied:10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw4389U73ot
“This silence isn’t emptiness. It’s an eye.”
No one laughed.
The next day, they entered a half-roofed corridor. The ceiling stones hung as if they were waiting. The ground was too smooth too eager.
Hadeen paused, lifted his foot, as though instinct screamed before his body could. In the same instant, Aram shoved him backward with all his strength.
The roof split open over the spot where the leader would have stood, and sharp rocks poured down like spearheads.
But Hadeen, thrown off balance by the shove, stumbled forward straight beneath the stone-rain.
Silence… then one single groan.
Aram and Ghassan clawed at the rocks with shaking hands. Hadeen’s face appeared, smeared with blood and grit, his chest rising slowly. He opened his eyes with effort, looked at Aram, and rasped:
“You pushed death away from you… and it fell on me… the way I wished.”
Aram shook his head, words choking him:10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDX4nNmJt06
“I never wanted this for you.”
Hadeen whispered:10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8VcQC1kZLZ
“We didn’t come to live… we came to finish…”
And he went still.
They buried him among stones, leaving his sword beside the grave because in Tamran law, a sword is only pulled from the earth upon return… and they no longer knew whether return still existed.
Only Aram and Ghassan remained.
On a cold night, they sat before a weak fire. Wabbar stood close, his eyes on his rider, as if they said: I’m still here.
Ghassan glanced at the horse.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeb6tr5B8gK
“Even this horse understands more than many men.”
Aram stroked Wabbar’s neck.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDo4nS3cC3N
“He’s the only one who witnessed all we have… and didn’t run.”
In the morning, Aram rose and searched for Ghassan and found nothing.
No blood.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNEK8XSoGhX
No body.
Only a thin severed cord dangling from a high rock, and a faint drag-mark in the dust as if a body had been pulled away without struggle. A silent abduction no animal would do.
Aram stood for a long time.
This time there was no grave to make.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP2db7NqDNO
No stone to place.
He held the cut cord between his fingers, looked up, then toward the path wavering in the mist the last stretch toward the Seer’s Cave.
He said, to no one:
“Fine… as they wanted… I’m alone now.”
He tightened his grip on Wabbar’s reins and stepped forward
One man,10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡD6svYn0bOZ
and a mountain waiting,10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡajMpO1A0Gc
and a cave that opens only for someone who has nothing left to lose.
and then Add to home screen.