The mountain did not want to be climbed.
That much became clear within the first hour of the fifth day, when the kingdom set foot on the lower slopes and the peak, which had spent four days pretending to be unreachable, finally stopped pretending and simply became difficult instead.
The slopes rose steep and broken under a violet sky, and the higher they went, the more the mountain fought them. The air grew thin and strange, heavy in the lungs one moment and too light the next. The stone underfoot shifted between solid rock and something that crumbled like ash, so that a firm step could vanish into a slide without warning.
It was slower going than any part of the crossing had been. A hundred thousand people could pour across a plain in hours. A mountain like this had to be taken one careful stretch at a time, roped together in places, hauling the exotic army up in others, and the clock in the back of everyone's mind kept ticking through all of it.
