The twins worked on him at first light.
Kylie had him sit with his back straight and his injured arm extended, which was uncomfortable enough that Levi occupied himself by not showing it. Kiyandra crouched beside him and pressed two fingers against the wound with the focused precision of someone locating something specific rather than just touching a surface.
"Hold still," she said.
"I am holding still," said Levi.
"You're thinking about moving. Hold that still too."
He held that still too.
The chi came in warm — unexpected, given everything he associated the twins' ability with was force and impact and the specific devastating application of concentrated energy outward. This was the opposite. It moved inward, finding the wound's edges, and where it touched the cold-corruption the Wendigo had left behind it pushed against it with the particular pressure of something that understood life energy well enough to recognise its absence.
"It's not healing magic," Kylie said, watching. "We can't do what Zoe does. What we're doing is more like — clearing a blocked path. Your body already knows how to fix this. We're just removing what's in the way."
"The Wendigo's bite corrupts chi flow," Kiyandra said, not looking up. "Leaves cold in the channel. Cold like that doesn't respond to warmth — it responds to chi pressure. Which we have plenty of."
Levi felt it working. Not painlessly — there was a specific deep ache as the corruption displaced, like something being removed that had briefly decided to belong there — but the bleeding that had resumed overnight as the cold set in stopped. Properly stopped, with the clean finality of a wound that had been addressed rather than managed.
"How did you know to do this?" Levi asked.
The twins looked at each other briefly — the half-second communication of people who had been having the same conversation their whole lives.
"Our hometown had no hospital," Kylie said. "We learned what we could."
She said it with the specific flatness of someone reporting a fact they had long since stopped feeling anything about on the surface. Levi didn't push it. He filed it in the place he was keeping things about the twins' history that were being given to him in pieces.
"Done," Kiyandra said, and removed her fingers. She assessed the wound with the expression of someone checking their own work. "Keep it dressed. Don't use the arm for anything heavy today."
"Define heavy," said Levi.
"If you have to ask," said Kylie, "don't do it."
✦ ✦ ✦
They broke camp as the sky moved from dark to grey to the specific pale white of a Blizzarian morning that had decided this was as bright as it was going to get.
The mountains were visible — had been visible since yesterday, a dark line on the horizon that had been growing with each hour of walking, close enough now to have detail. Peaks. The specific geometry of something very large and very old, the snow on the upper faces catching what light there was and throwing it back. They were beautiful in the way that things were beautiful when they were also going to be difficult.
Winters looked at them while the others packed, his morning iced coffee in hand — non-negotiable, regardless of circumstances — and drank it with the expression of someone who had done this before and was running a quiet checklist.
Priscilla appeared beside him. "How bad is the last stretch?"
"Depends on the weather," he said. "If it holds, manageable. If it doesn't—" He took a sip. "We manage anyway."
"Specific."
"The specifics change depending on what happens. The outcome doesn't." He looked at her sideways. "Your spatial awareness will be useful up there. The mountain has geography that moves — snowdrifts, ice shelves, sections that look stable and aren't. You'll read it before we reach it."
Priscilla was quiet for a moment. She had heard her ability described as powerful, as useful in combat, as a tactical asset. She had not often heard it described as specifically suited to something ahead of her.
"That's the most useful thing anyone has said to me about my ability in weeks," she said.
"It's just accurate," said Winters.
✦ ✦ ✦
The day's trek was harder than the first.
Not dramatically — there was no single moment where the difficulty announced itself, just the gradual accumulation of terrain that asked more with every hour. The ground began to rise. The wind came from a new direction off the mountain faces, carrying a purposefulness it hadn't had on the flat, as if it knew exactly where it was going and had no interest in what was in the way.
Levi kept his left arm close to his body and let the right do the work of the ice pole Winters had formed that morning — dense, the right weight. The shoulder ached with the background ache of something treated but not healed. He managed it the way he managed most things: acknowledging it was there and not giving it more attention than it required.
The twins moved at the front with Winters — their natural configuration on terrain like this, the three of them reading the ground with the unconscious fluency of people whose bodies had learned things their minds hadn't consciously been taught. Winters occasionally said something quiet and one of the twins would alter course slightly and the other would follow without question.
Priscilla walked beside Levi with her spear orbiting at a wider radius than usual, the extended reach mapping terrain ahead and to the sides, her spatial awareness running outward in the continuous rings that were as natural to her as breathing. Every so often she said something — ice shelf, three metres left or the ground drops here, step carefully — and the information was always accurate and always arrived exactly when it was needed.
"You're doing navigation," Levi said.
"I'm doing what my ability does," Priscilla said. "The navigation is a side effect."
"A useful one."
"Most things are useful if you understand them properly."
They walked for a while in the specific companionable quiet of people who were conserving energy but didn't mind each other's company.
"The mountains are closer than they look," Priscilla said eventually.
"Or further than they look," said Levi. "I can never tell out here."
"Closer. The visual scale is compressed by the whiteness — everything reads as further than it is. We'll be at the base by tomorrow evening if the weather holds." She paused. "And then it gets harder."
"Winters said the same thing."
"Winters says everything once. I'm saying it twice because I want you to actually think about it." She looked at him. "Your shoulder isn't going to appreciate what comes next."
"My shoulder will adapt," said Levi.
Priscilla gave him the look she gave him when he said things that were technically true but strategically optimistic. He received it without comment.
✦ ✦ ✦
They made camp in the lee of a rock formation Priscilla had identified from two kilometres out — a natural windbreak, the ground there flat and clear of the worst drifts. Winters built the igloos in the same unhurried sequence, the ice rising from the ground with the specific ease of someone working in their medium.
The mountains were close enough now to fill the northern horizon. In the fading light they were a different thing from what they'd been at distance — more specific, more present, the individual faces and ridges visible, the upper sections lost in cloud that moved across them with the slow purposeful weight of weather that had been doing this for a very long time.
Levi sat outside his igloo after dinner and looked at them.
Priscilla settled beside him a few minutes later — spear across her knees, coat pulled close — and looked at the mountains too for a moment without saying anything.
Then she said: "Can I tell you something."
"Yes," said Levi.
She assembled the words with the care she brought to things she meant properly. "Last night. The hallucination." She paused. "I saw my parents' apartment. The night it happened. My ability recreating it the way it always recreates it when I'm not managing it carefully — every detail exactly right, the light, the sound of them through the wall." She looked at the mountains. "The Wendigo found the right thing. It always does, I think. It goes for what you haven't finished with."
Levi said nothing. He waited.
"I broke out of it faster than I would have a year ago," Priscilla said. "Not because the memory has less weight. Because I've done the work of sitting with it. I know its shape now. When the Wendigo showed it to me it felt performed rather than real, because I've been through the real version enough times that I know the difference." She paused. "That's what doing the work actually means, I think. Not that things stop hurting. Just that you know them well enough that a copy doesn't fool you."
"Melissa," Levi said.
"Yes," said Priscilla.
He looked at the mountains for a long moment. The cloud moved across the upper faces and the peaks disappeared and reappeared as it passed.
"I heard her voice and I walked toward it," he said. "I didn't question it. Not even for a second." He paused. "I've been thinking about that all day. About what it means that I just — believed it. Immediately. Without any of the things I'm supposed to apply to situations that don't add up."
"What do you think it means?" Priscilla asked.
"It means I haven't grieved her," Levi said. "Not properly. I've been moving since Olympus fell — the mission, the squad, the Rogues, the journey. Moving because it's the only thing I know how to do when something is too big to sit with." He paused. "My mother died and I moved. Melissa died and I moved. And the Wendigo found the version of me underneath all that movement, and it turns out that version hasn't processed anything."
Priscilla was quiet for a moment. "That's not a failure," she said.
"I know it's not a failure," said Levi. "It's just true. And I needed to say it out loud to someone." He looked at her. "Thank you for going first."
She looked back at him with the complete attention she gave to things that mattered. "She knew you hadn't processed it," Priscilla said. "Melissa. She knew you were going to keep moving and she prepared you for it anyway, because she understood that was who you were. That's why she made Sylvia your responsibility as much as her own — she knew you'd need somewhere to put the care you weren't giving yourself."
Levi looked at the mountains.
"She was very annoying," he said, "about being right about things."
Priscilla almost laughed. Almost. "The best people are."
They sat in the cold for a while longer — the mountains ahead of them enormous and patient, the igloo village behind them small and warm, the specific companionable quiet of two people who had said what needed saying and were now just present with each other and with the weight of what lay ahead.
"Tomorrow," Levi said eventually.
"Tomorrow," said Priscilla.
They went inside.
✦ ✦ ✦
In his igloo, Winters sat with his back against the curved wall and his legs extended and a fresh iced coffee balanced on his knee. He had his eyes open, which was unusual for this hour.
Tonight he was thinking.
The listening device was in his pack, exactly where he'd left it. He had said nothing today that wasn't route information or logistical instruction — less conversational than usual, which the group had attributed to the terrain and the weather and the general weight of the journey, which was convenient.
He thought about the mountains. About what the last stretch would take from each of them. About what they were going to find at the Syndicate of Knowledge and whether it would be worth what it cost to get there.
He thought about whoever was listening to the feed from the device, sitting somewhere warm, hearing nothing useful, and whether the absence of information was itself information they were sending back to whoever they reported to.
He thought about his hometown. The specific way the cold had felt there, at the base of different mountains, in a different season of his life. His mother's particular way of carrying warmth into every room she entered. His father's way of building things that lasted. The town's way of making do with what the weather and the government left them.
He drank his iced coffee.
He thought about the axe, and what it meant that it had been waiting for him in the dark, and whether anyone on this journey was going to ask him about it, and what he would say if they did.
Nobody had asked yet.
He closed his eyes.
Outside, the mountains stood in the dark and the cloud moved across their faces and the wind did what the wind always did, which was everything and nothing, which was home.