The piercing ring of the digital alarm clock abruptly shattered the heavy, dense silence inside the blue tent at Post 3. 2:00 AM. The biting sub-zero air had coated the interior fabric walls of the tent in a shimmering layer of frost.

Rian blinked open eyes that felt like lead, as though he had only just dozed off after hours of being terrorized by the sound of heavy breathing right outside the tent wall. To his right, Dika stirred weakly, letting out a muffled groan as he curled his knees tightly inside his sleeping bag.

"Hey... wake up, Dik. It's time for the summit attack," Rian whispered in a raspy voice, nudging Dika’s shoulder gently.

Dika slowly peeled his eyes open, his face hollow and washed out with utter exhaustion. "What time is it, Yan? I swear, every bone in my body feels completely shattered. I've got zero juice left."

"It's two. If we don't move now, we'll miss the sunrise at the peak," Rian replied, crawling forward to unzip the tent flap and let the freezing pre-dawn air rush over their faces.

Outside, Gani was already up. The broad-shouldered guy was busy cinching the strap of his waist pack near the porch of Maya and Sita's red tent. There were no warm morning greetings or high-energy chatter like the first day of the climb; everyone moved in a stiff, suffocating silence weighed down by psychological pressure.

Maya and Sita emerged from the red tent with sluggish, dragging steps. Maya’s eyes were swollen and red, while Sita kept her gaze glued to the ground, staring vacantly at the sandy dirt.

"Is everyone ready? Just pack essential drinking water in your waist packs or side pockets. We’re leaving the heavy carriers behind in the tents," Gani instructed in a flat tone, refusing to meet any of his friends' eyes. He clicked on his headlamp, casting a harsh, piercing beam of white light. "Remember, stay in line, keep the gap tight, and no zoning out."

"Yeah, Gan..." Maya murmured softly, zipping her jacket up to her chin.

Without another word, the five friends stepped out and left the Post 3 campsite behind. The night was pitch black, as though the darkness stubbornly refused to surrender to the coming dawn. The sole source of light in the total gloom of the mountain slope was the glare of the headlamps strapped to their foreheads, slicing through the dark and casting long, dancing shadows against the jagged rock walls.

The trail from Post 3 transformed instantly into a punishing stretch of loose sand, shifting gravel, and steep, energy-sapping rock faces. Every single step forward caused the unstable sand beneath their boots to slide half a step back, forcing their calves and thighs to work twice as hard.

Krosak... krosak...

The rhythmic friction of trekking boots grinding against gravel dominated the pre-dawn climb. Gani took the lead, pacing the group to prevent anyone from falling behind. Maya followed directly behind Gani, trailed by Sita, then Rian, with Dika bringing up the rear.

Dika—who had been raging and throwing his backpack around just hours prior—now trudged in absolute silence at the very back. Gone were the loud complaints or cringey jokes; the only sound he produced was his ragged, wheezing breath, a pathetic huh-huh rasp echoing through the dead of night.

"Slow down a bit, Gan... huh-ha... I'm about to pass out," Dika wheezed in a raspy voice from the back of the line, pausing to brace his hands against his knees to ease the aching in his joints.

Rian, walking right in front of Dika, glanced back over his shoulder, flashing his headlamp briefly across Dika’s ghost-white face.

"You holding up, Dik? If you can't, grab the hem of my jacket."

"I'm... huh... I can still walk, Yan. But my chest feels so tight," Dika gasped, greedily taking a sip from his water bottle with shaking hands. "I swear, it feels like something is crushing my lungs from the inside."

"Just hang in there a little longer, Dik. We're almost to the upper ridge before the summit," Rian encouraged, though his own quadriceps felt like they were burning with lactic acid.

"Eyes front! Stop talking, save your oxygen!" Gani barked from the lead without turning around, his voice cutting sharply through their conversation.

Rian nodded stiffly, snapping his gaze back forward to follow Sita, who walked steadily ahead of him. They resumed their grueling ascent up the narrowing ridge line, flanked on both sides by pitch-black ravines plunging down into seas of night mist.

The mountain winds howled louder, carrying an extreme alpine chill that pierced straight through the layers of their thick winter jackets. Their headlamp beams swayed restlessly, flashing stark white light across towering cliff faces jagged like giant fangs.

Amidst the compounding physical exhaustion and the roaring night wind, Rian suddenly felt a visceral prickle at the nape of his neck. Goosebumps erupted across his skin as though an unseen pair of eyes was burning holes into their backs from somewhere high up on the cliff.

Rian flicked a glance at his watch—2:45 AM.

Driven by a surge of anxious curiosity, Rian slowed his pace slightly, allowing the gap between himself and Dika to stretch, then whipped his head back to check on Dika and ensure nothing unnatural was trailing them at the tail end of the line.

Rian aimed the headlamp beam straight back down the trail.

The bright white glare swept over the sandy path, passed the stooped, exhausted figure of Dika... and tracked upward into a cluster of dead, skeletal trees standing rigidly along the edge of the cliff on the right side of the trail.

The exact second he saw it, Rian’s heart stopped dead in his chest. His breath caught in his throat.

Perched atop the trunk of a towering, dead pine tree, hunched over with unnaturally broad shoulders, was a pitch-black, gargantuan silhouette—dwarf-like in its proportions compared to any normal human, possessing monstrously long arms gripping tightly onto the tree branches.

What turned Rian’s blood to ice was its head. There was no face; instead, two glowing pinpricks of dim red light burned with pure, unadulterated malice, staring straight down at Rian and the group.

The colossal entity glared down with intense focus, tracking their every move like a predator eyeing its prey in the dead of night.

"Rian? Why'd you stop? Move!" Maya’s voice called out from the front, shattering the paralysis locking Rian in place.

Rian blinked frantically, snapping his head back toward the dead tree on the edge of the cliff to verify what his eyes had just processed.

Yet, in the split second after he had looked away, the spot where the red-eyed giant had been standing was completely, utterly empty.

No shadows, no suspicious dead trees—the entity had simply melted away, swallowed whole by the pitch-black darkness of the night and the howling mountain wind.