The night wind howled savagely at thousands of meters above sea level, tearing fiercely across the stone cliff walls and slamming into the five of them without mercy. The trail had narrowed down to a razor-thin ridge line—scarcely a meter wide, flanked by pitch-black, yawning chasms on both left and right. Only the pale beam of their headlamps carved out a fragile boundary between life and death on that extreme path.

Rian still reeled from the residual terror of the gargantuan, dim-red-eyed silhouette that had vanished into thin air atop the dead tree. His heart slammed violently against his ribs in a jagged, chaotic rhythm. He pressed forward, marching directly behind Sita, who moved with sluggish, trance-like steps at the front of the line.

"Focus on the trail ahead! Don't look down at the ravine!" Gani bellowed from the lead, his voice nearly swallowed by the roaring mountain wind that chilled their fingertips to numbness inside their gloves.

"It's freezing... I swear, my hands are completely dead!" Dika groaned from the tail end of the line, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. His breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps as he fought the crushing physical weight of the increasingly steep, vertical climb.

"Hang in there, Dik! We're almost to the summit plateau, stop whining!" Maya shouted back from the middle of the pack, trying to rally her own flagging spirit even as her legs trembled beneath her.

They crept forward inch by inch through the suffocating silence of the night.

Then, abruptly, Sita’s steps halted dead in her tracks.

She froze entirely, causing Rian—marching right behind her—to nearly plow directly into her back. Sita stood rigid, her head slowly turning to the left, staring straight down into the black abyss masked by wispy night fog.

"Sita? Why are you stopping? Don't zone out here, the path is way too narrow!" Rian panicked, reaching out to grab Sita's arm.

Sita gave no response. Her eyes remained completely hollow, locked onto the bottomless dark below. Then, her bruised, blue-tinted lips parted slowly, whispering softly over the howling wind.

"Mom...?" Sita whimpered in a weak, trembling voice.

Rian blinked in shock. "Sit! Snap out of it! Don't talk crazy!"

"Mom is down there..." Sita continued, her voice growing raspy, dripping with a profound, suffocating despair. She took a slow step toward the edge of the precipice, as though spellbound by something down below. "She's calling me... she says it's dark and cold down there... she's asking for my help..."

Maya, watching from ahead, shrieked in horror. "Sita! Don't go over there! That isn't your mother!"

"Sita, stop!" Gani snarled from the front, attempting to pivot around on the narrow ledge, though blocked by the sloping rock face.

Sita ignored every warning. A single trembling boot stepped over the fragile, crumbling rock shelf at the edge of the drop—the soil beneath her heel immediately shearing off and tumbling silently into the dark expanse below.

Seeing it happen, Rian discarded all hesitation. With explosive reflexes, he lunged forward, clamped both hands around Sita’s thick winter jacket, and violently yanked her backward with brute force.

Thud!

Sita and Rian crashed hard onto the narrow dirt path, rolling across the stone spine. Sita thrashed weakly, tears streaming down her face. "Let me go, Yan! Mom is down there! She needs me!"

"Sita, wake up! You were about to plunge straight off a cliff!" Rian barked, his chest heaving as he pinned Sita to the ground, gripping her shoulders hard to lock her in place away from the ledge. "Do you hear my voice?! That is not your mother! That is a demonic entity trying to drag your soul down!"

Maya and Dika scrambled over, helping Rian restrain Sita as she thrashed and wailed for her mother with heart-wrenching terror.

"Sit, please snap out of it... you still have us right here," Maya sobbed openly, cradling Sita's head and forcing her friend's eyes away from the chasm. "Don't leave us, Sit..."

Amidst Sita’s weeping and the suffocating panic gripping the group, Gani barked out a desperate, commanding order, his voice strained and heavy with pressure.

"Nobody look down at the ravine! Whoever hears anything from below, cover your ears tight! Do not engage!" Gani shouted absolute instructions to them all.

Rian helped Sita into a sitting position, wrapping his arms tight around her violently shivering frame to cushion her from deep shock, while Dika guarded the outer flank, gripping his trekking pole with shaking hands.

"Let's go... let's move. Don't let this cursed place control our minds," Rian whispered firmly, helping Sita stagger back to her feet. Maya and Rian flanked her sides, locking her safely in the middle of the formation, far from the precipice.

Carefully, they resumed their march across the narrowing, wind-battered ridge. No one dared speak again; the sound of their ragged breathing and Sita's muffled sobs served as the only soundtrack in the pitch-black night.

Yet, barely a few meters past the spot where Sita had nearly stepped off, a far more horrifying anomaly assaulted their ears.

From the dark depths of the ravine on the left side of the trail, a voice suddenly called out their names.

“Rian...? Help me... wait for me...”

The five friends froze dead in their tracks.

That voice... it was Rian's own voice. Crystal clear, exact, without a single flaw—the cadence, the intonation, even the slight catch of a cough at the end of the sentence matched Rian's voice when begging for help.

Before Rian could recover from the shock, the voice from the abyss multiplied, echoing in overlapping unison from every direction below the cliff edge.

“Maya... it hurts... help me down here...” another voice shrieked from the base of the ravine, mimicking Maya's tone with agonizing, visceral pain.

“Gani... Dika... why'd you leave me all alone in this dark canyon?!” subsequent voices echoed simultaneously, aping Dika and Gani's tones with harrowing, manic weeping.

Dika clamped his hands tightly over his ears, his face draining to ash as he shook his head in frantic denial. "No... that's not us... those are monsters..." Dika whimpered in bone-chilling terror.

"Don't listen! Keep moving! Nobody look back!" Gani roared, his voice shaking violently as he forced his legs to march faster through the escalating auditory nightmare closing in on them.

The voices from the chasm were no longer calling from a distance; they sounded as though they were scaling upward, clinging directly to the vertical cliff face right beneath their hiking boots, mimicking the dying groans and terrified shrieks of their very own doomed selves falling into the dark.

Rian pulled Sita tight against his chest, forcing his eyes straight ahead, deafening his ears to the chorus of demonic echoes calling their names, as they raced against time and death along the razor ridge of Mount Aruna.