The action camera in Dika's hand suddenly grew so searingly hot that he instinctively jerked his hand away, letting the device drop to smash against the rocks below. The small screen instantly winked out, shattered, but the raspy, venomous whisper that had bled from its tiny speaker continued to ring hollowly in their heads.

"W-what was that, Dik? Was there actually a hand on my shoulder in that photo?!" Maya shrieked in panic, her hands frantically patting down her own shoulders as violent shivers wracked her frame. Goosebumps erupted across her skin, as though the Phantom claw-marks still burned against her flesh.

Dika swallowed hard over a throat made of gravel, taking a step back from the camera lying in the dirt. "I... I don't know, May! I swear, when I snapped that photo, nobody else was standing behind you! I swear on my life!"

"Stop it! Cut it off!" Gani barked, cutting short the panic threatening to shatter what little sanity the group had left. The broad-shouldered guy clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles turned translucent, his eyes darting frantically across the summit plateau, which moments before had basked in golden morning light. "Don't waste time obsessing over camera tricks! Look up right now!"

Rian, Maya, Dika, and Sita instinctively whipped their heads up toward the sky above the peak of Mount Aruna.

The next anomaly struck with terrifying speed, demolishing every shred of comfort they had scraped together minutes before. The bright morning sky, dressed in gradients of orange and vivid blue, shifted color in a matter of seconds. The cheerful blue bled out, wiped away by a heavy, bruised-purple ink that crawled across the heavens like the rot settling over a corpse.

The golden sunlight that had warmed their skin instantly died out, replaced by a surreal, sickly twilight that cast a deathly, bluish pallor across their faces.

"Huh? Why is the sky turning purple?" Sita whimpered in a shaky voice, clutching her heavy jacket tight as goosebumps rippled over her skin. "Where... where did the sun go?"

Before anyone could answer Sita's question, the summit plunged headfirst into an icy hell. The gentle pre-dawn breeze instantly mutated into a howling, savage gale that slammed into their bodies without mercy. The gale carried an extreme, piercing frost—stabbing straight through the dense layers of their winter coats, tearing at their pores, and flash-freezing the blood in their fingertips and toes.

Krrrr...

"Cold! I swear to God, this is freezing!" Dika shrieked hysterically, hopping frantically in place while hugging his torso. The breath pluming from their mouths instantly crystallized into tiny, sparkling shards of ice suspended in the gale. Dika’s eyelashes and eyebrows were coated in white frost crystals within seconds.

"A storm... this isn't a normal mountain storm!" Gani bellowed over the deafening roar of the wind. He grabbed his waist pack, staring back at his friends with naked panic in his eyes. "Meteorologically speaking, a weather shift this violent is impossible! This place is fundamentally wrong!"

"Then what are we supposed to do, Gan?! If we stay out here, we're going to turn into living ice statues!" Rian shouted back in terror, fighting the gale-force winds to shield Maya, who was nearly blown off balance.

"We move down right now!" Gani commanded sharply without a second of hesitation. "Grab your packs! Leave nothing behind! Run down the trail we came up before this storm locks us on the summit!"

Maya nodded frantically, bending down to snatch her small pack. Sita did the same, while Dika—his fingers stiff and frozen—scooped the action camera off the rock and shoved it deep into his jacket pocket.

"Move! Keep the formation tight, nobody gets separated!" Gani ordered once more, planting himself at the front to lead the way back down the rocky ridge trail.

Rian locked his fingers tight around Maya’s hand, ensuring she stayed safely in the middle flanked by himself and Sita, while Dika brought up the rear. Staggering blindly against the piercing, purple-tinted storm winds, they began to push away from the summit stone marker.

Yet the exact second Rian took his first step away from the plateau...

BOOOOOM!

A concussive shockwave rippled deep from the belly of the earth, rumbling violently beneath their boots.

The entire group froze dead in their tracks. The rocky ground atop Mount Aruna pitched and violently buckled, stripping away their balance and sending them crashing to their knees in the dirt.

"An earthquake?! Up here on the peak?!" Maya shrieked hysterically, clutching Rian’s arm to keep from being hurled aside by the increasingly wild tremors.

Gani anchored himself by driving his trekking pole deep into the earth. "That's no ordinary earthquake! Look ahead!" he screamed, jabbing a finger toward the downward trail.

Rian whipped his head upward, forcing his eyes open against the howling gale.

From the gaps between the volcanic boulders ringing the summit plateau, thick, heavy plumes of ash-gray fog simultaneously hissed outward. The vapor billowed massively, spinning wildly like a living, breathing wall of smoke.

In a heartbeat, that gray wall expanded at an unnatural velocity, swallowing the ocean of clouds, blanketing the sheer drop-offs below, and surging forward to slam shut over the sole exit path stretching out before them.

The world around them vanished entirely. There was no trail, no ravine, no outside world—left behind was only a suffocating, dense dome of gray fog, trapping the five of them inside a silent, freezing, and lethal cage.

"The trail... the trail is completely blocked by the fog!" Dika whimpered in sheer despair, frozen in place with wide, terrified eyes locked on the towering wall of gray vapor sealing their fate.

Gani hauled himself up with immense effort, shoving forward in a desperate bid to punch through the gray barrier. But the instant Gani’s outstretched hand brushed against the tumbling fog, he felt a scorching wave of heat paired with an intensely burning frost that violently threw his arm backward.

"We're trapped..." Gani whispered in a raspy, broken voice, glancing back at his friends as the heavy fog closed in from every cardinal direction.

“...We walked straight into their trap.”