And for the first time since they’d started the climb, he was certain of one thing: Whatever they’d heard—whatever had fallen and groaned inside—had not come from the mountain. It had come from the house. Up close, the structure felt less like a mystery and more like a problem they couldn’t ignore.
The wood was old but intact, pressed neatly into the limestone as if the mountain had grown around it instead of rejecting it. The door sat flush with the rock, narrow and reinforced, its frame darkened where something had been leaking from inside. The pink fluid traced down from beneath it in thin, uneven lines, staining the stone they were clinging to.