On The Mountain Top -ch. 1- By Professor Amethy... Apr 2026

I pulled my hand back from the crystal as if burned. My heart did not race. That was the second wrong thing. My heart was calm. I was supposed to be terrified. I was supposed to run. But the mountain had been breathing me in for days, and I no longer had the lungs for fear.

I climbed for six hours. The sky turned the color of a bruise—purple at the zenith, a sickly yellow at the horizon where the sun should have been. I did not get tired. That was the first wrong thing. My legs pumped. My lungs worked. But I felt no fatigue. No hunger. No thirst. I was a machine of ascent, and the stairs were the conveyor belt to a place that had been waiting. On the Mountain Top -Ch. 1- By Professor Amethy...

They were not carved. They were grown . A spiral of fused, obsidian-black rock, each step precisely seven inches high—the ideal riser for a human leg. They rose out of the mountain’s granite as if the mountain had extruded them in a single, smooth scream. Lichen? None. Moss? None. They were sterile. Perfect. Older than the Cambrian. I pulled my hand back from the crystal as if burned