Read Chapter 25: The Avalanche Shadow

The wind had teeth. It carved through Élise's jacket, found the gaps between zips and straps, and bit. She moved on feel alone—her headlamp a useless haze against the snow, her poles sinking into a surface that shifted with every step.

Paul was behind her. She knew because she could hear his uneven breathing, the crunch of Jasper's old hiking boots that Margaux had insisted he take. The two remaining tourists flanked him, silent, trusting her with a weight that pressed harder than any storm.

She hadn't told them how much the route had changed. How de Vries's fading ink marks, one every fifty meters, sometimes lifted from rocks—the only things still standing. Orti's words echoed in her skull. *The storm is not done with you, Élise.*

She trusted that about as much as she trusted the snow under her feet.

The first sound was wrong. A dull *whump*, like a heavy door slamming somewhere deep underground. The slope ahead of her sagged. Not a dramatic collapse—just a settling, a breath that the mountain took and did not return.

Then the mountain exhaled.

The avalanche came down the draw beside them, not on them. There was no time to feel relief. The shifting snow pulled the ground out from under their feet, and the world turned to white water. Élise screamed something—a hand, a name, she didn't know—and then the current took her.

She hit something hard. A tree? A rock. The breath left her in a single, sharp cry. Snow poured around her, over her, heavy as concrete setting in a mould. She remembered to make a swimming motion, snapping her arms above her head, fighting for a pocket of air, but the force was too strong. The world stopped moving.

Dark. Heavy. Quiet.

Her right arm was free. She didn't know how. Somewhere in the chaos, she'd thrown it up against gravity and it had stayed. Cold air found her fingers. She felt snow around it, loosely packed, wet. With every ounce of her, she worked her hand in a circle, opening an airspace the size of a fist.

She was alive. That was only the first fact. The second was that she had no idea how deep she was buried.

She tried to move her other arm. Nothing. Her legs felt distant, borrowed. The weight pressed against her chest with each breath—a slow, gradual crush she knew would only get worse.

*Paul. The tourists.*

She wanted to call out. But shouting would use air, and the air pocket she had was no bigger than her hand. She lay still. Listened. The mountain had gone quiet again. The wind had stopped, or she simply couldn't hear it anymore.

Fear came in a wave, cold and absolute, and she let it pass. She had taught herself this years ago, alone on a cliff face halfway up a mountain that didn't care if she came down. Breathe. Make a plan.

She had no beacon. Luc had taken the unit. *We'll send one back with the walking group,* he'd said. She'd laughed and told him she'd find de Vries's route markers.

The unmarked traverse. She'd been so sure she could read the mountain.

Something brushed her fingertips.

She froze. Went still.

Again—a scraping, soft, like fabric in snow. Then a voice, muffled, distant, barely more than shape:

"—Élise!"

Luc. She knew it the way she knew her own heartbeat. His voice was hoarse, raw from shouting.

"Luc!" The sound tore from her throat, wasted air, panic and hope and something else—relief that broke her open. "Here! I'm here!"

The scraping above grew frantic. Snow moved, lightened. Her arm was pulled by gravity, and suddenly there was more space around her face. Then a hand found hers—gloved, strong, squeezing with a force that made her gasp.

"I've got you. I've got you."

His face appeared above her. Wind-burned, beard frosted white, eyes wild with a fear she'd never once seen—not on any rescue, not in all the years she'd known him. His look said *I almost lost you.*

"Luc." She could barely move her lips. "The group. Paul—"

"Orti has them. They made it to the refuge." He was already digging, carving out her shoulder, her torso. "Found Paul's tracks leading the rest. They're inside. They're safe."

"Then why—" She stopped. His focus was total, scraping snow with bare hands, muttering the work of excavation.

"Don't." His voice cracked. "Don't ask me why."

The snow was gone from her chest. He pulled her halfway out, and she got her other arm free, then rolled onto her side as the last weight released her. Air flooded her lungs. She coughed so hard she saw stars.

He crouched over her, hands on her face warming her cheeks.

"You came back down into the avalanche path," she said. The thought was dizzying. "You led the group to the refuge and you *came back down.*"

"I left it."

"What?"

"Orti's holding them. He knows the building. He's got the stove, the radios." Luc's jaw worked. "I stood at the door and watched you cross up over the terrace, and I thought—"

His voice broke.

"I stood there, Élise. And I thought about living the rest of my life knowing I let you walk into that slope without me." He let out a breath like something heavy was leaving him. "I couldn't."

Above them, the mountain grumbled. A long, low sound, moving downslope. They had no time.

"We need to move." She found her feet. Her legs shook. "The base camp—Chloé's beacon—"

"Is still signaling. Weaker, but alive." Luc already had her pack, was settling it on her shoulders with practiced hands. "But we're not getting there tonight. Visibility is zero, and there's another slope set to go."

Élise looked at him. "Where do we go?"

He pulled out a map—wet, creased. De Vries's old route marked in faded pencil. Luc turned it, orienting it against a compass he'd pulled from his jacket. His finger traced a line, then stopped on a small, hand-drawn box.

"There's an emergency shelter on the old mountain-rescue route. De Vries marked it."

"Luc, that trail hasn't been maintained in over a decade."

"Better than the alternative." His eyes met hers. The exhaustion in them was bone-deep, but so was the stubbornness. "You and me. That's the team. We can make it."

Another rumble above them. The snowfield trembled.

She looked at the map, then at him. He'd come back for her with no beacon, no backup, just the old route and a dying promise she'd made.

"I can't lose you again," he said. "Not like this. Not in this white."

The mountain was not done with them yet.