Journey to the Summit

The world was grey. Not the comforting grey of a rainy afternoon, but a cold, biting grey that seeped into your bones. Liam, the mountaineer, coughed, the sound swallowed by the thick fog clinging to the mountain peak. Beside him, Khensu, his guide, a wiry man with eyes as sharp as flint, adjusted the oxygen tank strapped to Liam's pack. Khensu’s weathered face, etched with the map of a hard life lived at altitude, remained impassive, but Liam caught a flicker of concern. "Visibility’s almost zero," Liam rasped, his voice strained. Khensu nodded, pulling his thick woolen scarf higher. "We wait. Dawn is close. Fog may lift." He pointed a gloved hand towards the unseen horizon. A sliver of pale orange began to bleed into the grey, a promise of the sun's return. Liam shivered, not entirely from the cold. He trusted Khensu implicitly; the guide had led expeditions up this treacherous mountain for twenty years. But the mountain... the mountain was indifferent.