The thunderous roar and the trembling of the Snow Mountain beneath her feet made Miss Chloe, climbing towards the higher place, desperately want to turn back and check on Shade. But she knew Shade would not want her to delay the journey for him. So even as the worry and guilt in her heart reached their peak, she still bit her lip and continued climbing.
She could already see the snowy slope of the platform at the highest point from afar, but the young witch with silver hair and crimson eyes felt that she could no longer hold on.
In her daze, the thirteen companions she still remembered all appeared at her side, tugging at her hem and urging her to stop and rest. In her daze, every evil creature she had encountered on this lonely, bizarre Snow Mountain appeared again, laughing loudly at her overestimation of herself.
This was the final journey. The end lay before her, yet Chloe's steps were growing slower and slower. The wind and snow seemed determined to blow her to the ground, and the chaos in her mind had begun to affect her memories. For a moment, she even believed that she had entered this Snow Mountain alone.
When she came back to herself, she realized she was crawling upward across the snow surface. Her ragged breathing made her pull down her scarf. She rolled onto her back and lay on the snow, gulping down air as she watched snowflakes drift across the mottled black sky.
That mottled black was something Chloe had never seen anywhere else. At that moment, she felt as though the sky were pressing down like a coffin lid, about to lock her forever within this deserted Snow Mountain:
"Keep going. Walk on."
She rolled over and struggled to stand,