Niko and Hana ran after the young boy, soon catching up to him, while Leta flew overhead.
"My name...is Tai", the youth panted, "Me and my little brother, Yuko, are from a village quite far from here."
He strained his mind, still struggling to piece together his hazy memories.
The sudden avalanche, his death, and then being revived, all of it had happened too fast, leaving his mind in a daze.
But he still did his best to focus his muddled mind.
"Our mother died when we were young, so we were raised by our dad. He...he was a great father. He had raised us with great love and care. But then..."
His eyes welled up with tears.
"Then one day, a Fire Spirit attacked our village. My father and the rest of the older hunters in the village worked to drive it off."
Tai had begged his father to let him help, but his father refused, saying that the boy wasn't capable of fighting a Spirit yet.
"After a long battle, the Spirit finally fled, but it cursed them all before leaving."
He struggled to catch his breath, but kept on speaking.
"At first, they had all been fine, aside from a mild fever, but then, their bodies continued to grow hotter and hotter. Their fever had grown severe enough to kill a human, yet they all stayed alive."
Tai didn't know whether to be glad about that...or horrified.
"It got to the point that just touching my father's face had burned my hand."
He clutched his scorched hand and grimaced.
"But that wasn't even the worst of it."
Tears welled up in his eyes, and he gritted his teeth.
"You...you wouldn't understand how it feels— to see the hands that fed you become filled with cracks, revealing the boiling blood coursing beneath..."
He broke into tears.
"...to see the face that always smiled at you be clawed at by those hands, as if trying to rip off the scorching flesh..."
His voice hitched, shaking from the constant sobs
"...and the mouth that sung lullabies to comfort you when you were haunted by nightmares...to see that mouth remain eternally open in an agonizing scream that shook your very soul!"
The boy was so caught up in his painful memories that he didn't even notice the path being blocked by a pile of rocks.
He crashed into it, falling back onto the ground.
Niko caught up to him, helping him get back to his feet.
"The village shaman told us that they could all be cured if we brought a special flower—the Winter's Breath. So...we came to this mountain to find it."
He wiped away his tears.
"After climbing for nearly two days, we had almost reached the top, but then the ground shook violently, and we were hit by an avalanche. I...I pushed Yuko out of the way to save him and then...I died. But—now he's all alone up there! He can't reach the top by himself!"
He grabbed Niko's hand, "I've heard about you—about how you fulfill the wishes of the dead, so please, help me save my family, I beg you!"
Hana came up and nodded firmly at him, assuring him that they would help.
His face lit up with hope.
"Thank you both, thank you so much!"
Niko turned around to face the pile of rubble, rasing his hand to summon several corpses that quickly took apart the wall of stone.
The soul he revived had made a wish, and the wish of the souls was his command.
***
The four of them continued to climb up the mountain, closely following the path that Tai had taken before with his brother.
Their path was filled with several obstacles, from fallen debris to deep chasms.
Niko used his [Reaper's Call], summoning undead minions that helped them quickly get through.
Undead animals tore through the rubble, and skeletons joined arms to form bridges for them to cross the chasms.
However, as they climbed higher, the number of nearby bodies kept on getting smaller and smaller.
After a while, Niko started having trouble clearing the path on his own.
Luckily, he didn't have to. As soon as his pace faltered, Hana joined in to help.
She waved her hand, and a soft, golden light flowed out of it, seeping into the earth below.
[Blessing of Nature]
Green plants grew out from the ground, giving rise to long, stretching vines.
The vines pulled the fallen rocks aside, helping the dead in clearing the path.
Once the path opened up, they got back to rushing up the mountain.
As they ran, Tai glanced around and sighed.
"You know, I think I kind of like this place", a small smile found its way to his lips.
But then his smile grew a little wistful.
"I'm sure Yuko would think the same..."
He shook his head before turning to look at the three Spirits following behind him, each looking at him with a confused expression.
"Ah, I mean, it's always snowing here, while it rarely ever snows in our village. In fact, the two of us have only ever seen snow once in our lives."
"I still remember it like it was yesterday. We had so much fun. The little brat even turned me into a snowman when I fell asleep under a tree!", he chuckled, allowing himself to get lost in the pleasant memories for a brief moment.
"Maybe if I been able to do more, we could have come here under better circumstances..."
He sighed and shook his head.
"But we can't change the past, so I guess it's best to not dwell on it too much."
With that, he turned his focus back to the task at hand, which soon became much more difficult.
They had to cross a narrow ledge covered in slippery ice, sticking to the rocky walls behind them as they carefully inched across its length.
They had barely gotten across it when massive rocks came falling down from above. Niko tried to summon bodies to stop them, but there was nothing there that could answer his calls.
Tai cursed under his breath, and all four of them dashed forward, narrowly avoiding being crushed by the rockfall.
The blanket of snow covering the ground also started getting much thicker and harder to move through, slowing their pace down to a drag.
At one point, Niko took a step forward only for the snow underneath to collapse, causing him to start falling down a deep hole.
Tai hurriedly grabbed his arm, and Hana used her vines to pull them both back up.
"I take it back", Tai wiped the cold sweat off of his forehead, "I don't like this snow."
The higher they climbed, the worse things got. More blocked paths, more hidden pits, more broken roads and deep chasms.
Strangely enough, most of these obstacles hadn't been there when Tai had first climbed up with his brother.
It was as if the entire geography of the mountain had changed completely within the past few days.
Normally, Niko wouldn't have had a hard time getting across with the help of the dead, but by now there were hardly any bodies around for him to summon.
It was as if no one had ever died on this towering peak...or that every death had been too brutal to leave a body behind...
And then there was the unbearable cold, threatening to freeze them down to their very cores.
Niko found that cold deeply unsettling.
Perhaps feeling so cold would have made sense if they were living people, but Spirits had a high resistance to things like heat and cold.
So the fact that they were all chilled to the bone made him suspect that there was something unnatural about the frigid mountain.
And on top of everything else, there were also various wild animals.
Birds of prey, large snakes, angry boars, and ravenous wolves stalked every corner of the mountain.
Luckily, these ordinary animals didn't dare approach powerful Spirits like Hana and Niko.
Even Tai, who carried some of Niko's power, was strong enough to kill them with ease.
So, most of them kept their distance from the four Spirits.
Sometimes, a few of the braver ones tried to approach, only to be sent running by a glare from Niko.
But that didn't do much to make Niko less worried, because the higher they went, the more ferocious the animals around them became, glaring at the four of them with hungry eyes.
The environment also continued to get much more harsh, slowing them down even further.
Tai couldn't help but despair as their situation continued to turn for the worse. More obstacles, more hungry creatures, more unbearable cold.
Reaching the top of the mountain was starting to feel like an impossible task.
And yet, despite it all, they still managed to keep going, pushing through every obstacle that came their way.
Hana created bridges to help them cross chasms, Niko's own strength was enough to move aside large obstacles, and Leta flew above to guide them to safer paths.
Even Tai did whatever he could to help, refusing to sit back and let the others take all the burden.
The young hunter may not have had powers like theirs, but he was skilled and resourceful enough to make up for it.
Whether they had to cross treacherous paths or climb steep slopes, the boy always figured out a way to help them get across.
So, despite the path being filled with perils, they were crossing it rather easily by working together.
Seeing that made Tai feel a bit relieved. Maybe he would actually make it this time.
Niko, too, felt strangely happy at their teamwork and, without even realizing, he had started smiling somewhere along the way.
Noticing that, Hana narrowed her eyes and gave him a teasing smile.
But the smile quickly disappeared, as a chilling wind crashed into them, almost causing Hana to fall over.
Niko's expression turned grim as he stared up at the sky, where countless black clouds were starting to gather.
A blizzard was coming.