Chapter 1: The Whisper Beneath the Peaks
Snow fell thick and slow over the edge of the Whitecap Peaks, muffling sound and painting the world in endless white. At the last shivering ridge below the clouds, a peculiar little den jutted out, half-carved from a glacier, half-built from tinkered-together boards and battered lanterns. Inside, Jabari hunched over his workbench, a tangle of fur and nervous energy, claws blackened with coal dust as he peered through a cracked lens.
Jabari was a yeti—small for his age, with a round face, wide-set hazel eyes, and the constant look of someone just about to apologize for taking up space. Yet inside, his mind roared louder than mountain storms. Today, he examined a copper lockpick he’d fashioned out of broken watch-springs, his tongue between his teeth. The only sounds in his den were the whir and click of his inventions, and the faint echo of the elders’ warnings drifting from the village below:
“Stay clear of the old mine, Jabari. Its curse takes curiosity like yours and buries it forever.”
Curse or no, the mine had become Jabari’s quiet obsession. When he was little, his father—an explorer, too restless for village life—used to tell him stories about a library hidden in its frozen heart. The library held every tale lost or left behind, books that could change the world, or at least, maybe, a lonely yeti’s life. Since his father vanished into a blizzard two winters ago, the stories were all Jabari had left.
A howl of wind rattled the boards and made Jabari flinch. He tried to focus on his lockpick, but a whisper tugged at his mind—a thread of something cold and ancient. At first he thought it was just the wind through the chinks in his den. But as it repeated, stronger now, the words teased at the edge of imagination:
"Forgotten... forgotten... stories... waiting... waiting... below."
Jabari’s fur bristled. He scrambled to the window. The sky over the peaks gleamed with harsh silver light. Was his mind playing tricks, or was that a faint, spectral shimmer swirling around the old mine’s sealed gate?
He snatched up his battered satchel, heart pounding. If ghosts were sending invitations, he wasn’t about to refuse. Not this time. He would uncover the truth. And—he’d bring something back. Proof. Maybe even a story for himself.
He scampered down the ridge on snow-crunching paws, eyes darting. The mine loomed, a squat black mouth ringed with icicles. Not a single elder in sight. Only a dust of powder coating the ground. Jabari crept closer, clutching the lockpick like a wand.
That’s when he spotted them—claw marks, gouged deep and fresh into the wood. Too large even for a yeti. Something else had tried to get in—or out. It was both thrilling and... less than comforting.
As Jabari squatted to inspect them, a loud sneeze exploded behind him. “A-choo!”
He spun around.
A girl—maybe a year or two older than him, wrapped in mismatched scarves like a rainbow-draped snowman—tumbled out from behind a drift. She grinned, cheeks blazing with cold.
“Fascinating, aren’t they?” she asked, immediately dropping to crouch beside him, snow whumphing up around her boots. “That one probably belongs to the legendary frost-wolf, or maybe a mutant marmot. You think it’s haunted in there?”
Jabari stammered, “Um, I—I was just—”
“Exploring!” she declared decisively. “Perfect. I’m Kaya, aspiring adventurer and officially the bravest person in class. You’re Jabari—tinker, idea-smith, but rather shy.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “Which is why I’ll be the talker and you’ll handle the tricky bits. Deal? Oh, and we’ll need a third, for trap-spotting and general wolf business.”
“Wolf business?” Jabari echoed, trying to regain his balance.
Kaya nodded at the claw marks. “We need someone who thinks like whatever did that. Come on—I know just the one.”
They followed faint prints beyond the mine to the edge of the pine woods, where silence hung thick as fog. There, scanning the horizon with ice-bright eyes and blending almost seamlessly with snow and shadows, stood Lupa: the wolf. She was larger than either of them, lean and wary, with fur as grey as mountain dusk and a scar along her ear. Lupa’s reputation for prickly intelligence—and for keeping her distance—preceded her.
Kaya waved like they were old friends. “Lupa! We’re about to go somewhere very dangerous, extremely foolish and highly possibly cursed. Would you care to join us?”
Lupa fixed them with a look that managed to convey skepticism, irritation, and just a hint of amusement. “No.”
Kaya tilted her head. “If it helps, Jabari’s dad once saved you from a collapse, didn’t he?”
Lupa’s nostrils flared. She eyed Jabari, who shuffled his feet but didn’t look away. “Fine,” Lupa finally said. “I’ll make sure you two don’t get yourselves killed. But you’re carrying your own supplies, and if I say run, you run.”
With the trio assembled—one hopeful, one cautious, one barely believing any of this was a good idea—they trudged back to the mine. Jabari produced his makeshift lockpick, hands trembling. The old mining gate was banded with iron so cold it burned at a touch. Working quickly, almost forgetting to breathe, Jabari pried loose the rusted padlock. Metal shrieked. The gate swung open—on its hinges, or perhaps, on its own.
Inside, darkness pooled against their boots. Their breath plumed, making ghosts of themselves. Kaya produced a flickering candle stub from her pocket and grinned. “Forward to adventure!”
The mineshaft sloped down into the earth, lined with rotting beams and dust-choked rails. Their footsteps echoed louder than seemed possible. Now and then, the wind outside sobbed through cracks, and faint blue glimmers danced across the stone. It was Lupa who nudged Jabari, her voice low: “There. Look.”
On the wall, symbols glowed—runes in a script that twisted and flowed like water. Some looked almost like letters, others like stories half-finished. As Jabari traced their pattern, power hummed up his arm: wonder, memory, longing. “Magic,” he whispered. “There really was a library!”
The stones shivered. A spectral wail rose up behind them, high and cold as winter storms. The flames in Kaya’s candle guttered to blue. The mine’s door slammed shut, iron groaning as if the mountain itself had drawn a breath and decided—no one was leaving.
For a long moment, none of them spoke. Then Kaya squared her shoulders. “So,” she managed, “guess we’re not going back now.”
Lupa sniffed the air, hackles high. “Something’s awake down here.”
Jabari forced himself to breathe. His heart hammered, but inside, something else flickered to life—a fragile but stubborn hope, bright as myth.
“Good,” he said, voice rough but steady. “Because we came for answers. And I think they’ve been waiting for us.”