Gold flashed on the shoulder of the mountain. The boulder lit from the inside, cracked, and exploded. The slope fractured like glass. Snow lifted in a white wall.

No warning. No count. Just a roar that erased thought.

"MOVE!" Keahi's voice cut through once. Then the sound took even that.

Hikari turned uphill. She saw only the tail of a golden streak, a shadow where Raizen had been.

She ran toward it without thinking.

Keahi caught her by the arm. Hard. "Downhill. Now."

"Let me go!"

"He bought you time. Don't waste it." Keahi didn't ask. She dragged.

The avalanche dropped.

It wasn't snow at first. It was air. A fist of wind punched the line flat. The first wave hit like a building falling. White. Heavy. Noise too big to hear.

Rune hit the ground, rolled, and screamed orders that broke on impact. "Form - FORM -"

The formation shredded. Nobody cared about formations.

Esen slammed both hands together. A shockwave thumped the ground, tried to shove the front of the slide back. It staggered the skin of the flow, then the next layer crushed it. "Again!" he yelled at no one and did it again anyway.

Ichiro threw his palms down. Low walls jumped up out of packed ice. The slide bit them off like sugar and kept coming. He built higher, wider. They held for half a breath longer. He kept building.

Arashi fired blind into white to clear falling limbs and ice. Green flares popped and vanished. "Left! LEFT!" he yelled, but there was no left, just the place you didn't die and the place you did.

Lynea didn't run. She slid. Violet rings spun up on her ankles and she skated the slope like the ground was a river. Her fragments flashed out to cut ice blocks before they clipped heads. A chunk the size of a chair went for Keita's back. Lynea shaved it into snow and kept moving.

Oren flipped his shield flat and shoved two wounded miners onto it. "Hold!" he barked, and rode the shield like a sled, boots skidding, shoulders shaking. The slide tried to spin him. He muscled it straight.

Keahi pulled Hikari through a gap that wasn't there a second earlier. Hikari fought her like an animal. "Let me go! He's up there!"

"He's behind it" Keahi snapped. "Run."

"I have to -"

"Run!"

Hikari shoved at her once, hard. Keahi didn't let go. She locked her grip and dragged, digging her heels, sword in her other hand, blade spitting small tongues of heat that didn't matter to snow but mattered to the things inside it.

The slide found trees and erased them. Trunks snapped like thin bones. A powder cloud rolled sideways and ate the view. You couldn't tell ground from sky. The roar climbed higher, then lower, then filled every space.

Keahi didn't look back. She kept Hikari's arm in her hand and aimed for the only direction that made sense: downhill.

Rune tried to fly. He opened his wingsuit and caught a pocket of air. It flipped him end over end. He slammed into the slope, slid, and clawed for purchase. A long-armed Nyx rode the front of the slide like a skater and reached for his head. Oren bowled into it with the shield and took them both under. Keita's fan flashed once. Nyx gone. Oren up again, bleeding, dragging the shield and the men on it with his teeth clenched.

"Keep moving!" Rune coughed out snow and blood, staggered forward, spear blades out to trip anything that stood up out of the white.

Esen found a ledge that wasn't there and put a shockwave into the heart of the flow. It didn't stop. It softened. That gave Ichiro time to raise a line of ice that split the tongue and sent the left edge past Division Two instead of through them. Esen whooped once and nearly passed out.

Lynea lost a skate for a heartbeat when the snow grabbed underneath. She pitched forward - Hikari's staff slammed into the ground beside her, a blue ring rippling out under the surface. The layer under their boots stiffened for one heartbeat. Lynea caught balance, kicked, and was moving again.

"Thanks!" she yelled over the roar.

"Keep going!" Hikari yelled back, voice raw.

A heavy shape stood up out of the white in front of them - a plated Nyx, somehow still climbing. Keahi didn't slow. She hit it with two fast cuts and a shoulder. It tipped, fell backward, and vanished under the next wave. Gilded ash flashed, then was gone, swallowed by more snow.

They started to outrun the front. The slide thickened, slowed, turned from a wave into a push. It still wanted them. It had patience.

Arashi tripped over something buried - tarp? rope? - and went to his knees. He saw the next lip coming and knew he wouldn't get up in time. Hikari's hand yanked his collar so hard it choked him. He stumbled forward, coughed, and kept going. "Remind me to not die in front of you" he rasped.

"Do your best" she said, not smiling.

The slope broke into gullies and fan-outs. The avalanche chose a broader path to the right. The group on the left hit a shoulder and slid to a stop, half-buried. Coughing. Cursing. Counting.

Keahi bent over, hands on her thighs, and finally let go of Hikari's arm. Hikari took one step back uphill. Keahi caught her again. Not as hard. Still not asking.

Silence came back in pieces. First the edges - wind, small and mean. Then the groans of settling snow. Then breathing. Then voices.

"Team Three?" Rune shouted.

"Here" Keahi answered. "Hikari. Arashi. Lynea. Ichiro. Esen. Keahi." She swallowed. "Others at camp."

Rune waited for one more voice. He didn't get it.

They stood where the camp should be visible and saw only a white field that stopped short of the perimeter like the mountain had changed its mind. The avalanche had split and run wide down two chutes. The basin had taken wind and powder, not the weight. Some tents were flattened by air, not buried. The heaters still blinked orange under a skin of drift. The center pole stood like a finger.

They'd gotten lucky. Lucky had teeth.

They staggered into the ring of half-buried canvas and rope. Obi burst out of a tent, face white, hair worse than usual. "I heard - I saw -" He saw their faces and shut up.

Feris hung low in her rope sling, eyes too big, body scuffed and spinning slow. "I felt that" she said softly, like the words might change it. "What did you do?"

No one answered her.

Hikari walked straight to the line where camp met open snow. She stopped. She looked up the slope. The white was smooth. Clean. No tracks. No gold.

Keahi stood next to her. She rested the flat of her blade against her boot and leaned on the hilt. Flames on the edge flickered once and went out. Her right shoulder guard steamed in the cold.

Arashi bent double, hands on thighs, breathing like his body had filed a complaint. He straightened, checked his pistols out of habit, and holstered them because there was nothing left to shoot.

Esen sat down hard and laughed in a way that wasn't a joke. Ichiro sank next to him and put a hand on his shoulder without looking at him.

The comms clicked.

Static licked the line, then parted.

"Division Three, report." Alteea's voice. Smaller than usual. Tired. Still iron. "Anyone!?"

Hikari didn't touch her earpiece. "We're here" she said to the snow. Then she lifted her hand and pressed the switch.

"Alteea" Keahi said, voice steady by force. "We made it to camp. Avalanche passed. We have wounded."

"Copy." A breath. The sound of keys. "Iris is on foot from lower ridge. Search team is leaving now."

Silence.

"Raizen" Alteea said, gentle for once. "Can you hear me?"

The wind moved a line of powder along the ground and took it away.

Hikari's throat worked. She kept her eyes on the white, as if staring could drag a shape out of it. "He can't" she said. A whisper. A verdict.

No one contradicted her.

The channel stayed open. No one spoke. Somewhere a tent creaked. Somewhere a heater clicked and failed to catch and then tried again.

Alteea's voice came back thinner. "Hold positions. Don't climb. I'm sending -"

The signal tore and died.

Hikari lowered her hand. She didn't move. Keahi didn't either.

Around them, people started to work because work was the only thing left that didn't break. Oren lifted canvas. Keita dug. Obi counted heads he could see and wouldn't write down the number he couldn't.

Snow drifted across the open, light as breath. It glittered in the weak light. Maybe it was just snow.

Maybe it wasn't.

Raizen didn't walk in out of it.

He didn't call down from a ridge.

He didn't answer Alteea's second try.

Hikari said it first, almost to herself, and the words cut the camp in two.

"Raizen's gone."

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