The mountain does not negotiate.
You begin at base camp in the icefall's shadow, where the glacier groans all night like a ship. Above you: the western cwm, the lhotse face, the geneva spur — and somewhere past the south col, a wind that has killed better climbers than either of us. Scroll to climb. There is no shortcut key.
The valley of silent wind.
By camp two the air has thinned to a rumor. Every step is a sentence you must finish before breathing. The lhotse face rises ahead like a held breath — fixed ropes the color of old butter stitching the ice.
Into the death zone.
Above eight thousand metres your body is dying faster than it can heal. That is not poetry; it is arithmetic. Toggles the oxygen off if you want to feel what the mountain takes — the page itself will narrow.
One step. One breath. Repeat.
The summit pyramid is not climbing so much as very slow falling upward. The blue spot becomes the black sky becomes everything. Somewhere below, the world you agreed to return to.
The top of the troposphere.
You are standing where the weather lives. The horizon curves, faintly, like a held breath let go. Take your photograph — the wind will take everything else.