The climb was becoming impossible. Not because of the slope, nor the altitude. But because of the density.
Something was thickening with every step. In the air. In my legs. In my thoughts. As if the world, suddenly, weighed heavier. As if every particle around me had grown denser, saturated with an invisible but real weight — a weight of memory, of truth, of exhaustion.
It was no longer a climb. It was a crossing. A wall of silence, of resistance, that I could neither bypass… nor refuse.
Each step pressed deeper into my belly, like a dull, visceral pressure compressing something older than pain.
A deep backwash pounded in my legs, wave after wave, as if the ground itself was trying to push me back.
My breath scattered. It no longer flowed, it fragmented. Beat after beat, it became erratic, dissolved, fleeing — as if my own body could no longer contain what it was going through.
My arms, they… still held the child. Out of habit. Out of duty. Out of reflex.
