Alaska was colder than any of them had expected. Even Felix, who once spent two winters in Northern Quebec for an artist's residency, shivered as the small cargo plane descended through a veil of storm-laced clouds.
The runway at Barrow was little more than a flattened stretch of ice, the airport manned by two locals and a malfunctioning weather station. But the glacier—hidden deep within the Brooks Range, accessible only by snowmobile and survival instinct—was their destination.
Isaiah would go alone.
The team stayed behind at an outpost while he prepared. Dr. Harrow armed him with the best gear they had: thermal armor, a satellite beacon, and a drone embedded with Sofia's coded signals in case the Whisperers made contact.
Aiden handed him the shard. Not the original fragment, but one of five the Archive had replicated. Each was attuned to a different beacon, each tailored to the bearer's frequency.
"You ready?" Aiden asked.
Isaiah gripped the shard in one gloved hand. "Let's find out."
The ascent took two days.
Isaiah traveled through white silence and blistering wind, memories of his old life surfacing with each mile. The boy from Chicago who lost his parents to gang crossfire. The boy who never believed in fate until his first abduction, when he saw a future in which he died saving strangers.
The boy who woke screaming but stood anyway.
At night, the glacier whispered.
Not like wind or snow, but actual whispers—barely audible at first, then louder, coherent.
"You are alone."
"You are unworthy."
"You were a mistake."
Each step became a battle not against the cold, but against belief.
On the third night, the storm abated.
Isaiah reached the heart: a chasm of black ice surrounded by spires like frozen lightning. At its center floated a structure—circular, rotating, crystalline. The beacon.
He stepped forward, shard in hand.
The beacon flashed, and the glacier vanished.
He stood in a field under a burning sky. Fire rained from above, cities collapsed in the distance, and he was alone. Again.
This was the test.
"Show us your worth," the voice said.
But this wasn't a fight of fists. It was a trial of spirit.
He was shown futures where he betrayed his friends. Timelines where he died in shame. Universes where he gave up.
But then, he remembered Aiden's voice, the way Sofia stood between danger and others without fear, how Harrow never flinched, and how Felix painted with hope even in darkness.
He knelt, placed the shard into the icy altar beneath the beacon, and whispered, "I choose to carry others. Even when I can't carry myself."
The field disappeared.
He awoke at dawn. The beacon was gone. In its place, a symbol etched into the glacier—glowing with pale blue light.
Back at the outpost, the others watched as Isaia