Vesna Kruger hadn't set foot on Ember Pass since the avalanche took four clients and her guiding license. Now she stood at the trailhead in borrowed crampons, breath fogging, while a man named Doru loaded heavy crates onto her sled by lantern light. "Don't open them," he said, and pressed a thick roll of banknotes into her glove. "Get them over the pass by dawn. No questions." The money was more than she'd made in two years. She tightened the sled straps and looked up at the dark mountain.

Vesna took the money and started up the trail without a word. A deal was a deal. She'd haul the crates, collect the rest, and never see Doru again. The sled scraped over the first rise as the lanterns of the town shrank behind her.

The wind picked up and the snow started falling sideways. Vesna knew the signs at once: the same heavy, brittle snowpack that had buried her clients. She stopped at a fork in the trail, heart pounding. The short route ran straight under the avalanche slope.

Vesna refused to gamble on the killing slope again. She took the long ridge route, twice the distance and twice the cold. Her hands went numb and the storm screamed, but she kept the sled moving, step by step, all night.

On the ridge Vesna found two climbers half-buried and barely breathing, Doru's runners who'd gone ahead and never arrived. She cut the crates loose, loaded the men onto her sled, and chose them over the cargo. The money was gone, but she dragged them down to the warm lights of the valley.