It was during the third hour into the mountain pass that the snow began to fall.
At first, it went unnoticed. It was impossible to tell if the specks drifting from the sky were the remnants of sand or mere ash. It was only when Kuon tilted his artificial eye upward, scanning the heavens with a flicker of pale blue light, that they realized it was snow.
"The first snow," he remarked.
"Snow..."
Kōyoi turned her palm toward the sky. A white grain landed on her hand. It was cold, yet it did not melt.
It simply would not melt.
Even as it touched the warmth of her skin, the flake remained a tiny, stubborn crystal. It was hexagonal and transparent, like a bead of glass. Kōyoi narrowed her eyes. Deep within the crystal, something was moving—a faint, rhythmic flickering of light. Slow and steady, as if it had a pulse.
"Kuon, look at this..."
"Don't touch it. No—I see you already have."
Kuon stepped closer, the focus of his artificial eye narrowing onto Kōyoi’s palm. His blue light pierced through the crystal, projecting its internal structure. Kuon’s eyes thinned.
"It’s a fragment of a Name."
"What?"
"But it’s different from the ones frozen by the Observers. This froze naturally. Residue of prayers that were drifting in the air crystallized as the temperature dropped. There is no malice here. It’s just winter."
Kōyoi looked at the crystal in her hand once more. The pulsing light. Hearing that this was the wreckage of a prayer made a dull ache spread through her chest. A prayer offered by someone, somewhere. Words that never reached their destination. Caught by the winter air, they had turned into crystals and fallen upon the mountain.
Along both sides of the path, the snow was beginning to accumulate. Yet even those that touched the earth did not melt. It looked as if the soil was being paved with tiny grains of light. The ground beneath their feet glowed with a faint, ethereal luminescence.
"This is Otama’s mountain."
The man walking ahead of them, a figure with a fading presence, looked back. He was a resident of Hoshino who had volunteered to guide them over the pass. His name had been half-lost to the world, leaving no fixed way to address him; Kōyoi and the others simply called him "the Guide."
"This mountain is warm. Because when a girl named Otama passed through here, she left her warmth behind."
"You knew Otama?"
"I didn't. But the mountain remembers. When winter comes, the snow on this mountain alone glows without melting. Because the warmth Otama left behind cradles the snow without killing it."
The Guide said nothing more and turned back to the path.
Asahi came to a halt.
His face was tilted toward the sky. A snowflake fell against his cheek, snagging on his eyelashes, refusing to melt. Tiny crystals scattered across his face, flickering like the embers of a dying campfire.
Kōyoi watched his profile and stopped walking as well. Since their journey had begun, she could count on one hand the number of times she had seen Asahi look up at the sky. Asahi was always looking ahead, or at his feet, or behind him. He only looked at the sky when there was no enemy left to fight.
"Asahi."
"Shut up. I’m just looking."
Snow accumulated in Asahi’s hair. Upon those black strands, the unmelted crystals scattered like stars. Asahi closed his eyes. Perhaps he was listening to the sound of the falling snow. When the crystals touched the ground, they made a sound like the faint chiming of glass bells—a sound so delicate it could only be heard if one strained their ears in total silence.
Kuon sat by the side of the road and opened his logbook. He picked up a single crystal and pressed it between the pages. The light of his artificial eye flared as he recorded the data: size, shape, the frequency of the light within.
"The Names frozen by the Observers were uniform. Identical in shape and density, like industrial products. But this snow... every grain is different. Both in form and the way they glow. Proof of natural freezing."
Kōyoi nodded. she focused her mind on the crystal in her hand once more. As she brought her fingertip close to the pulsing light, she saw a faint vibration ripple through it. Inside her drawstring bag, the Divine Drop stirred as if in resonance.
"It really is a prayer, isn't it?"
"Strictly speaking, it is the trace of a prayer. The prayer itself is already lost. Only the form remains. Like a fossil."
"Do fossils have pulses?"
"...There is no record of that. It is a new discovery."
Kuon wrote in his logbook. Kōyoi did not miss the fact that his handwriting was a little more careful, a little more elegant than usual.
They continued their ascent. The snow did not stop. Yet the cold did not sharpen. Just as the Guide had said, there was a lingering warmth in this mountain. The path Otama had once walked. Her footprints were invisible, but the earth remembered her heat.
Near the summit, the wind died down.
The snow fell straight. Undisturbed by the breeze, governed only by gravity, the crystals descended vertically. To Kōyoi’s eyes, the scene looked like pillars of light—unbroken threads of radiance pouring from the heavens to the earth.
"It’s beautiful..."
"I’ll admit its aesthetic value. But watch your step. The accumulation of crystals is making the path difficult to see."
Kuon’s voice was flat, but his artificial eye remained fixed on the sky. He would claim it was for the records. But Kōyoi knew that his blue light was chasing the falling crystals, one by one.
Asahi said nothing.
With his face still turned upward, he walked in silence. Crystals would pile upon his cheeks only to be brushed away by the movement of his stride, and then they would gather again. He accepted the cycle without bothering to wipe them away.
"I wonder if Otama saw this too," Kōyoi murmured. She had meant for it to be a whisper, heard by no one.
"She must have," Asahi answered. He didn't look back.
"That’s why this mountain is warm. The warmth of the person who saw it stays behind here, doesn't it?"
The snow continued to fall. The crystals of prayer piled silently upon Otama’s mountain. A winter without malice settled softly over a nameless warmth, burying the world in a soundless white glow.