I was standing on this same mountain top, but I was not wearing my climbing gear. I was wearing a robe of undyed wool, and my hair was long and white. In my hands was a chisel and a hammer. I was carving a single word into the stone floor.
I have read. The door is not a door.
I pitched my final camp on a razorback ridge. My altimeter read 7,200 meters, but that is a lie. The sky was wrong. The constellations were a half-turn out of phase, and the wind carried no sound from the world below. No bird cry. No avalanche rumble. Just a low, subsonic hum that I felt in my fillings.