The wind never truly dies in the Urals.
It prowls the valleys and ridgelines like a restless spirit, rattling bare birches, hissing across the frozen stone. At night it screams—long, feral cries that curl around the peaks like warning songs. The Mansi hunters had long ago given one of those mountains a name: Kholat Syakhl, the Mountain of the Dead.
In the dim light of February 1959, the mountain waited. Snow drifted across its slopes, erasing tracks, swallowing sound, hiding the small traces of what was to come. Soon, nine figures would climb its shoulder, laughing, weary, defiant against the cold. They would pitch their tent there, a fragile canvas wall against an indifferent wilderness.
And within hours, the mountain would keep them forever.