A cold fog blanketed the jagged cliffs,
where the waves below spoke in thunder.
In a narrow village etched into stone,
an old fisherman beckoned Arthur near.
“There is a storm in the gorge,”
the man whispered,
“where the wind screams like beasts
and the earth breaks beneath your step.
Inside it dwells your fear, and only through it may what you seek be gained.”
Arthur said nothing, but his hands tightened around the straps of his pack.
He followed the path carved by time and tremors, descending into the gorge.
Darkness rose to greet him.
Closed in like breath held too long.
A hiss echoed—then another.
Eyes blinked open in the dark.
Not beasts, but memories.
Failures he’d buried,
moments of doubt made form and voice.
“You will fail again,” they rasped.
“You are not enough.”
Each step felt heavier.
The air grew hotter.
The path ahead a furnace.
But Arthur did not turn back.
“I am afraid,” he said aloud.
“but I must keep walking.”
And so he did.
One step, then another, until fire turned to wind, and the gorge opened into a clearing bathed in gold.
In the center, a single clay pot bubbled, steam rich with the scent of fermented spice and embers roasting.
From it rose a glowing ember,
swirling like flame, until it cooled in Arthur’s hand, the fourth spice.
Back in the village, the old man smiled, a bowl of hot rice waiting by his side.
“Courage,” he said,
“is not the absence of fear,
but the will to walk through it,
burning and whole.”