That scent shouldn't be here.
At the highest peak in the world, where the wind blew like a razor and the temperature could freeze blood in seconds, the aroma of warm roasted meat was an anomaly. It was a smell from the world below—the noisy human world, full of lies and steeped in deceit.
Chronos stared at the woven bamboo basket resting on the stone.
'What does that girl want?'
The question revolved in his mind. The colossal dragon did not touch the food. He merely watched it with half-lidded golden eyes. Thousands of years of experience had built a solid wall of distrust within his chest. Humans never gave without asking for something in return. They offered sacrifices to soothe his anger, presented tributes to ask for protection, or laid poisoned bait to bring down an enemy.
'Is it poison?' Chronos thought coldly.
Of course, not even the deadliest human poison could harm the internal organs of an immortal dragon. But the fact that a teenage girl had dared to climb the mountain of death just to leave behind a basket of meat sent his suspicions soaring.
Chronos exhaled slowly through his nostrils.
WHOOSH!
The hot air from his breath swept over the basket, keeping the meat inside warm amid the snowstorm. However, he did not eat it. He chose to let the basket rot and become buried in ice, then closed his eyes again.
He was certain the little girl would never return. The path to this peak was incredibly steep. A snowstorm arriving without warning could easily sweep a frail human body away and smash it at the bottom of the ravine.
But Chronos was wrong.
Seven days later.
TAP. TAP. TAP.
The echo of footsteps could be heard again.
Chronos did not open his eyes fully, only leaving a narrow slit between his eyelids. Through the white fog, the same teenage girl appeared once more. Her clothes were still just as simple, but now her knees and hands were covered in blue bruises from crawling along the frozen cliff face. Her breath came in ragged gasps, as though her lungs were about to burst.
In her hands was a fresh basket of roasted meat.
The girl saw last week's basket, still intact where she had left it, now covered in a thin layer of ice. Her face showed neither disappointment nor anger. She simply stood a few steps away from Chronos's snout.
SCRAPE.
She set the new basket right beside the old one. Without saying a word. Without asking for protection. Without kneeling to worship the dragon.
The girl only gazed at Chronos's golden eyes, peering coldly from behind the ice. For several seconds, their eyes met amid the silence of the mountaintop. There was a strange warmth in the girl's gaze—a glimmer Chronos had never seen in any human throughout his tens of thousands of years of life.
Then the girl turned and descended the mountain.
'Crazy,' Chronos thought. 'This human is completely crazy.'
And so the absurd routine began.
Every week, without missing a single visit, the girl would climb the mountain. Sometimes she arrived in clothes torn apart by the storm, sometimes with scratches across her cheeks from falling onto jagged rocks. But no matter what happened down below, she always managed to reach the summit and leave behind a basket of warm roasted meat.
One year passed.
Two years passed.
Five years passed.
The teenage girl began to grow into an elegant young woman. She grew taller, her features became more beautiful, and her steps grew steadier across the snowy terrain. Yet her attitude toward Chronos never changed in the slightest.
She never spoke. Never shouted. Never begged.
She simply came, set down the meat, gazed at the dragon for a moment, and left.
Chronos, who had initially been suspicious and indifferent, gradually began to feel unsettled. The dragon grew accustomed to the echo of fragile footsteps arriving every week. Without even realizing it, whenever the woman's day of arrival drew near, Chronos no longer slept deeply. He would slowly awaken, waiting for the echo of those steps to pierce the storm.
In the tenth year, Chronos finally ate the meat.
SLURP!
Using his colossal tongue, he drew a piece of roasted meat from the little basket and swallowed it. For a creature as large as a mountain, a piece of meat like that could not even be felt inside his mouth. Yet the savory flavor, the seasoning that had soaked in, and the warmth of meat roasted with such patience spread through his chest.
It wasn't poison. It was food prepared with genuine care.
'Why?' Chronos asked himself as he watched the young woman's back while she began descending the mountain. 'What do you get out of doing this?'
Decades passed like water flowing down a river.
The teenage girl who had once possessed a fresh, beautiful face had changed. Lines of wrinkles had begun to etch themselves across her features. Her once-shimmering black hair was gradually filled with white strands. Her formerly nimble steps had slowed and grown heavy.
The woman had grown old.
NOW!
Her footsteps no longer kept a rhythm. Her body was severely hunched, and a rough wooden staff now rested in her hand to support her weight, increasingly worn down by age.
TAP... SCRAPE... TAP...
Chronos opened his eyes wide. The colossal dragon watched as the old woman struggled up the snow-covered stone, one step at a time. Her breathing sounded painfully labored. Every gust of cold wind seemed capable of carrying her hunched body into the ravine.
Yet she still made it to the top.
With violently trembling hands, the old woman placed the basket of meat on the stone floor. The roasted meat was still steaming hot, wrapped in thick cloth to keep it from growing cold during the journey.
Chronos exhaled slowly, scraping away the ice around him.
"Grrr..."
A soft, low growl emerged from the dragon's throat—a sound so quiet that it would not damage the eardrums of the old human before him.
The old woman looked up. Her eyes, clouded by cataracts and old age, stared directly at Chronos's golden pupils. For the first time in decades, the wrinkled woman's lips lifted slightly, forming a sincere and soothing smile.
She wasn't afraid. She had never been afraid from the beginning.
'If this had happened back then,' Chronos thought as he stared at the hunched figure in overflowing wonder, 'I would've thought this human had some deeply hidden motive. But you're old now. You've spent your entire youth just climbing this mountain.'
Chronos knew the woman did not want wealth, because she had never asked for gold from his lair. She did not want power, because she had never brought an army.
'I have nothing to repay you with,' Chronos sighed inwardly. 'I only have my power. And if I leave this mountain to help you, the whole world will only panic and descend into chaos.'
The old woman gently tapped her wooden staff against the ground, then slowly turned away. Her frail footsteps once again carved a trail across the deep snow, leaving him alone in the cold silence of the summit.
Chronos stared at the basket of meat, then at the old woman walking away. For the first time in hundreds of thousands of years, the dragon's chest felt constricted by a feeling he had never known before.
A great question began to torment his mind: 'How long are you going to keep bringing me this food?'