The year is 2100
The world died slowly.
Not with a bang, but with the relentless creep of ice.
They call it The Cryo-Shift, a sudden, brutal collapse of the climate that turned oceans into tombs and skies into endless gray. One decade of frost swallowed the planet whole. Cities were buried beneath glaciers, forests turned to crystal forests, and humanity was pushed to the edge of extinction.
No one knew exactly why it happened. Some blamed a catastrophic chain reaction in the atmosphere, others whispered about an ancient faultline awakening beneath the crust. But it didn't matter anymore. The old maps were useless, governments crumbled, and the sun was just a pale memory behind a veil of frost.
In the void left behind, a mountain was born.
Mount Ridgeway, a towering, jagged scar tearing through the frozen world like a blade. It grew higher every year, an impossible monolith of ice, rock, and forgotten ruins.
For those who survived, the only way forward was up.
Humanity adapted or perished.
The Hikers emerged: hardened climbers, scavengers, and explorers who dared to scale the frozen heights in search of food, shelter, and remnants of the old world. Each expedition was a gamble—against frost, starvation, avalanches, and the savage beasts mutated by the cold.
Most never returned.
Among them was a man called Ghost.
Hirotaka Mizushino.
A hiker with a feared name, a dark past, and no place to belong.
His story begins not with a summit, but with a fall.
And this is his very story.