I had no idea what to expect. No image, no clue of what I might find at the summit.

But there it was—at the top of the Volcano, nothing but a gaping void. The landscape was barren: jagged rock, coarse, frozen pumice, and clouds torn across the sky by an icy wind. At the bottom of that yawning chasm, a lake shimmered—untouchable, unreachable. The slope was too steep, impossible to descend without ropes.

The wind howled. And the farther I wandered from the lodge where clusters of tourists in bright clothing chattered and laughed, the more the world faded to something ancient and raw—this stark, mineral expanse.

And that’s when I saw it.
The thing.