The sky was tinged with red that July afternoon as Laura and her father, Daniel, adjusted their outfits and socialized for the camera for the last time. It was a promise fulfilled, a trip dreamed of for years, a rite of passage between them. Laura, twenty-two years old, wore her hair in braids and a sparkle in her eyes that spoke of service and emotion. Daniel seemed more serene, although his smile concealed the theory that he knows the mountain doesn’t forgive him. With his gear loaded and his ropes neatly arranged, he began the ascent up the side of Mount Hooker, the graphite wall that rises almost vertically against the sky. No one would see them again.

The alarm went off two days later, when they stopped answering radio calls. In the first few hours, the silence was interpreted as a simple communication failure, but when the storm fell, the rescue team was mobilized. Helicopters flew over the mountain with searchlights, search groups checked every crevice, and even trained dogs were taken by aircraft to the access points. The only thing that was found was a section of severed rope, hanging like a thread from the wall, and embedded in the rock. It looked too clean, too precise, as if someone had deliberately decided to disconnect. The family clung to hope for weeks, but summer ended, snow covered the Hooker, and the investigation was closed. “Mountain accident,” the official reports stated, and with those three words the case was closed.

But the pain wasn’t filed away. Lara’s mother left the room untouched, her boots still stained with dust and her backpack hanging in the same place where her daughter had left it that morning. Every anniversary of her disappearance, a small group of friends would leave flowers at the foot of the mountain, as if the gesture concealed the promise that one day the mountain would return what it had taken.

That day came eleven years later. It was at the end of June, in the summer, when a team of professional climbers was tracing their route up the wall. The wind was calm, the sky clear. One of them spotted something that looked like a metallic glint in the distance, like an object that the sun had accidentally revealed. They approached. What they found there changed the silence and sent a collective shudder: an intact camp hanging from the rock, suspended like a time capsule several meters above the ground. The ropes, still worn by the weather, still held the platform up. Inside, the gear bags, the overturned thermos, the rust-streaked mug—everything was in place, as if their owners had planned to return at some point. But what made the air unbreathable was the sleeping bag. Inside, the skeleton is perfectly arranged, with its hands folded on its chest, as if the person had simply gone to sleep and had just woken up.

The team immediately called the authorities, who deployed an operation to recover the scene. The leaked images showed something even more disturbing: a diary soaked with humidity, but partly legible. The first pages were technical notes on the access, weather records, and route maps. The last lines, however, seemed to be written in haste, in shaky handwriting: “The ropes are tangled. Something is moving in the dark. Dad says it’s the wind, but I hear footsteps.” There was no more. The last leaves were torn off or destroyed by mold.

The news spread like wildfire. Neighbors, journalists, and curious people gathered at the foot of Hooker, some with candles, others with cameras. The authorities remained silent, which only fueled theories. Some said the body belonged to Laura, others that it belonged to Daniel. Others, more stubborn, claimed that the forensic descriptions clearly coincided with the medical records of the missing. And then the confusion began: if the body in the sack was theirs… where was the other one?

The recovery of the camp was prolonged for days due to a repeated storm that forced the suspension of the work. Several rescuers reported hearing screams, or what sounded like screams, from the windshield. One of them claimed to have seen a silhouette moving higher up, just before the fog covered the wall. No one would officially confirm it, but the situation at the base camp could be cut with a knife.

Meanwhile, Laura’s mother arrived and stood silently against the mountain for hours, holding the sealed letter. She didn’t speak to the press. She didn’t cry. She just left the letter in a small cavity in the rock and walked away without looking back. No one knows what she said.

The government promised to release a full report in the coming weeks, but those who have seen the evidence up close say it doesn’t resemble a common accident. The cuts to the neck found in the camp are not so regular, they appear to have been made at different times, some with a knife, others torn out by force. In addition, there were claw marks on the platform floor, as if someone had tried to cling desperately in order not to be pulled away.

The climbers who returned a few days later say the place no longer feels the same. “Hooker is… different,” one of them murmured. “It’s as if the mountain remembers what happened that night.” Locals claim that, since the discovery, things have become more restless: the wind seems to bring moths, and in the early hours, some claim to see light moving along the wall, right where the camp was found.

No one knows if the riddle will ever be solved, if the mountain will ever return the last piece of this puzzle. For now, all that remains is the empty sleeping bag, the diary that is shattered in the darkest moment, and the corazon that seems to silently watch those who dare to climb it. And every time someone passes by, they hope to hear something. A whisper, a rope knock, the sound of footsteps.