True TAIWAN Horror story

No one could have lunch at noon. At this altitude, appetite is already scarce, but here, on the ruins of C2, it was impossible to eat anything. So we retraced our steps downhill, following the footprints we’d left on the ascent. Halfway down, Chen Ming stopped abruptly, his face pale. Honestly, I was terrified too—too scared to look back, fearing our group of four had gained a fifth member who shouldn’t exist. Thankfully, nothing was behind us.

Chen Ming pointed at our tracks and told me to look. At some point, the footprints we’d left climbing up split off in two directions. It meant someone had followed our route up the mountain, then veered away here. Though we were eager to descend, we felt obliged to link up with other rescue teams—both to warn them of the situation and for the safety of greater numbers. But as we followed the diverging tracks, they led to the edge of a cliff—and stopped.

We all flinched. If an entire team had fallen, it’d be catastrophic. Yet below the cliff, there was nothing—no bodies, no gear, no signs of a fall. The snow remained pristine and thick. A chill shot through me. The owner of these tracks couldn’t have backtracked upside-down, could they? Or had the trail started at the cliff? It felt like a sick joke. Then Mita let out a gut-wrenching sob.

Not far from the cliff, on a snowy slope, sat a small rock ledge. On it, something black fluttered in the wind—long woman’s hair. The only woman on the missing team was Kita Kiyoko. That hair on the ledge had to be hers—her head. Avalanches or falls often leave climbers’ bodies mangled; necks snap easily, so severed heads aren’t rare. But seeing it there, alone on that ledge, was unbearable.

‘I’m taking her back,’ Mita said, voice trembling. ‘Even if it’s just her head, I’ll bring her back to Japan.’ He unclipped his safety rope and started toward the steep, unstable slope. Chen Ming grabbed his collar and threw him down into the snow.

‘We go together,’ he said. He secured Mita’s rope, and the four of us edged toward the slope. We drove two ice axes deep into the snow for anchors, then slowly traversed sideways. ‘Kiyoko,’ Mita whispered, ‘we’re going home. Back to Japan together.’ With shaking hands, he reached from behind, cradling her head, and gently lifted. Then—‘Aaaah!’—he screamed. It wasn’t a head. It was a full scalp, hair attached, torn off and snagged on a jutting rock.

Chen Ming and I froze. This death was too cruel, too bizarre, too unnatural—stripped of all dignity. ‘No, no, it shouldn’t be like this,’ I muttered, stumbling back. Something tripped me, and I crashed onto the snow. Frowning, I looked down—a sky-blue jacket, half-buried under thin snow. A gust blew the cover away, and my jaw dropped.

Wang Yi lay there, long dead, eyes wide open in a frozen stare. His body was an ice pillar, stiff for at least three hours. I glanced at Chen Ming and Mita, who gaped back at me, bewildered. Then I realized—the Wang Yi who’d been with us was gone.

I was certain we’d been four since the climb began. Three of us couldn’t hallucinate a fourth together. If this was the real Wang Yi, dead here, then who was the Wang Yi who’d followed us from the fork to this slope? Seeing one teammate dead and another mutilated snapped our last thread of sanity, like a final straw. Three grown men knelt on the slope, sobbing like puppies, whimpering for who knows how long. Eventually, we trudged downward, heads bowed in mourning, a funeral procession.

We left Kiyoko’s scalp and Wang Yi’s body on that slope. Along the way, we shed our gear, abandoning it piece by piece. Survival instinct gone, we just wanted to lighten our load and escape. But as if the mountain read our minds, thick fog rolled in that afternoon, obscuring the path.

The weather turned against us—we missed C2’s camp spot entirely. The scenery was unfamiliar; we had no idea where we were. As daylight faded, wind and snow intensified, plunging us into darkness. It enveloped us. Sharp gusts howled in our ears, laced with sounds not of this world—laughter, cries, wails, sighs—boring into our skulls. We couldn’t ignore them. Our hands and feet, once aching, then numb, now felt nothing. Regret gnawed at me. We should’ve descended when we had the chance.

No—I realized we never should’ve come here. This mountain holds nothing but death.

Nothing at all.