A Five-Hundred-Word. Very similar to Hundred-Words, just five times as long.
While I've been too busy to really get into the spirit of things, to my great sadness, I at least was able to write this earlier in October.
I present it to you now!

Cut over eras into grey rock, a ravine cleaves rain-polished cliffs down and deep towards the mountain’s hollowed heart. Should one enter the stony throat, braving keening gusts of frigid air deafening in their vindictive whispers, the adventurer within will finally be killed nevertheless – not by the cold blades of nature sucking life from their blood, but rather by the gate.

It offends the very mountains, ageless and defiant of forces deemed supreme. For all the wind and water can try, for all the stone and storms can pound, the ancient passage denies time its usual weathering dues. Its metallic sheen never tarnishes, its flanking pillars never bend, and for all the fruitless frustrations of Earth itself its doors never reveal a crack’s view of whatever it keeps inside.

If a daring soul is willing to follow legends, legends which seem to originate from no nation or creed so much as from the depths of memory itself, said soul can sit outside the door once per fortnight and flip a coin. So likely as heads lands the gate will silence nature’s spiteful song against its unyielding frame with an unforgiving shriek.

Somewhere in the depths of the range something tears and breaks. Every time, metal rends. Every time, something falls. Every time, it gets a few paces closer.

Yet the gate is untouched. The bleak cliffs go without a crack. Even in the bitter winter, when snow strangles what little calls the heights home, not so much as an icicle falls.

It’s as though the war within the hills is none more than imagined.

However, no matter how the screams of material failing have never been successfully recorded, no matter how great the discrepancies are in what exactly witnesses claim to hear, no matter how much anyone unfortunate enough to be there in those wretched moments tell themselves that the unearthly howls stabbing at their frozen lungs never happened, everyone, everyone, knows the truth.

Inside the gate something is churning.

Inside the gate something wants out.

So, take the dare.

Gather your friends, pack bags, and set out on that second week.

Climb the mountain, laughing, poking fun along the way at all the theories of this eldritch gate’s supposed origins.

Tell farfetched tales of how an ancient empire constructed its grand form to keep their vanquished enemies’ souls contained for all eternity, how it was crafted by the gods to lock away a cruel demon which sought to count its endless days by tallying the splinters of men’s bones, how alien races built the mechanisms to forget behind them their greatest mistake.

Tell these stories and know them all to be true.

Savour these moments of warm bliss in the biting frost. Hold them dear, as the sight atop that lonely range within the dreary chasm will surely extinguish the spirit’s hottest fires.

Wish for the ashen rain of a blizzard to hide that grim display from mortal eyes.

The gate is open.

The wailing heart is out.