The road creaked beneath my feet.
Teeth — that's what it was. Thousands of human teeth, pulled from mouths that may still be screaming in other realms. Each step was a confession, a betrayal made solid. Each crunch echoed with ancient memory, grinding against time itself. And the arch I had left behind — "The first door bleeds before it opens" — continued to whisper, even out of sight.
The sky didn't move. It stared. The color had drained from it entirely, leaving only a canvas of bruised black and rotted crimson. The world ahead was changing. I could feel it folding and stretching — not like a place, but like a wound trying to open wider.
Ruins bent like trees in a storm that wasn't there. The remains of cities? Cathedrals? Shapes that once had form were now mockeries of architecture. Doors led nowhere. Stairs spiraled both up and down at once. And behind some of those doors… eyes. Watching. Blinking out of sync with time.
And then… I saw it.
An altar. No — a throne. A thing made of reverence and ruin. It stood atop a mound of skulls, some split by force, others by madness. Surrounding it were broken mirrors filled with images that didn't reflect the present. They showed things I hadn't yet done. Murders. Ascensions. Screams in languages that would make blood curdle.
Floating above it, a spiral of living stone spun without motion. Symbols flickered across its surface — alive and unreadable, yet I felt them inside my ribs, gnawing. It was saying names. Names I didn't know — but which knew me.
And from within it… descended a figure.
It had no face. No true form. Only a veil, dripping like wet ash. Its arms were long, and in place of hands were lengths of chain, rusted and twitching, as if remembering past bindings. It hovered just above the ground, weightless yet heavy — a gravity of presence.
It didn't speak with words. It entered.
"Steps exist. But they have no names. Because those who climb… forget."
The voice was a thought pressed into me like a brand. My chest ached. My hands burned. The key I carried flared once — a final breath — and went cold.
The faceless being raised its arms and three paths unfurled from the base of the altar:
— One paved in black obsidian, lined with skulls turned inward, whispering to themselves.
— One made of shattered mirrors, reflecting futures that never happened.
— One formed entirely of bone, all cracked, but none broken.
"Each path is an abyss," it said again, this time as if the world was saying it.
"But only one leads to Ascension.
Another to Truth.
The last… to Yourself."
I didn't choose.
The black stone road crumbled beneath me as something deeper chose for me. I fell. Or rose. Or was erased. My consciousness unraveled like a thread in burning cloth. I was being rewritten.
I saw wars I'd never fought. Cities burning in my name. I felt adoration — and fear — from mouths that hadn't yet been born. I saw temples built from my teeth, priests baptizing children in my blood. And above it all — my name carved in the sky in letters of bone.
I wasn't dreaming.
I was remembering something that hadn't happened yet.
And in the middle of it all… the child in black rags returned. Always watching. Always there. Its mask now cracked, revealing nothing underneath. And in its hand — the key. Again.
But this time… the key was in me. Embedded in my chest, pulsing like a second heart. With each beat, a lock opened. Inside my mind, inside my name.
Reality twisted. A soundless scream erupted from the core of everything. The world around me shattered into letters — phrases — meanings. And when they reformed, I was elsewhere.
Kneeling.
On paper.
Books surrounded me. Books that wept blood instead of ink. Books that turned their own pages. I was in a library — but not one made by men. Not for men. A Whispering Library, where knowledge watched you back.
And from within the air, a single phrase reached me. Not a voice — a sentence-shaped wound.
A name.
Not of a man. Not of a god.
Something older.
"Seth'Riel. The Step That Denies Heaven."
And when I heard it, something shattered inside me.
Not fear.
Not hope.
But the illusion that I had ever been walking.