Step by step.
Each one heavier.Each one older.
They weren't climbing stairs.
They were walking through time.
The stars above bent to watch.
But none dared shine.Not here.Not this high.
Even light feared what waited at the top.
The girl's breath fogged.Not from cold—from pressure.
Reality itself thinned the higher they went.
Thoughts echoed before they were spoken.
Bones creaked under the weight of forgotten laws.
The boy stopped.
The blade in his hand?Gone.
Or maybe it refused to exist here.
He looked at the girl.
She was flickering.
One moment whole.The next, possible.
Not future.Not past.
Something between.
She asked, "Do you feel it?"
He nodded.
"It doesn't want us to know it's real."
She whispered, "Too late."
And kept walking.
At the summit—
there was no Vault.
No door.No lock.
Just a single line.Etched into space.Barely visible.
A scar.
Like the world had once been split in two—
and stitched back wrong.
He stepped over it.
The world inverted.
Now they stood beneath the staircase.
But still above the sky.
In a place made of silence.
No wind.No time.No gods.
Only her.
She waited on a throne carved from the first heartbeat.The first sin.The first lie.
Tall.Cloaked.Unmoving.
A crown of thorns hovered above her.Never touching.
A void where her face should be.
She spoke.Not with words.
With endings.
The girl collapsed.Bleeding from her eyes.Not pain—
Recognition.
"I know her," she gasped.
"She created me."
The boy stared ahead.
"I thought I did."
The throne-being rose.
Reality cracked beneath her footsteps.
Each step dissolved a part of the sky.
She looked at the boy.
No face.But he felt her eyes.
She reached out.
A hand of black fire.Fingers made of names.
She touched his chest—
and opened him.
Not flesh.
Not bone.
Story.
His life spilled out.
The Vaults.The gods.The blade.
The girl.
Her too.
Every page of him.
Floating.
Visible.
Judgeable.
She turned her hand.
Ready to erase.
But something stopped her.
The girl stood.
Bloodied.Shaking.Smiling.
And said,"He chose to climb."
"He saw the end."
"And came anyway."
Silence.
Then—
the throne cracked.
The crown fell.
The void-face split—
and wept.
She sank to her knees.
Voice trembling.
"You were never meant to reach me."
The boy walked forward.
"I wasn't made to follow the story."
"I came to end it."
He raised nothing.
No blade.
No power.
Just will.
He touched her head.
Whispered:
"Sleep."
And the Vault—
the one that shouldn't exist—
closed.
Not with light.
Not with sound.
But with peace.
They stood in the nothing.
No more stairs.
No more names.
Just each other.
The girl touched his face.
"Are we done?"
He looked up.
Where the stars once were—
now a garden.
New.
Unwritten.
He smiled.
"No."
"But we can write our own now."
To be continued…