The spiral shimmered before Aarav like an endless thread of stardust, unraveling across the unknown. It pulsed with rhythm, like a heartbeat—his heartbeat. With a deep breath and a muttered, "Well, no one warned me the elevator to hell would be cosmic," Aarav stepped forward.
The moment his foot touched the first step, gravity unlatched itself. He floated—not weightless, but as if the world respected his presence just enough to let him pass unharmed.
The Spiral Stairway – Between Strata
The spiral stairs coiled endlessly in a celestial column, suspended in void. Each step hummed with soft blue runes that flickered to life at his touch, and the space between each rotation of the spiral revealed glimpses of a vast, shimmering nothingness.
Below him, the Shatterfold was now just a blurred memory—a misty floor suspended far beneath his feet. Above… the Second Strata awaited, bathed in an eerie silver glow that bled through the staircase's ceiling like moonlight through cracked glass.
As he climbed, the veil between realms began to thin.
Then he saw them.
The Cosmic Beasts
Gigantic, formless entities drifted outside the spiral staircase, tethered to something unseen—cosmic beasts so vast, their presence made his bones feel imaginary.
One looked like a molten centipede coiled around a planet-sized pearl; another resembled a tiger woven from solar flares and ink-black stone. Their eyes—if they could be called that—flicked in his direction once or twice, but never crossed the barrier of the staircase. One even snarled, causing a tremor in the structure, but the spiral merely flickered and realigned itself.
"Yep," Aarav muttered, ducking instinctively. "Definitely not making eye contact with the interstellar lizard-demon thing again."
He quickened his pace.
Second Strata
The final step burst with silver light as his foot pressed it. The barrier thinned—and shattered. With a boom that echoed like the collapsing of a star, Aarav was flung into the Second Strata. Dust kicked up around his boots as he landed hard on what looked like cracked obsidian ground laced with soft grass that shimmered under his weight.
"Why does every upgrade feel like being drop-kicked by the universe?" he wheezed, brushing himself off.
The sky above him was alive—threaded with violet constellations in motion, drifting like jellyfish across a galactic tide. Strange floating monoliths hummed above ridges in the distance, and the air smelled faintly of ozone and burnt amber.
Then he paused.
"Wait... was that an explosion?" he said, eyebrows raised. "I swear, if this place doesn't kill me, irony will."
Meanwhile, Somewhere in the Second Strata…
A battered figure limped through the thorngrass jungle, trails of blood speckled across her tattered cloak. Her shoulder was bandaged with the sleeve of someone else's uniform, and a glowing red cut traced her cheekbone like a rebellious tattoo.
Xena Vael'thari, of the Ryvalis bloodline, spat out a fragment of a bitter root she was chewing and muttered, "Ugh. I swear this was medicine last time I lost a bet in Gorgul's Vault. Tastes like regret now."
She dabbed some thick purple salve onto a burn across her ribs, then grabbed a broken blade lodged into her boot. She sighed dramatically as she pulled it free.
"That's the third boot this week… seriously, who throws a halberd with precision?"
Collapsing onto a rock with a grunt, she wiped her brow and took a sip from a flask labeled "Not Poison (This Time)". Her eyes, sharp even behind exhaustion, narrowed toward the distance. The faint ripple of power shimmered in the air—the unmistakable distortion of someone stepping into the Second Strata.
She sat up straight.
"Hmm. Someone just got through the Spiral. Could be a merchant. Or a clueless Tier One."
Her lips curled into a smirk as she tapped the side of her head.
"Or maybe... someone lucky. Very lucky. Which means... probably rich."
She stood, wincing slightly but steadying herself.
"Alright, Xena. New plan. Find the poor idiot before the mercs do. If he's nice, sell him bad maps. If he's cute, marry him. If he looks like he's never played dice… fleece him."
Her eyes locked on the horizon where Aarav had just landed, though the two were still miles apart.
The game had begun.