And between the ashes of creation, there rose a stairway with no beginning and no end.
Those who walk it are neither living nor dead, but something the gods themselves cannot name."
The Tablets of Ereshka, Fragment IV
The storm had passed, but the desert was not silent. It breathed, low and hungry, whispering over the bones of the fallen. Beneath a shroud of sand, a body stirred.
Lyssa rose from the earth like something the world had tried to bury and failed to forget. Her hair, once silken black, now hung in strands of ash and blood. Her torn flesh shimmered faintly where divine embers still burned beneath her skin. The seed in her chest pulsed once—softly, like a sleeping heart.
She pressed a hand to it.
Warm. Alive. Waiting.
The air stank of brimstone and dust. Her throat was cracked from screams she did not remember giving. Around her lay fragments of what had once been the devils' stronghold—twisted metal, molten glass, a ruin devoured by its own fury. She had destroyed it all in her escape, and yet, the silence that followed did not feel like victory. It felt like exile.
"So this is freedom," she whispered, her voice raw. "Empty and endless."
The desert shifted in reply—an unkind laugh of wind.
She began to walk. Each step left a faint trail of heat behind her, footprints smoldering before the sand swallowed them whole. The sun above was pale, too white to be real. And when she looked closely, she saw the horizon bending, as if the world itself had forgotten its shape.
It was then she noticed the first door.
It stood alone in the sand, made of bone and light. Beyond it was not sky, but movement—a swirl of colors that should not exist. Behind that, another door. And another. Until she realized the dunes themselves were layered with them, like graves built for gods.
A whisper passed through her, not from outside but from the seed within: Choose.
Her hand trembled as she reached for the handle. The metal burned against her palm, and suddenly she felt the pull—something deep and ancient demanding a price. A memory stirred, slipping away before she could hold it.
"A toll," she breathed. "Even here, nothing is free."
She stepped back. The door shimmered, then went still. The seed quieted too, as if listening.
And then the ground trembled.
From the shifting dunes rose a figure wrought from brass and sorrow, its wings fractured but still vast enough to dim the false sun. Its eyes were hollow circles, reflecting every door at once.
"You are not written," it said, voice like thunder on old stone.
"Your name does not dwell in the Ledger. You should not be here."
Lyssa's lips curled. "Then unwrite me."
The Warden's sword materialized from light. It swung once—swift, perfect, inevitable. She moved slower, bleeding still from the lab's torment, but instinct carried her. Claws met blade. The impact cracked the air like glass.
The Warden struck again, speaking between blows.
"The Stairway remembers the living.
The Stairway remembers the dead.
But it forgets those abandoned by gods."
"Then let it forget me twice."
Her fury surged, the seed pulsing harder, brighter. The sand around them turned to molten glass. She caught the Warden's arm, dragged it close, and drove her claw through its hollow chest. Light burst from the wound, then scattered into dust.
Silence followed. The Warden's body fell apart like ash in wind.
Lyssa sank to one knee, chest heaving. The seed inside her flared—a soft, steady thrum—and her skin burned where Ereshka's sigil carved itself across her heart.
For a moment, she thought she heard her mistress' voice in the pulse: not words, but warmth.
She rose again. The dunes had changed. The doors now glowed faintly, hundreds of them stretching into forever. Some were carved in gold, others made from black glass or bone. Each hummed a different note, like a choir of worlds singing against eternity.
She whispered, almost reverent:
"How many realms are there to conquer, my goddess?"
The desert wind did not answer. Only the seed did, pulsing once in reply.
And so, she chose a door that burned between crimson and gold—the color of desire and blood—and stepped forward.
Behind her, the sand began to move again.
Somewhere in the distance, the Warden's hollow voice whispered into the void:
"No god may cross twice."
Lyssa did not look back.
She walked through the light, and the world swallowed her name.