The spiral stair never quite agreed on where it was going.
Each step curved slightly away from the last, turning without committing to a direction, as if the concept of forward was negotiable here. Elaris climbed in silence, the ache in her wings a low, steady reminder of the choice she'd made in the Vault.
Above them, something chimed.
Soft. Delicate.
Dangerous.
They reached the top together.
A circular chamber waited—smooth, pale stone veined with faint light. Twelve doors ringed the room, evenly spaced, each carved with a scene that felt wrong in a way that crawled under the skin.
A dead tree bearing ripe fruit.A river flowing uphill.A blade healing the hand that held it.A bird released… only to fly back to the same palm.
From the ceiling hung thin metal chimes like frozen rain.
Xyren stepped beneath them.
They sang.
Not music—logic arranged as sound.
Choose the door that is always true,The door that lies but gets you through,The door that takes and leaves you two—Three choices, only one for you.
The final note faded, leaving the room too quiet.
Kael exhaled slowly. "The 'always true' door is a trap."
"Agreed," Xyren said, already running models. "Truth here would be static. This place hates static."
He paced the circle, eyes flicking from carving to carving. "Lies that get you through… Door Eight. The river climbing the mountain. Physically false, narratively consistent. It promises progress by contradiction."
Kael nodded. "Makes sense."
Elaris didn't move.
She was standing in front of Door Twelve.
It was different.
No carving. No story. Just a shallow dent in the stone—exactly the size of her palm.
The air felt… expectant.
"What if," she said slowly, "truth isn't what the door shows us."
Both of them turned.
"What if it's what we choose to carry through it?"
Xyren frowned. "Elaris, that door has no data. No metaphor. No—"
She placed her wounded hand into the dent.
The stone warmed instantly.
Not hot. Not cold.
Alive.
The door sighed and swung inward.
The chimes above fell silent.
Inside was a short hall—and then a space that was not a room at all. Open air held together by will alone. Beyond it rose a palace of obsidian and light, spires braided with shadow like dark hair, sharp and elegant and waiting.
Xyren swallowed. "That's… not a puzzle reward."
"That's a destination," Kael said quietly."Or a mouth."
"The heart," Xyren whispered.
"And the teeth," Kael finished.
Behind them, something shifted.
The other eleven doors did not close.
They forgot how to exist.
The chamber erased them without ceremony, as if they had never been options at all.
A wind rolled out from the palace steps below, heavy with intent.
Elaris flexed her wings.
Whatever waited ahead wasn't asking them to choose anymore.
It had already decided they were worth testing further.