"The dead gods still whisper through their bones.
They remember the warmth of prayer, and they hunger."
From the Hymns of the Unwritten
---
The air shifted when she crossed the seventh landing.
Lyssa had learned by now that the Infinite Stairway did not end — it merely changed its mind.
Each door she opened was another truth uncoiling in her chest, each threshold a question the universe whispered in a dead tongue.
This one, however, breathed.
The stone beneath her bare feet trembled as she stepped through. Wind, *real wind*, brushed her skin — warm, thick with the scent of dust and spice.
And before her stretched a city of golden ruin.
Half-buried ziggurats pierced a crimson sky.
Temples leaned like drunks against dunes of glass.
Incense still burned in cracked braziers though the priests were long dust.
Lyssa walked through the silence like a ghost come home.
> "This place remembers worship," she murmured, running a finger along a toppled idol.
> "But not who they prayed to."
A whisper rose in the air. Soft. Familiar. Hungry.
The idols — a hundred faceless visages — turned slightly, following her with the blind obedience of the damned.
And then, the air breathed back.
---
A voice, slow and honeyed, spoke through the broken wind:
> "Child of Ereshka. Thief of breath.
> You wear the perfume of a dying god."
Lyssa froze. Her pupils flared into black fire.
> "Show yourself."
From the heart of the largest temple, something moved — light, thick as molten glass, spilling outward until it took form:
A man-shaped silhouette made of ash and prayer.
Eyes like sunflares. Voice like a tomb speaking to itself.
> "I am Namtar," it said. "He who keeps the dead awake."
He smiled, and dust bled from the corners of his mouth.
> "They once begged for my blessings. Now I dine on memory. And you—"
> his gaze sliced through her, "—you are a feast born walking."
Lyssa tilted her head, amused.
> "You talk too much for a corpse."
The temple floor pulsed beneath her as tendrils of white ash coiled up, forming specters of the worshippers who once served Namtar. They circled her, whispering half-words of prayers never finished.
> "Kneel," the hollow god said, "and I shall grant you an Anchor — a relic to steady your soul in the storm between worlds. Serve me, and I will feed you from the womb of creation itself."
Lyssa smiled — a sharp, slow smile that carried no warmth.
> "And if I say no?"
Namtar's grin widened.
> "Then you will forget yourself — as all who defy gods do."
The ash-beasts lunged.
Lyssa moved like smoke given fangs.
Her claws split spirits as if they were flesh; each shriek filled her veins with a feverish joy.
For every phantom she tore, she drank in the ghost of worship still clinging to them — warm, intoxicating, divine.
Namtar roared, his form fracturing like a mirror under pressure.
> "You dare *consume* what was mine?"
> "I dare everything," she hissed, her eyes burning with unholy light.
> "And I was hungry."
With a guttural cry, she seized his luminous throat and pressed her lips to his chest.
The air screamed. The temple buckled.
She drank deep , not of blood, but of belief.
Of faith once offered. Of prayers long unanswered.
When she let go, Namtar was gone.
All that remained was a shard of radiant stone — pulsing like a dying heart.
The Anchor.
She picked it up, feeling its pulse sync with her own. The echo of his voice drifted through her mind _ fading, defeated, worshipful.
> "You… are the end of us all."
Lyssa whispered back,
> "Then pray louder."
---
Outside, the false sky trembled. The city began to unravel — towers falling upward into dust.
At the edge of reality, the Infinite Stairway opened once more.
As she stepped through, a new voice ancient and cold, slithered through the dark:
> "You've drawn blood from the divine, Lyssa.
> The balance bends. Beware what wakes."
She paused, eyes reflecting galaxies now pulsing inside her.
The Anchor's light seeped into her veins like a quiet infection.
> "Let them wake," she whispered.
> "I'll be waiting."
And with that, the world behind her folded into silence.