SFX: ――KRRSHHHHH…
The dust sighed under her boots.
Lira walked until her legs burned, until the gray dust clung to her skin like a second death. The silence wasn't empty—
it was crowded.
Every grain of ash whispered the echo of a scream that had nowhere left to go.
The Wraithweaver
The first creature came without sound.
It unfolded from the dust itself—tall as three men, body a lattice of bone and shadow, limbs jointed wrong.
Where a face should be: a single, milky eye that swiveled, lidless, and fixed on her.
It didn't walk.
It flowed.
The tower's janitors.
Wraithweavers—born from climbers who had surrendered their names entirely.
They stitched the dead into the ground, to keep the Zone fertile for new despair.
Lira's breath caught. The apple tree tattoo on her chest flickered, dimmer than a heartbeat.
No lantern. No light.
Only Shade's night-forged dagger, its constellations dull but stubborn.
SFX: SHHHH-CRACKLE!
The Wraithweaver raised one skeletal hand.
Threads of shadow spilled from its fingers—searching for her heartbeat.
Lira slashed.
The dagger carved a crescent of starlight through the dark.
The threads recoiled with a hiss like burning silk.
The creature tilted its head, curious—then sank back into the dust.
The Procession of the Dead
More came.
Grave-moths—wings of flayed skin, whispering the last words of the buried.
Chainwraiths—knights dragging their own intestines like leashes.
Echoes of the Unnamed—pale children with mouths sewn shut, eyes weeping dust.
Their fingers ended in tiny mirrors—each reflection showing a future where she walked alone forever.
SFX: HHHHHHHSSSSHHHH… whispering chorus fills the dark.
Lira ran.
The dust clawed at her ankles. Every breath tasted like rot.
The tattoo's glow faded to a weak green ember—like a dying firefly trapped under glass.
Stormfang's Cradle
She crested a dune—and froze.
Below lay a crater of black glass, ringed by dragon bones arranged in perfect geometry.
At its center: the Wrathhound's corpse. Stormfang.
Chains melted into the ground.
Its heart still beat—a crystal of blue fire, tethered by veins of shadow.
The truth hit her like a heartbeat.
Stormfang was no monster.
It was Skyrim's last oath.
When the dragon-knights fell, their warhound refused to die.
It crawled across the void, eating its own grief—until the Tower twisted it into a guardian.
Every climber it killed fed that oath:
Protect the fallen, even from hope.
The crystal pulsed once. A memory spilled free—
A knight with Lira's eyes whispered, "Wait for me at the summit."
Stormfang waited.
Still waiting.
Lira's throat trembled. She knelt, pressing her palm to the crystal. It was warm. Alive. Lonely.
"I can't free you," she whispered. "But I can carry your oath."
CRACK.
The heart split.
A shard of blue fire slipped into her tattoo.
The apple tree flared—its roots drinking starlight.
Power surged through her veins.
The circling monsters shrieked and fled.
Lira rose, the dagger blazing with constellations reborn.
In the far distance, the horizon trembled—a flicker of night sky ribboning toward the void between worlds.
She started toward it, every step a promise.
The Fallen Kingdom
Shade's boots crunched through ankle-deep snow.
The throne room was silent, except for the whisper of drifting frost.
The skeleton king sat unmoving on his melted throne.
Frost crawled across the wall, shaping words:
SHE IS NOT DEAD. YET.
Shade's map-compass spun wildly—needle trembling between two runes: LIRA and SUMMIT.
He slammed a fist on the throne.
SFX: THUD-CRACK!
"Tell me how to find her!"
Dust poured from the king's open jaw, shaping a memory:
Stormfang's knight—small, fierce, braids whipping in dragon-wind—kissed the hound's brow.
"If I fall, find the Door. Bark until the stars hear."
The image dissolved.
The compass needle froze—pointing down.
Shade scraped away the snow. Beneath lay a trapdoor of dragonbone.
He pulled it open.
A staircase spiraled into nothing—colder than the Dead Zone, sharper than the Venom Galleries.
The Void Between Worlds.
The Fall
No steps.
No walls.
Only a fall that lasted forever and ended too soon.
Shade sheathed the night-forged blade, gripped the wooden sword and scorpion stinger—and jumped.
SFX: WHOOSHHHHHHHH—!
Wind screamed.
Stars stretched into rivers of light.
Fragments of lives not his own flashed by:
Lira at seven, running from fire, lantern in tiny hands.
Himself at seven, dropping the wooden blade, cousins laughing.
Stormfang's knight dying, whispering, "Wait for me."
The compass against his chest burned.
He reached for it—and touched nothing.
Time froze.
He drifted amid floating islands of broken moments.
Lira fighting Wraithweavers, dagger gleaming.
Vesper at the summit, mask shattered, bleeding light.
The child of Skyrim, wooden sword raised before the Door of Waking.
A voice—neither Tower nor Maria—whispered through the void:
"Choose the path. One heart. One door. One oath."
Shade closed his eyes.
He saw Lira's smile under sunlit apple trees.
He saw Stormfang's heart beating in her chest.
He saw the child's handprint in the ash.
"I choose all of them," he said.
The void answered.
SFX: BMMM-SHHHHHH—!
The islands shattered into comets that streaked toward a single point—a tear in the dark rimmed with blue fire.
Shade fell toward it, compass blazing with one word:
LIRA.
Behind him, the Fallen Kingdom collapsed into dust.
Ahead, the Dead Zone waited.
He hit the ground hard—gray dust exploding around him.
SFX: BOOMM—THUDD!
When the haze cleared, he looked up.
Fifty paces away, Lira stood, dagger at her side, eyes fierce and alive.
Between them, the Wrathhound's heart pulsed beneath her ribs—blue fire flickering through apple-leaf veins.
The void sealed behind them.
The final spiral had begun.