The glyphs pulsed brighter, spiraling across the walls like veins of fire. Each beat seemed to throb in time with Kaelen's own heart, a rhythm that grew harder to resist the longer he stared.
"What are they saying?" Lyra murmured, her voice hushed as though afraid the stair might overhear.
Kaelen shook his head. "It's not words. It's… intent. A warning. A lure."
The candle-bearer's flame flickered wildly, pulled toward the markings as if the symbols were breathing them in. Their hand trembled. "It feels like it wants me."
Before Kaelen could answer, the glyphs surged, flaring white-hot. The chamber lurched, tilting beneath their feet. The stair stretched—stone steps rippling like liquid, folding and twisting until the path ahead was no longer stairs at all, but a spiraling corridor that bent in impossible directions.
Lyra staggered, bracing herself on the wall, only to feel it pulse beneath her palm like living flesh. She recoiled, eyes wide. "The stair… it's alive."
A low hum filled the air, swelling into a deep, guttural tone that shook their bones. The walls closed in, reshaping, the glyphs rearranging themselves into snarling patterns. The spiral twisted until up and down were meaningless—Kaelen felt his body pulled in two directions at once, as though gravity itself had fractured.
"Stay together!" he shouted, but his voice stretched, echoing back in strange, broken tones—his own words thrown at him in a dozen distorted voices.
The candle-bearer screamed as the stair bent them upward, their flame guttering. Kaelen lunged, catching their wrist, but for a heartbeat he wasn't sure if he was grabbing them—or their reflection.
The stair was no longer just a path. It was a predator.
Shadows seeped from the cracks, not like the ones they had fought before but elongated figures with no faces, their bodies made from the stair itself. They reached with arms of stone and glyph-light, pulling, clawing.
Lyra roared, her molten blade slicing through the first that lunged for her. It shattered into shards of glowing rock, but where it fell, the stair healed itself, rising higher, reshaping.
Kaelen's fire blazed, but every flame he cast was absorbed by the glyphs, swallowed into the walls until the stair glowed brighter. His own power was feeding it.
"They don't want us to understand," he realized aloud, struggling against the pull. "They want us lost."
The candle-bearer pressed their tiny flame against the wall. For a breathless second, the living stone recoiled, hissing. The stair did not like their light.
"That's it!" Lyra shouted. "The flame—it hurts it!"
But the stair howled, a sound like a thousand collapsing towers. The glyphs shifted violently, forming a single, blinding command:
"Kneel."
The steps beneath them buckled, forcing them downward. Kaelen fell to his knees, his body heavy as iron, his fire sputtering. Lyra cried out, slammed to the ground. The candle-bearer's flame wavered, nearly extinguished.
Through gritted teeth, Kaelen forced his head up, eyes burning. "No… we don't kneel. Not to shadows. Not to you."
The stair roared, and the entire spiral trembled, splitting apart.
The path itself was tearing open.