There are paths that remember their makers, and doors that judge those who knock.
Every passage demands a price.
Even silence."
The Testament of the Warden, Fragment 9
....
Lyssa woke to the sound of her own breathing — ragged, animal, desperate. The storm had passed. The air no longer burned. She tasted sand and ash, the flavor of survival. When she opened her eyes, the world was wrong.
The desert had folded in on itself. Dunes curved upward like the ribs of a dying god, and where the horizon should have been was a staircase that vanished into nowhere — steps carved from light and bone.
She touched one. It was cold, humming like a throat holding back a scream.
A whisper bled through the silence. *"You should not be here."
Lyssa laughed weakly. "You and everyone else."
Her voice echoed a thousand times, bouncing across unseen walls. For the first time, she felt small— not in the way mortals were small, but in the way forgotten prayers were small.
She climbed. Each step shimmered between existence and memory. Doors flanked the stairway — some gilded, some rotting, some breathing as if alive. Behind one she heard oceans. Behind another, laughter that made her skin crawl.
When she reached for the third door, it pulsed with light. A sigil flared — a language older than her goddess. Her touch burned; she hissed, instinctively summoning dark energy to force it open.
The door screamed.
The Stairway reacted like a living thing — the air rippling, the steps trembling under her. Shadows spilled from the walls, coalescing into a figure. Not flesh, not smoke — something between.
The Warden.
He had no eyes, only mirrors, reflecting her in endless distortion. His voice came from every direction at once.
"Rule the First: None ascend without purpose. Rule the Second: None break what was sealed."
Lyssa stood her ground, lip curling. "Then tell me how to open it."
"You were not chosen."
"Neither were you." She flung her words like daggers. "Now you guard a graveyard."
The Warden stilled. "A graveyard is holier than the living who defiled it."
Something in his tone pierced her — ancient grief, bound duty. She almost pitied him. Almost.
When he raised a hand, the Stairway's sigils glowed. A force pressed her to her knees. Her wings — ragged, blackened stubs — flared out, trembling.
"Rule the Third," he whispered. "Every trespasser must leave an Anchor behind — blood, memory, or soul."
Lyssa snarled, cutting her palm. "Then take this, old ghost." Her blood dripped onto the stair, black and luminous.
The Stairway drank. The Warden paused, tasting the power. "Ereshka's seed still burns in you."
At her mistress's name, Lyssa's rage cooled to something sharper. "Then you know why I climb."
He said nothing. Only stepped aside, and the sealed door's sigil dimmed to a dull glow — not open, but watching.
As Lyssa ascended further, her blood mark followed her like a trail of stars. The Stairway whispered its secrets in half-formed words. Somewhere far above, another door opened — one that smelled of iron, fire, and the faint echo of Earth.
Lyssa smiled — the kind of smile only the condemned could wear.
"An Anchor, a purpose, and a sin," she murmured. "Seems I already have all three."
And the Stairway answered — with a heartbeat.