The staircase was made of ribs.
Each step a cage of bone, still wet, still breathing. The lungs inside fluttered under Sunny's weight, exhaling centuries of unsaid apologies that tasted like rust and milk teeth.
Blood dripped upward from the cuts on his soles, painting the ceiling in looping scarlet script that repeated the same sentence over and over:
You were supposed to save me.
He climbed.
At the top, the child waited—legs swinging as if this were a playground, not the heart of a dead world. The cheap coat hung too large, the silver eyes far too old.
"Almost there," the child called, voice bright with playground cruelty. "Took you long enough, coward."
Sunny's shadow cloak writhed. Seven arms unfolded and refolded, unsure whether to shield him or strangle the thing wearing his childhood face.
The child hopped down—cat-light—landing in front of him. Up close, Sunny saw what he had tried to forget:
A scab on the left knee from fleeing the police.
The faint bruise on the cheek—his father's last gift before the bottle won.
Sleeves chewed at the cuffs because hunger had tasted better than pride.
The child spread his arms.
"Remember me? I never forgot you."
Sunny's voice cracked, ancient.
"You're dead. I killed you in the Red Colosseum. I ate your heart so the others could live."
The child laughed. The staircase shook.
"No. You killed the lie. You ate the part that still believed someone would come save us. I'm what was left behind."
A small hand pressed against Sunny's chest—over the place where a heart should have been.
"I'm the First Nightmare, Sunny. The one the Spell gave you the day you turned sixteen. The one you never actually woke up from."
The world tore open.
The staircase vanished. The Hollow Mountains vanished.
He was sixteen again.
The ruined city of the First Nightmare stretched around him—grey sky, broken buildings, the distant howl of the tyrant larva that would kill him a hundred times before the Nightmare finally let him wake.
He was on his knees in the police station holding cell. Wrists raw from cheap cuffs. The air stank of piss and bleach. A single flickering bulb swung overhead, casting everything in sickly yellow.
The child sat cross-legged on the opposite bench—exactly as he had been that night.
Except now, the child's shadow stretched across the room, black and many-armed, crowned with broken halos.
Young Sunny looked up, eyes wide, terrified.
The child smiled with gentle cruelty.
"Tell him," he said to the shadow. "Tell him what really happened."
The shadow leaned forward. Its voice was Sunny's own, stripped of every lie he had built to survive.
"You never passed the First Nightmare. You failed. The larva tore you apart on the third loop. The Spell couldn't let a Flawed Aspect with a [Crippled] fate line into the Dream Realm—it would have broken the balance. So it did the only thing it could."
The child finished, soft.
"It split you. The part that could lie, cheat, survive—that part woke in the real world, got on the bus, met Nephis, became Saint of Shadows. The part that was still human, still weak, still praying someone would save him… stayed here. Forever."
Young Sunny on the bench began to cry.
The child cupped the boy's face with both hands.
"I died here a hundred million times," he said conversationally. "Each loop worse than the last. The Spell tried to forge me into something useful. It failed. So it buried me under every lie you told yourself later. Every time you said 'I had no choice,' I screamed a little louder."
He turned to adult Sunny, eyes shining with tears that were not his own.
"But then you killed the Spell. The walls came down. And I finally got out."
The child's smile widened, splitting the small face in half.
"And now I'm going to make you feel every second of it."
The cell exploded.
The world became pain.
The tyrant larva towered before him—not bus-sized, but city-sized, carapace made from every corpse Sunny had ever stepped over. Its mandibles formed the gates of the Ivory Tower. Its thousand legs were the Hollow Mountains themselves.
It lunged.
Sunny met it with everything he had become. Shadow cloak detonated into a storm of black spears. Each spear a memory he had tried to bury, punching through the larva's armor and dragging out pieces of himself left behind—screaming fragments of a boy who had once believed in heroes.
The larva screamed in the child's voice and bit him in half. No clean severance. Jaws ground slowly, savoring. Every rib snapped. Every organ ruptured. Blood filled his lungs. Shadow arms clawed inside the creature's throat, tearing out chunks of divine flesh that tasted like his mother's last birthday cake.
He was swallowed. Darkness. Acid. Dissolution of identity.
Then he tore out through its spine. Vertebrae exploded like fireworks.
He stood on the larva's corpse—dripping, reborn, taller, crueler.
The child applauded slowly.
"Better," he said. "But not enough."
The scene shifted.
Now it was the Red Colosseum, the day Sunny had murdered his own past. Stands full of everyone he had failed. Nephis in chains. Effie missing an arm. Kai blind. Cassie with her throat cut.
The child stood in the arena center, holding a crude bone knife.
"This is the moment you decided mercy was a luxury," he said. "Let's recreate it. Only this time, you're on the sand."
The crowd roared.
Sunny found himself on his knees, hands bound. The child circled.
"I begged you," the child whispered. "Do you remember? I got down on my knees, begged you not to do it. I said we could find another way. You told me to shut up and be a man."
He stopped behind Sunny.
"I was fifteen."
The knife came down.
It did not kill. It carved. Slowly. With centuries of patience.
The child peeled strips of shadow-flesh from Sunny's back, revealing older wounds—the First Nightmare scars that had never healed. Sunny screamed until his voice gave out.
The crowd chanted the child's name.
When there was nothing left to peel, the child crouched.
"Look at me."
Sunny did. The eyes were ancient, burning with four billion years of unshed tears.
"I'm not trying to kill you," the child said gently. "I'm trying to make you remember what it felt like to be powerless. Because that's the only honest thing you ever were."
He placed the bone knife in Sunny's hands.
"Now cut me out of you. Or I'll keep you here forever."
Sunny hesitated. Hands shook. The child waited.
Finally, Sunny reversed the grip and drove the knife into his own chest. Once. Twice. A hundred times. Each thrust carved away another lie:
"I had no choice."
"I did it to protect them."
"They would have done the same."
He kept stabbing until the blade snapped. Until only a hollow space remained.
The child reached in, pulling out a small trembling boy—ten years old, curled in a ball, blood-soaked terror. He cradled him to his chest.
"Thank you," he whispered.
The Colosseum dissolved.
They were back on the rib-staircase. The child stood a few steps above, holding the terrified boy. Sunny knelt in a lake of his own blood—empty, flayed, still breathing.
"I don't want your throne," the child said quietly. "I never did. I just wanted you to come back and get me."
He knelt to meet Sunny's eyes.
"But you never did."
The small boy in his arms reached toward Sunny. Slowly, Sunny lifted his own hand—scarred, black with shadow-blood—and took it.
The moment their fingers touched, the world shattered. Light poured in. Not divine. Not radiant. Just ordinary, painful, human light—the kind that comes through a cracked window after the worst night of your life.
The child smiled. For the first time, real.
"I forgive you," he said. Then leaned forward, pressing his forehead to Sunny's.
"I always did."
The boy dissolved into soft grey motes, sinking into Sunny's hollow chest. Warmth returned. Not power. Not divinity. Just the ember of something that refused to die.
The staircase gone.
They stood on a flat plain of black glass beneath a sky that no longer bled. In the distance, a single throne waited—ugly, broken iron.
"That part's still yours," the child said. "I don't want it. Never did."
He turned and walked away. Halfway across, he called over his shoulder:
"Hey, Sunny?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't fuck it up this time."
He waved once. Then gone.
Sunny was alone.
He looked at his chest. A faint scar remained—thin, pale, human. He breathed. Not of blood. Not shadow.
He turned to the throne.
One step. Two.
The shadow cloak settled across his shoulders—not heavy. Just familiar.
Behind him, footprints appeared in the black glass—two sets.
One large.
One small.
Walking together. For the first time.