The staircase delivered them into silence.
Not absence of sound—
weight.
A silence thick enough to crush ribs.
To bend thought.
To make breathing feel like trespass.
No wind.
No water.
No laughter.
Only night turned inside out.
The Sky That Wasn't a Sky
The fourth floor was a firmament. An inverted heaven stretched in every direction—
a black velvet void, embroidered with frozen stars and dying galaxies.
Islands of crystallized starlight floated like drifting continents, jagged and magnificent.
Their edges were sharp enough to cut memory.
Between them drifted broken constellations—shards of forgotten myths leaking faint light,
(starlight drip… drip…)
as if the heavens themselves were bleeding.
At the center of it all hung Kai.
The Crucifixion of Light
He was crucified on his own wings.
The wings—once radiant, feathered with living starlight—were stretched wide, pinned to a cross of frozen comets that glowed with the cold of dead suns.
Chains of compressed dark matter wrapped his wrists, ankles, and throat, humming with a silent vibration:
(low cosmic resonance…)
His body was naked, pale as moonlight, every rib a blade beneath skin.
His eyes—once bright emerald—were now sewn open with threads of silver star-fire, forcing him to watch.
He had been watching for four hundred years.
And the sky forced him to witness everything.
Across the inverted heavens, atrocities replayed on a cosmic screen:
– the caravan walking its endless circle
– the Drowned Legion rising again and again
– the City-That-Ate-Time devouring its children
– Effie laughing herself into rust
– Ash burning her soul to save a monster
All of it.
Every loop.
Every sin.
Every failure.
Silent. Endless.
His tongue had been cut out long ago—
cauterized by a falling star.
Nephis Speaks for the First Time
Nephis stopped on the edge of the nearest floating island.
Her wings of flame folded behind her like a quiet judgment.
"He never looked away," she whispered.
"Not once. The Spire offered him blindness.
He chose to see."
Sunny Walks Into the Sky
Sunny stepped forward.
Starlight islands shifted in slow orbit around him, scraping the void with soundless gravity:
(grinding cosmos…)
He reached the cross.
Kai's sewn-open eyes found him instantly.
Recognition flared across four centuries—
sharp, painful, forgiving.
A single tear of liquid starlight rolled down Kai's cheek.
It hung in the air… refusing to fall.
Then it shattered—
TING.
Into constellations.
Starlight bled into letters across the void:
You came.
Sunny's breath caught.
He touched the chain at Kai's wrist.
It was cold—cold like forgotten space, like distant dead suns.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
Kai's head moved a fraction.
Another tear broke into words:
Don't be.
You are here now.
The chains tightened—
KRNNNCH—!
His body arched in silent agony.
More words spilled across the cosmos, trembling:
She plans to burn it all again.
Slower this time.
So no one forgets the heat.
So everyone learns her name in fire.
Sunny felt the white-gold brand over his heart pulse—
a heartbeat of flame, furious, alive.
He looked toward Nephis.
She stood distant, calm, watching with the serenity of someone who had already made her decision,
already accepted the cost.
Sunny turned back.
"I'm not letting her," he said.
Kai's sewn eyes softened—
somehow, impossibly, smiling.
The next constellation was small. Gentle.
Then free me.
I am tired of watching.
The Breaking of Chains
Sunny reached for the chains.
Shadow rose around him—smooth, precise, surgical.
(shadow ripple…)
It wrapped around the dark-matter links, traced their cores, found their origins.
And cut.
SNAP.
SNAP.
SNAP.
One by one, four centuries of bondage fell into the void.
Kai sagged.
Sunny caught him instantly.
He was light—
far too light.
As if the years had burned everything except the will to endure.
Kai's wings—pinned, shattered, frozen—began dissolving the moment they were freed, turning into drifting motes of starlight that floated away like dying fireflies.
His body followed.
He was choosing.
Not to ascend.
To end.
Sunny held him through the unraveling.
Kai raised a trembling hand and touched Sunny's cheek.
One feather remained on his ruined wings.
Pure. Radiant. Untouched by corruption.
With the last of his strength, Kai plucked it.
He placed it in Sunny's palm.
Folded Sunny's fingers around it.
A gift.
The first he had given in four centuries.
Kai's lips moved silently.
The cosmos provided the voice for him—
words blooming from a final tear:
Fly for both of us.
Then he shattered.
A storm of starlight erupted outwards—
WHOOOM—!
Silent.
Beautiful.
Final.
It washed over Sunny.
Over Nephis.
Over the inside-out sky.
When it faded, the cross was empty.
The sky islands began to fall—
slow, drifting, peaceful—
toward a dawn that didn't exist anymore.
The Feather, the Flame, the Fifth Floor
Sunny stood alone in the void, holding a single feather of pure starlight.
He looked at Nephis.
She looked back.
Nothing needed to be said.
The darkness parted.
A new staircase spiraled upward, carved into the void.
Sunny pressed the feather into the flame over his heart.
It settled there—
bright, steady, eternal.
He began to climb.
Behind him, the silence Kai had endured for four centuries finally ended.
And somewhere far above,
a star that had never existed before
began to shine.