The ascent to the Sixth Floor felt less like climbing
and more like being swallowed whole.
Sunny expected another gate of bone, ivory, or memory.
Another trial made of someone's cruelty.
Instead—
SFX: hhhhh—THOOM
—the staircase simply ended.
One moment he dragged his ruined leg up the final step.
The next, the Spire exhaled, and the world folded around him
like wet paper being crushed by a giant hand.
He stepped into a library with no walls.
Shelves stretched upward into darkness.
Downward into darkness.
Sideways into darkness.
And on every shelf—
People.
Not statues.
Not ghosts.
Living bodies, chained by their own intestines
to the books they had written in life.
Their eyes were gone—
replaced by smooth scars or empty sockets
that wept clear, steady tears.
They turned pages with finger-stubs where nails had once lived.
When they read aloud, their voices did not sound like themselves—
They sounded like
memories someone else was trying to forget.
Sunny recognized some.
A woman in Cohort armor recited the day Effie died laughing.
An old man in Dream Realm robes whispered the exact second
Kai's heart stopped beating.
A child no older than twelve spoke in Jet's voice,
describing the moment she realized
Soul Reaper Jet had become
just another piece of meat on a battlefield.
The blind seers.
Bound to the stories they could no longer see.
And at the center of it all—
on a throne woven from braided fates
(gold threads, black threads, threads the color of raw blood)—
sat Cassie.
She looked exactly as she had
the day she walked into the sea of souls.
Bare feet.
White dress.
Hair drifting as though underwater.
Her milk-white eyes moved like she could see him perfectly.
A small, terrible smile curved her lips.
"Hello, Sunny," she said.
A soft voice—layered—
as if every version of Cassie across time
spoke in perfect harmony.
"You're late."
He stopped ten paces away.
Shadow Step tried to flicker instinctively,
but the shadows here belonged to the books.
And the books were watching him
with printed eyes.
"You're dead."
It came out rougher than he meant.
Cassie tilted her head.
"I was dead the moment I understood what had to be," she said softly.
"Same as you."
She rose from the throne.
Threads of fate unraveled, re-braiding into steps beneath her feet.
She walked toward him—
barefoot on nothing—
until he could smell salt and cinders on her skin.
"I waited," she murmured.
"Everyone else took the easy doors.
Nephis took the door of fire.
Kai took the door of song.
Even Mordret took the door of mirrors.
But you… you always take the long way."
Sunny's fingers tightened on Cruel Sight.
"If this is another one of your games—"
"It isn't a game."
Her voice didn't change.
"It's the last one."
She lifted a hand.
SFX: fwooo—silence collapsing
The library stilled.
The chained seers stopped reading.
Pages turned themselves in anticipation.
Cassie raised three fingers.
"I'm going to offer you three futures," she said.
"Real ones.
Certainties wearing different dresses.
You only get to leave with one."
Sunny felt the Spire lean in to listen.
Far below, Nephis climbed—
a walking inferno,
melting entire floors into rivers of stone.
Fragments of the Cohort died one by one,
feeding the Spire's appetite
so he could reach this place.
Everything tightened around this single point.
Cassie extended one finger.
FIRST FUTURE
SFX: vrryuu—whoooom
The library darkened.
Visions unfurled like flaming silk.
Sunny saw himself
standing over Nephis's body.
Her white hair spilled like milk across the throne room floor.
Her silver eyes stared at nothing.
Cruel Sight dripped starlight and blood.
The Spire's heart pulsed in Sunny's chest—slow and vast.
He wore a crown of broken swords.
Below, the Forgotten God knelt.
Sunny ruled forever.
Immortal.
Alone.
The last living creature in a universe of ash.
The weight hit him like a lead avalanche.
Cassie extended a second finger.
SECOND FUTURE
Nephis stood radiant
on the Spire's highest balcony—
wings of white flame unfurled.
The world beneath was glass and cinders.
Sunny stood with her, hand in hand.
Both crowned in sunlight.
Together, they had burned away the gods—
and fate itself.
Human remnants knelt, calling them saviors.
But in Nephis's eyes,
Sunny saw his own reflection—
Broken Sword's smile.
Serene.
Empty.
Already half divine.
Never alone again.
Never free again, either.
Cassie extended a third finger.
THIRD FUTURE
This one hurt to look at.
Sunny saw his own corpse—
skin flayed by pages,
eyes burned out—
lying in the ashes of the Sixth Floor.
No legend.
No grand death.
Just another skeleton no one would find.
Nephis would climb past his body,
reach the throne,
and become a new sun.
The Spire would fall.
The Dream Realm would fade.
Humanity would wake one morning
and discover the nightmare was over
because every dreamer had quietly died in their sleep.
No gods.
No fate.
No story.
Just Tuesday.
Cassie lowered her hand.
"Choose," she whispered.
Sunny stared at the futures
hanging in the air like gutted fish.
Then—
He laughed.
Cracked.
Ugly.
Real.
"You absolute bitch," he said.
"After the Shore, after Antarctica,
after you walked into the ocean
and left me holding everything—
you think I'm going to choose
one of your neat little boxes?"
Cassie smiled without blinking.
"You have to choose.
The Spire demands a heart."
"No," Sunny growled.
"It demands a sacrifice.
There's a difference."
He stepped forward.
Cruel Sight sang as he drew it.
"I refuse," he said.
"All three.
Burn them."
Cassie's smile finally shifted—
not fear,
but recognition.
"You can't refuse," she whispered.
"Fate—"
"Fate is a story someone else wrote," Sunny snarled.
"And I've been editing with a knife for years."
He lunged.
THE LIBRARY ERUPTS
SFX: KRRRSHHH—PAGES DETONATING
Books tore themselves apart.
Paper became blades.
Threads of fate cracked like whips.
Chained seers screamed in a thousand borrowed voices.
Sunny moved through it all—
shadows bursting around him,
Cruel Sight drawing golden wounds in the dark.
Cassie didn't fight.
She only watched.
Sunny reached her in six heartbeats.
Cruel Sight stopped an inch from her throat.
"Any last words?"
Cassie leaned forward.
The blade kissed her skin.
A single bead of blood rose like a ruby.
"The fire only wins
if you keep feeding it guilt," she whispered.
Then she kissed his forehead—
soft as a mother's goodbye.
And set the library on fire.
THE BLACK FIRE
This was not Nephis's flame.
This was older—
a fire that consumed meaning.
Books screamed.
Seers aged centuries in seconds,
crumbling into dust
that wrote new sentences on the floor
before blowing away.
Threads of fate ignited,
turning to ash mid-air.
Cassie stood in the center—
burning white,
dress turning translucent.
Sunny tried to move,
but the fire was everywhere—
licking his skin,
eating his memories,
burning guilt and terror
and love
all at once.
He fell to his knees.
Cassie knelt in front of him,
her melting eyes still smiling.
"I was never trying to save the world, Sunny," she said.
"I was trying to save you
from becoming the thing that has to rule it."
The fire reached her heart.
She pressed something into his palm—
her blindfold.
The same silk she'd worn on the Forgotten Shore.
It soaked instantly with blood—
hers or his, impossible to tell.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"For the long way."
And she was gone.
AFTER
The Sixth Floor collapsed
into a pillar of black fire
that pierced the Spire
from bottom to sky.
Sunny walked out alone.
His clothes were burning.
His skin was burning.
His memories were burning.
But he walked.
Cruel Sight dripped molten starlight in his left hand.
Cassie's blindfold lay heavy with blood in his right.
Behind him—nothing.
The Sixth Floor no longer existed.
Ahead—
the staircase upward.
The Seventh Gate.
Nephis.
The end of someone's story.
Not his.
Sunny tied Cassie's blindfold
around his arm like a tourniquet.
The fire only wins
if you keep feeding it guilt.
He took the next step.
The Spire trembled—
uncertain for the first time in eons—
because someone had just
edited fate with a knife
and then burned the library down.
His clothes on fire, carrying her blindfold (now soaked in his blood).