She woke to silence.
And pain.
The kind of pain that had a voice—
soft, patient, merciless.
It whispered her name in Nephis's cadence,
again and again,
until the syllables unthreaded,
became meaningless noise.
Ash opened her eyes.
She was alone.
The chamber where Sunny had carried her—
where frozen memories of betrayal had burned alive—
was empty now.
The walls were scorched black.
The looping scenes had been reduced to drifting ash.
The staircase upward had sealed behind them,
a smooth wall of crimson crystal where the path once stood.
Her body was wrong.
Skin sloughed in wet sheets.
Bones gleamed beneath, glowing faint gold.
Her silver hair was gone—burned away entirely—
leaving blackened stubble that crumbled when she moved.
Her hands—once strong, calloused from spear and shield—
were claws of charred bone wrapped in living fire.
She was dying.
No.
She had died.
This was the echo.
The soul-burn that had bought Sunny thirty seconds against the Terror
had not stopped at her flesh—
it had eaten deeper.
It was eating still.
Ash pushed herself to her knees.
SFX: SHRRK—skin peeling like burnt paper
The motion cost her.
A layer of skin peeled off her back and fluttered to the ground.
She laughed—
wet, cracked, painful.
The sound echoed in the empty chamber.
She had always known she was a copy.
The elders in the City-That-Ate-Time had told her the stories:
How the Traitor Saint's flame-haired companion had left a drop of blood in a glassed crater.
How the Shore had drunk it.
How the Spire had grown a child from it,
feeding on souls for centuries
until the child was ready to be born.
They had called her blessed.
They had branded 0001 onto her forehead the day she opened her eyes.
They had taught her to hate the Traitor Saint
with a devotion that tasted like prayer.
But they had never told her the truth.
Ash crawled to the nearest wall.
Her claws scraped the scorched stone.
She found a shard of mirror—
a remnant of the fifth floor, impossibly fallen here.
She held it up.
The reflection was monstrous.
Bone.
Fire.
Melting gold.
But the face—
The face was Nephis's.
Younger.
Seventeen instead of eternal.
But unmistakable.
Ash stared until the shard cracked in her grip.
She was not a descendant.
She was not chosen.
She was a clone.
A seed planted four hundred years ago.
Watered with hate.
Grown in darkness.
A weapon given a heartbeat.
The shard slipped from her fingers.
SFX: TINK—glass shattering across stone
Something inside her chest shifted.
The soul-fire surged—white and gold and furious.
Ash stood.
Her legs buckled.
She caught herself on the wall.
Stone hissed where her palms touched.
She looked up at the sealed ceiling.
Somewhere above,
Sunny was walking deeper into the flame.
Somewhere above,
the original—the real Nephis—was waiting.
Ash took one step.
Her foot left a print of molten gold that cooled into glass.
Another step.
Flesh dripped from her arms in burning droplets.
She kept walking.
The wall was smooth.
No staircase.
No mercy.
She dug her claws in
and began to climb.
Stone resisted.
She burned hotter.
Her claws sank deeper.
Inch by inch.
Skin melting and reforming.
Bone cracking and knitting.
Soul-fire screaming inside her chest—
Nephis's fire,
the Spire's corruption,
and her own will braided into something new.
She climbed.
Through the sealed ceiling—
SFX: FFFSSHHH—stone turning to molten glass beneath her fire
Burning a path with her own body.
Through the sixth floor—
Cassie's library, already ash.
Through the seventh—
the void still shattered and not yet healed.
She left a trail of molten footprints
and burning handprints.
A path carved by agony and will.
She did not stop.
She did not slow.
She had a choice now.
Save her "grandmother."
Or kill her.
Either way,
the fire would have its reckoning.
She reached the eighth-floor gate.
A wall of white flame—pure, absolute,
the color of Nephis's last stand.
Ash stood before it.
She was barely human now—
a skeleton of glowing bone wrapped in living fire.
Silver hair regrown as strands of molten gold.
Eyes twin suns.
She raised one melting hand.
Touched the gate.
The fire recognized her.
It parted—
just enough.
She stepped through.
The gate sealed behind her.
Ash collapsed to her knees on the other side.
The eighth floor stretched before her—
a dawn that never rose.
The Crown of Dawn floated in the center,
bleeding silent light.
She looked at her hands.
They were almost gone.
Only embers and will remained.
She laughed—soft, cracked,
but free.
Then she stood.
And began to walk toward the final staircase.
One way or another,
the fire would end.
And Ash—clone, descendant, weapon, girl—
would be the one to deliver it.