The staircase began where the war ended.
A single ribbon of red stone—
no wider than a sword's edge—
spiraling upward into a darkness that bled light.
No walls.
No railings.
Only the drop.
Endless.
Patient.
Hungry.
Sunny placed his foot on the first step.
SFX: tap… (silence)… THRUM—stone absorbing sound, answering with a pulse.
The world folded.
He was no longer climbing.
He was falling—
backward in time.
First Step — The Lie That Started Everything
The memory hit like a hammer to the ribs.
The cathedral in the rain.
Eighteen years old.
Soaked to the bone.
Nephis standing in the broken nave, white armor gleaming through the downpour, sword planted point-down in the cracked altar.
She looked at him—
really looked—
and asked the question that had carved a hollow through centuries:
"Will you stand with me, Sunny?"
Her voice was steady.
Exhausted.
Hopeful.
The younger him—thin, shivering, lying through his teeth—smiled that coward's smile.
"Of course."
The lie tasted like rust even then.
Now the memory weaponized.
The rain became needles of white fire.
**SFX: hissss—tssssk! tssssk! FIRE-RAIN IMPACTING SKIN **
They punched through his coat.
Through his skin.
Through his shadow.
Each droplet carried the weight of her trust.
He walked forward.
The fire burned deeper.
He did not stop.
Second Step — The Girl Who Trusted Him Too Much
Cassie's death.
Dark City outskirts.
Moonless.
Air sharp enough to cut.
Cassie on her knees.
Blind eyes turned to the sky.
Blood pouring from the cut he had made across her throat.
She was smiling.
"You had no choice," she whispered.
"It's all right."
Now the memory froze her there—
forever smiling,
forever bleeding.
The blood rose from the stone step like a tide.
SFX: GLOOOOP… slosh… slosh…—blood swallowing the steps
It wrapped his ankles.
His legs.
His waist.
It pulled.
He walked anyway.
The blood filled his mouth, his lungs, his eyes.
He swallowed four centuries of guilt—
and kept climbing.
Third Step — The Promise Never Kept
The cathedral again.
Only fire now.
Nephis burning—
white flame consuming her from the inside,
holding the line against the Crimson Terror
so the rest of them could flee.
She looked back at him through the inferno.
Her lips moved:
Stand with me.
He had turned away.
Now the memory became the stair itself.
WHOOM—!!
White flame erupted upward—
a pillar, a pyre, a judgment.
It wrapped him.
Burned through coat, skin, shadow.
All the way to bone.
He walked through the fire.
Flesh charred, regrew, charred again.
The air stank of cooked muscle.
He did not scream.
He had screamed enough for ten lifetimes.
Fourth Step — The Boy With Star-Wings
The Red Colosseum.
Kai kneeling.
Wings dimmed.
Smile gentle.
"I forgive you," he whispered.
Cold steel in Sunny's hand.
The inevitability of the moment.
Now the memory inverted gravity.
The stair flipped.
He fell upward—
into the stands,
into the exact moment the blade slid into Kai's throat.
SFX: SHIKK—!! (blade), hfff—! (breath leaving), drip… drip… (warm blood on stone)
Kai's blood sprayed across Sunny's face—
warm, accusing, endless.
He fell through it.
Through every throat he had cut.
Every back he had stabbed.
Every promise broken.
Every sin he had learned to shoulder because no one else would.
The memories chained him.
Drag him downward.
He walked upward anyway.
Step After Step — Punishment, Trial, Forging
Each step a memory.
Each memory a blade.
Each blade carving truth into his bones.
The staircase grew longer—
stretching, fracturing, unfolding—
with every refusal to fall.
He climbed.
Burning.
Bleeding.
Laughing—
soft,
broken,
free.
The flames did not stop him.
The blood did not drown him.
The lies did not hold him.
The guilt could not break him.
He walked through them all.
Centuries of agony compressed into the length of a heartbeat.
Until—
The Top
The staircase ended.
The darkness parted.
The top floor waited.
And there—
wrapped in white flame,
wings folded like judgment,
eyes glowing with all the centuries he had refused—
Nephis stood.
The fire that had waited four hundred years
finally saw him coming—
and smiled.