The stairs find me before I find them.

  One moment, the Veilstone's cold surface presses against my palm. The next, stone rises beneath my feet, spiraling upward into darkness that tastes like copper on my tongue. I do not remember the transition. I do not question it. The Veilstone has taken me, and I am here.

  My hand lifts from my side. Fingers spread against nothing. The air feels wrong, too thick, pressing against my skin like drowning in blades. Each breath cuts. I climb because there is nowhere else to go.

  Movement flickers at the edge of my vision.

  I turn.

  They stand three steps below me. Four of them. Five. Their forms shift as I count, angles bending wrong, limbs folding into configurations that make my eyes water. Blue-green light ripples across their surfaces—not skin, not metal, something that shifts between carapace and liquid, refusing to settle.

  One tilts its head. The motion is too smooth. Too fluid.

  Click. Click. Click.

  The sound scrapes against my skull. Not external. Inside. Like obsidian knives tapping against the bone behind my eyes.

  They move closer. Three steps smooth as water, then a stutter, limbs snapping to new positions. My throat tightens. The Inner Hell's gate trembles, but I hold it shut. Fear stays locked away. Only observation remains.

  The nearest one stops two steps below. Its face shifts. Eyes form and dissolve. A mouth appears, then scatters into light. The pressure in my skull builds.

  Shapes bloom in my mind. Not words. Symbols that slice through thought and fade before I can grasp them. But meaning bleeds through the gaps, sharp and immediate:

  Who?

  I open my mouth. Nothing comes. My tongue feels thick, useless. The creature waits. They all wait. Their chittering fills the space between us, a sound like grinding gears wrapped in silk.

  More symbols press against my consciousness. Each one leaves a ghost-wound behind, tender spots in my thoughts.

  Purpose? Reason? Why-here?

  "I do not know." My voice sounds distant. Wrong.

  They surge forward.

  Not threatening. Curious. But my pulse does not know the difference. Their limbs twist into patterns—angles wrong, geometry impossible—pulling at something deep in my chest.

  Recognition.

  Something in me answers.

  Joy floods the space between us. Sharp. Sudden as a blade between ribs. Not mine, but I feel it. They are glad I am here. I am their answer.

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  Then it cracks.

  Their movements turn jerky. Desperate. One stumbles backward, form losing coherence at the edges. Fear bleeds into the space where joy lived.

  Cold. Absolute.

  The symbols splinter in my mind. Erratic. Broken.

  Wrong. Not-allowed. You-should-not.

  I step forward. My hand rises, palm out. A gesture of peace.

  They scatter like mercury on stone.

  But their eyes stay fixed on me. Accusing. Knowing. Blood wells in them, thick and dark, tracking down faces that no longer hold shape.

  One remains. Braver than the others. More desperate. It steps toward me, hand trembling as it reaches out. Then snaps back as if burned.

  A single symbol cuts through my mind. Sharp enough to draw blood.

  Eater.

  The word ignites something in me.

  Ancient. Hunger. Not mine.

  But woven into my marrow all the same.

  Heat floods my chest. My fingers curl without thought, grasping at something I cannot see. The creature freezes. Horror twists its face into new geometries, angles that should not exist but do.

  I feel it. Inside the creature. Something essential. Something I can hold.

  Not around flesh. Around something deeper. Like grasping a heartbeat.

  My hand tightens.

  The creature convulses. Dark liquid—thicker than blood—pulses from its mouth, spattering the stone between us. I feel it break beneath my grip. Not bone. Not muscle. Something essential.

  Veins blacken around its eyes, bulging, bursting. Its form collapses inward, folding into itself, compressing into a mass that quivers and dissolves.

  I did this.

  The thought surfaces through shock. Distant. Clinical. The Inner Hell's gate trembles but holds.

  Power floods me.

  Warm. Raw. Natural as breathing. The sensation is neither pleasure nor pain. Something else. Something that fills the hollow places where fear should live.

  The others scream. The clicking rises to a crescendo, metal on glass, glass on bone. They cannot look away. Cannot flee.

  I did not mean to do this.

  But I did it anyway.

  One lunges. Desperation made manifest.

  The force rises in me again. Hungry. Familiar. My hand moves. The creature stops mid-air, suspended. Its essence unravels like torn silk, threads of light and darkness spiraling outward. When it collapses, the power flows into me again. Filling. Completing.

  The survivors flee upward, movements fractured. All except one.

  Smaller than the others. It stays. Sorrow fills its bleeding eyes as it points toward the darkness above me. Toward something I have not yet seen.

  Its final message cuts deep:

  What-are-you? Is-this-you?

  The creature holds my gaze a moment longer. Then dissolves into mist, leaving only its question behind.

  I look up.

  The throne rises from shadow, massive and dark, carved from stone that drinks light. Shadows twist up its edges like vines, and I feel their pull in my chest—a hook behind my sternum, drawing me forward. My feet move without permission. Step after step, drawn by the resonance between the power in my chest and the darkness above.

  I should stop.

  I do not.

  The throne grows larger. The shadows thicken. I kneel before it. Not from reverence, but because my legs give out. The stone surface reflects a truth I do not want to see.

  Myself.

  But wrong.

  This version sits upon the throne. Shadows crown my head. My eyes are winter stone, devoid of light. Devoid of warmth. Power radiates from my future self, absolute and terrible. But something is missing. Something vital.

  The reflection's lips move.

  To rule is to consume.

  The words settle in my bones like frost. The shadows tighten their grip. The whispers persist. Eater, Eater, Eater. A chorus without end.

  But another voice cuts through.

  Warm. Clear. Real.

  Whatever happens, you are my brother.

  Cyra.

  I stare at my reflection. At the throne. At the hollow victory it promises. The power pulses in my blood, demanding. The shadows pull. The throne waits.

  But doubt holds me still.

  I do not sit.

  The shadows recoil. As if my refusal burns them. The throne cracks, stone fracturing into light, and the vision shatters—

  The Veilstone's surface beneath my palm. Real. Solid.

  And the whispers, etched into my bones:

  Eater.