"It's not the end," she said finally. "The stair was never meant to lead to a place. It leads to a state."
Asher looked around, but there was still nothing. No horizon. No path. Just that weight. That absence. As if even the concept of space had been erased.
"So what now?" he asked.
Valeris let go of his hand.
Immediately, the cold intensified. Asher staggered forward, instinctively reaching for her—but there was no one there.
"Valeris?!"
No answer.
And then he felt it.
Something watching. Not with eyes. But with awareness. Death wasn't a figure waiting at the bottom. It wasn't a scythe. Or a scream.
It was isolation. Erasure.
His breath hitched.
He remembered dying once—long ago, before his path began. But this was different. This was the knowledge that death was not a moment, but a truth. That everything he was—everything anyone was—could be peeled away, stripped, undone, forgotten.
Even the memory of himself began to flicker.
