The Stair That Bleeds Time
They descended.
The spiral staircase was too narrow for comfort, yet too vast for logic. Each step creaked like old memories snapping underfoot. The bones that formed the structure were not white — but stained in slow, oozing ink that dripped upward.
No one spoke.
Speaking here felt wrong. As if words would rot.
After what felt like hours—or seconds—they reached the bottom. It wasn't a floor. It was a wound.
A vast cavity of pulsing walls, slick with ancient script. The ink here flowed like blood through veins carved into the stone. And in the center of the cavern stood a monument:
A clock.
But its hands moved backward. Fast. Then slow. Then they stopped altogether, twitching like dying limbs.
Kael muttered, "That's not how time works."
Aira whispered, "Not our time."
Juna's eyes narrowed. "It's bleeding into us. Feel it?"
Elías felt it. Deep in his bones.
This wasn't a place. It was a memory that hadn't happened yet.
---
The Scythe of Death glowed faintly at his side. As if reacting to what slept here.
"Where are we?" he asked aloud, the words already unraveling in the air.
No one answered.
Because something else did.
A voice rang out, not from any direction — but all of them.
"You have entered the Scar of Time. The wound left by the first lie."
A form emerged from the ink-covered walls. It wasn't human. Not entirely. It had a thousand faces, none of them stable. Each blink showed a different version of a person—young, old, dead, divine.
It wore robes made of calendars, and each step it took tore days from the air like petals from a dead flower.
"Elías," it said, in a dozen voices. "Son of forgetting. Do you remember what you never lived?"
He stepped forward. "I remember enough."
It smiled with teeth made of clocks. "Then let us test that."
The creature raised one long, broken hand.
And time shattered.
---
They were not in the cave anymore.
They stood in a city of light. Of hope. Of before.
Elías gasped.
It was the world — before it fell.
He saw towers of glass, people laughing, machines humming in peace, children without scars.
But no one saw them.
"Are we ghosts?" Juna whispered.
"No," Aira said. "This is the ghost."
Elías turned — and saw himself.
Younger. Smiling. Whole.
Running toward his sister.
She was alive.
Her laughter echoed like windchimes in sunlight.
Kael stepped beside him. "This isn't real."
"I know," Elías said, voice shaking.
"But it hurts," Kael added.
Elías nodded. "Yes."
Then the sky broke.
A massive crack split the heavens — and from it fell ash, fire, and silence.
The Fall.
The Moment Everything Ended.
And yet...
The world didn't fall.
Not yet.
The memory had changed.
Elías turned to see the creature again, grinning.
"This isn't your past," it said. "It's the future that almost was. And if you wish to survive what comes… you must choose what to forget."
---
They fell.
Again.
Back into the ink-filled cavern.
But something followed them.
A shadow with too many limbs. It did not scream. It echoed.
Kael drew his blade. "Incoming!"
The shadow struck, splitting into four — each one latching onto a different member of the group.
Aira screamed first. Her shadow whispered all the times she had failed to kill. It showed her victims that should have lived, and those she spared that burned cities.
Kael's shadow showed him his own cowardice — the moment he didn't save his brother.
Juna fell, clutching her chest, as the shadow filled her lungs with forgotten words — spells she never learned, because of the day she almost drowned in silence.
And Elías—
His shadow did not speak.
It showed.
Hundreds of versions of himself.
Kneeling. Broken. Burning. Begging.
Every Elías that had chosen differently.
Every Elías that failed.
And above them all — a throne made of bones spelling one word: FORGOTTEN.
---
But Elías didn't kneel.
He screamed.
And the scythe answered.
It burst into flame—not fire, but burning time.
He cut the shadow in half.
And then again.
And again.
Until it dissolved into nothing but scattered minutes and choking years.
He turned to his friends.
Juna was chanting a reversal glyph. Aira, eyes red, had stabbed her shadow with her own past — a poisoned memory. Kael bit through blood and struck his phantom with a sword lit by guilt.
They survived.
But the cost showed on their faces.
---
The clock in the center of the cavern ticked once.
And then stopped forever.
A door opened in the far wall — carved in bone and silence.
Juna whispered, "We passed."
"No," Elías said. "We remembered."
They entered the door.
---
Beyond it was a room of mirrors.
Not reflections — but truths.
Each mirror showed something different.
A war. A kingdom of light. A sea made of stars. A boy killing a god. A god killing a boy.
Kael stepped in first — and flinched.
"What do you see?" Aira asked.
He didn't answer.
One by one, they each passed by a mirror. None of them spoke of what they saw.
Only Elías lingered.
His mirror was cracked.
And in it—
He saw nothing.
Not himself.
Not a future.
Not a past.
Just... silence.
A single sentence floated across the glass:
"The last name is the one who has no name left to lose."
---
They left the hall behind.
Another staircase.
Another descent.
And in the distance — a heartbeat.
Not theirs.
Not human.
Something vast.
Something waiting.
Aira broke the silence. "Still with us, Elías?"
He nodded, slowly. "For now."
Kael grunted. "Let's hope that's enough."
Juna whispered, "It has to be."
They walked on.
And far below — the next scar opened its eye.