Trial of Confrontation

The stairs of the tower have no end.

Every turn looks the same: the same cracked step, the same hollow flame. You’ve climbed so long your breath rasps like wind across gravestones, echoing endlessly.

A voice comes: "You should have stayed below." It echoes from above. It resembles your own voice, but worn thin with exhaustion.

Then another comes: "You never finish what you begin."

And then another: "You only try when others watch."

You turn, and there are faces in the dark. Dozens of them, crawling along the walls like stains, all whispering things you thought long buried. Their eyes glow faintly with the same golden runes that line every stone of the tower.

You keep moving, and the tower keeps tilting. Steps slide sideways; the railings stretch and twist. From the corners, forms detach; formless things clothed in memory. A hand you once refused to hold, a mouth shaped by anger, a silhouette that weeps without sound. They follow, each carrying a fragment of your voice.

You run.

Their footsteps multiply. One becomes many, many become storm. The tower fills with the stampede of your own regrets, their shadows climbing the walls like insects. Doors appear and vanish. Windows open onto staircases that lead down and up at once. The geometry around you makes no sense - a cathedral of motion without logic.

The foes close in. Each carries a smell: smoke, salt, iron, sweat. Each carries a name you once called yourself.

The Coward.

The Impostor.

The Failure.

The Monster.

They whisper in unison now, their words scraping like claws: "What are you fleeing from? You are the architect of this."

You turn a corner and the stair ends; cut clean, opening into a yawning void. The tower hangs broken here, fragments suspended in midair, staircases floating like ribs of a colossal beast. You leap from one fragment to another, the fall below endless. The foes leap too. Some crawl along the undersides of steps; others drift like ash, grinning without faces. They climb over one another, a mass of memory and muscle and shadow.

You reach a landing. A door waits ahead - one that has two handles. One gold, one iron.

The gold handle exhales calmness. You can feel what waits behind it: stillness, peace, the mercy of not having to face these ghosts again. You’ve longed for that silence.

The iron handle hums with dread. Cold seeps through your palm, carrying every ache you’ve ever hidden. Behind it, lies pain. The kind that - if endured - grands acceptance.

The air splits with a scream - your own - as the swarm reaches you.