The staircase felt endless.
Zekai kept climbing, step after step. The sanctuary grew overhead — white stone, distant waterfalls, a silence too heavy for the noise they should have made.
He'd already crossed hundreds of steps. The summit sat within reach now.
"...Almost there."
He let out a slow breath. His legs had started to burn, but stopping wasn't an option. Whatever waited up there tied into the fracture — and closing it was the only way to stop it spilling monsters, or something worse, into his world.
He took another step.
Then stopped.
"...?"
Several steps ahead, something was waiting on the staircase.
Six figures waited there like witnesses.
Pristine white robes, hoods low over their faces. Different poses, different weapons — a blade, a spear, things he didn't recognize. None of them moved. They just watched him.
Zekai's grip tightened around Null Drakular. "...People?"
He blinked — and the figures flickered, distorting for a fraction of a second like a broken signal.
Then they were gone. Just stone, and the sound of his own breathing. He stared at the empty space.
"..."
He blinked again. Still nothing. "...Maybe I'm just seeing things."
He rubbed his eyes and looked again. "...Yeah." A breath. "I've been in this place too long."
He kept climbing. Something about those figures wouldn't leave him alone, though.
Something about them refused both labels — not dead enough for ghosts, not empty enough for illusions. For that one flickering second their eyes had met his, something had passed between them.
Recognition. Whatever those things were, they'd already seen him before — and hadn't been surprised by it.
Not the way strangers register a face. The way you'd look at something you'd been told to wait for.
He shoved the thought down. No time to sit with it. A few more steps. Then the staircase ended.
He stepped onto the summit. His eyes went wide.
"...Whoa."
Not a room. An open platform, ringed by towering columns, stretching farther than he could track.
At the far end sat a throne of pale stone, lit by a light with no visible source.
Behind it, an angelic statue rose into the sky, wings spread like walls, one hand gripping a sword pointed straight up. Its face gave nothing away. He looked away.
Judgment. That was the only word for it.
He'd been passing that same sentence on himself for weeks now. Didn't need a statue for it.
He lowered the blade. "...So this is the center of it."
He scanned the platform. Nobody. Just the throne, and the statue behind it. For a second the sanctuary looked abandoned.
Then a heavy breeze cut across the platform, dragging his coat sideways. The air didn't move naturally — it curled around him deliberately, then drifted toward the empty throne.
A whisper rode the wind. Ancient. Distorted. Barely audible to a human ear.
"..."
He turned his head. "What was that?"
The wind died. Silence again.
He looked back at the throne.
Still empty.
"...I swear I heard—"
He never finished the sentence.
Someone was sitting there. He sat with one leg crossed over the other, cheek propped on his fist, face hidden under a white hood.
Zekai's whole body locked.
"..."
He took an involuntary step back.
How did he get there?
He hadn't even sensed another presence enter the space.
And yet there he sat, like he'd always been there and Zekai had simply failed to notice until now.
Every nerve in him went on alert at once.
'I can't sense him.'
His eyes narrowed. That shouldn't have been possible, not even standing right in front of him. Zero had left some trace. A pressure. A weight in the air. Something.
This thing had nothing to trace. No aura. No origin his senses could reach.
It looked almost human. Almost.
Faint markings glowed under his skin, symbols that looked grown into him, not carved. The face was beautiful in a way that felt wrong — almost angelic, too clean, too symmetrical.
His skin went cold looking at it. This wasn't someone who'd claimed a throne.
This was someone the world had handed one to because it had no other option.
The air moved again — this time from the figure himself, answering to him.
The hood slipped back on its own. Red hair fell across a pale forehead. The face lifted.
Golden eyes, closed.
Zekai's instincts didn't tell him how to fight.
They told him that fighting was no longer an option.
Zekai swallowed. Stay calm. It's fine. Just stay calm.
He cleared his throat. "...Hey. Mister."
Nothing.
He waited. Still nothing.
He scratched his cheek, awkward. "I'm Zekai Krystan."
Silence.
"..."
"Right. Not exactly a warm welcome."
Still nothing came back.
He let out a breath, and his expression sharpened.
"There's a Reality Fracture bleeding into my world. Something in yours is causing it."
His eyes stayed fixed on the throne. "So either you know something, or you don't care. Which is it?"
Nothing. The figure didn't even register that he'd spoken.
He'd fought monsters. Entities. The Fool itself, in a manner of speaking. Stared down death more times than he wanted to count.
And somehow being ignored wore on him faster than any of that ever had.
"...Seriously?"
He waited another beat. Still nothing.
He muttered, mostly to himself. "This guy doesn't understand a word I'm saying."
The instant the word left his mouth, the whole sanctuary shifted.
The golden eyes opened, gold and depthless, fixed directly on him. His stare moved once — down to Null Drakular, then back to Zekai's face, like something had just been confirmed. Then he raised one hand, slow, fingers tracing a simple gesture downward.
Instinct screamed one word.
RUN.
Pressure hit a half-second later, crushing in from every angle at once.
"Shut up." Quiet. Nearly toneless.
Then—
"Dirty stray dog."
Something in his chest snapped taut, hot and immediate — not fear. He'd been called worse by people who'd earned the right to say it.
BOOOOOOM!!
The world vanished under raw pressure. His body slammed into the stone hard enough to crack it.
CRACK!!
The platform split beneath him. His chest hit the ground with enough force to tear blood from his mouth.
"...Ghh!" His arms shook, bones grinding under the strain.
Invisible weight pinned every inch of him flat. Not like the staircase. That had been a law refusing him passage.
This was something else entirely. Pure domination. Something above him had simply decided, without argument, without debate—
You will kneel.
His fingers found the stone beneath him anyway, and closed. Not surrender. Just the shape his hand made while it decided what came next.
✦ End of Chapter 61 — You Will Kneel ✦