The stairwell didn't go up so much as change its mind about where 'up' lived. One flight took me north, the next sideways, and a third insisted that down was now a lifestyle choice. Every landing was adorned with the same polished brass plaque: WELCOME TO THE SUMMIT.
It was lying. I've met truthful villains; I've also met stairs.
'File a complaint,' Valeria said from the quiet of my forearm, bright and unhelpful. 'Dear Management, your impression of an escalator is an insult to working architecture.'
Julius waited two steps above me with one hand on the rail. He didn't glow. The stairwell simply behaved itself in his immediate vicinity, like a hallway that remembers it was designed by adults.
"This is not a physics problem," he said, reading the frustration on my face. "It's a story that thinks it's clever. Don't argue with it. Edit it."
"With the Grey?" I asked.
