The staircase made of ribs led into a throat.
Not a hallway.
Not a tunnel.
A throat.
Its walls pulsed like meat. Breathless and wet. Each step Elías took was greeted with a twitch beneath his feet, as if the very path was trying to swallow him. Tirian followed close, one hand on the hilt of his blade, the other gripping a relic — a charm shaped like a laughing skull.
"Do we… walk inside things often?" Tirian asked, voice unsteady.
"In this world?" Elías answered. "We walk inside truths."
The air grew heavier. Not thick with heat or dust — but with intention. The further they descended, the more the space wanted them to understand something.
Then, they saw it.
At the base of the stairs, past what looked like vocal cords made of braided bone, opened a chamber. A cathedral carved not by hands, but by memory warped by guilt. Its columns were arms — hundreds — reaching upward, fingers broken and pleading. The ceiling was made of mouths. Thousands. Mute, but moving.
And in the center: a pulpit of flesh.
Upon it, a skull.
No jaw. No crown. But its eye sockets bled words — black streams of ink spiraling outward, tracing phrases in a dead language along the floor.
Tirian whispered, "I don't like this."
The pen in Elías's hand pulsed.
It wanted something.
Not to write.
To answer.
A presence moved above them. The mouths in the ceiling opened wider. No sound came. Only breath — a warm, rotting wind that carried meaning instead of air.
A voice entered their minds. No gender. No mercy.
"What do you seek beneath the flesh of language?"
Elías stepped forward, slowly. "A lie that became god."
Tirian flinched. "Elías…"
But the air approved.
The words bled faster.
"Then let the lie be told."
The skull spoke.
Not with a voice.
With a vision.
---
The world twisted. Reversed. Died.
Elías stood in a field of ink — not wet, but alive. Each drop was a soul that had forgotten its name. Above him floated a god with a thousand faces, each one a mask made of a different lie.
It whispered promises:
"You are safe."
"You are chosen."
"You will be rewarded."
"You are not alone."
"You will be remembered."
"You matter."
And last:
"You are real."
The god fed on those who believed. The more faith it was given, the bigger its lies grew — until it rewrote history itself.
Elías watched as kingdoms collapsed because of hope. Wars were started over comfort. Children sacrificed not to demons — but to delusions.
And the god grew.
Until it believed its own story.
And that's when it fell.
Because someone — unnamed — wrote its ending.
Not with sword. Not with flame.
With a sentence:
"Even gods can be wrong."
---
The vision ended.
The chamber breathed again.
Elías opened his eyes — bleeding from his left.
Tirian caught him. "What the hell was that?"
Elías didn't answer.
He approached the pulpit. The skull waited.
He reached toward it.
And the moment he touched it — something entered him.
Not a spirit.
A title.
A forgotten word that once named a god.
It coiled behind his heart.
Not giving power.
But giving potential.
The pen in his hand burned brighter.
He dropped it.
But it didn't fall.
It hovered, writing words midair that vanished before they could be seen.
The skull crumbled.
And a door opened in the wall — not a passage, but a wound torn into reality. Through it: a sky made of ink and stars shaped like forgotten names.
Tirian helped him up.
"We going through?"
Elías looked back once at the cathedral of mouths. At the bleeding language. At the thing that had once been a god and now was only a sentence.
He nodded.
"We go forward."
---
But even as they stepped into the ink sky, one question lingered:
If a god can die from a sentence…
can a man be killed by a truth?