The first step up the cliff was a whole new dimension of agony. The trials had me redefining that word every day now, but this was definitely my new benchmark for pain. More than that though, it took me back. I’d come to terms with my loneliness in the temple, but that didn’t magically make all the pain I’d ever been in go away. I still remembered my suffering when I was younger.

My first step brought me back to some of my earliest memories, seeing my dad on one of his rare visits, not being able to measure up to what he wanted, and then blaming myself when he left. Zeke tried his best, taking me out for ice cream, telling me not to take it personally, but that was pointless. He’d left me. Personally. How could that be anyone else’s fault?

The next time it was both worse and better. Better because I knew it was coming, and worse because I still blamed myself. Still thought I could do something to make him stay. Do better. Be better.

On his third visit I ran away from home. I was seven years old, and I was alone and scared in the city. I didn’t want to go anywhere they might find me, so I struck out on my own. I ended up falling asleep in an alley, and Zeke came and found me the next day, telling me he’d left and I could come home.

In retrospect, I know I wasn’t in any actual danger. Zeke could see the whole planet if he wanted to, and he was there to protect me. But at the time I was terrified, small and empty and broken hearted. He carried me home, and after that my dad only sent emails.

Once I got past that, I remembered my first crush, the first time I lied to a friend, the first time I said something mean in anger. One by one, all the little pains, the little agonies, that made me who I was, they all got dug up and shoved into the limelight, placed front and center in my mind. Like I was watching my personality get built one crack at a time.

Because Bernadette had been right the first time we met. Pain makes us who we are. We start as blank slates, empty canvases, stone statues yet to be carved. Then the first pains hit us, chip away at the stone, and bit by bit they carve us from relief. Sure, there are good things as well as bad, but you cant have the hills without the valleys. Pain gave us nuance, gave our souls texture. Made us who we were.

I still felt the physical pain through all this too. Every nerve in my body exploding with the white hot intensity of a thousand dying stars. I didn’t reach for the bond. I didn’t want Callie to go through this. This was…worse. Worse than any other pain I’d experienced. The combination of physical agony and mental anguish was unique and awful in its own special way.

And honestly, I was ashamed. My petty little hurts and most tragic stupidities being laid bare like that made me feel small. Pathetic. I was reminded of all my most human failures, and it made me feel weak.

I stopped about halfway up, having mostly been so lost in my progress that I’d failed to notice where I was until I took a break. I was crying, and my voice was hoarse from screaming. I wasn’t the only one. The Falls of Lamentation lived up to their name, and I was still using my soul to force my body to move as everything I was got stipped bare. I’d puzzled out why too, it kept me from using my soul to resist what the falls were doing to my mind.

But then…why should I resist it? Part of the Lady’s thing was using your pain to understand. Using it to grow.

So I started cataloguing my scars again from the beginning. It wasn’t hard, I’d just relived most of them. In my mind, I was back in my younger body, looking up at myself. I was scary, a big man in big armor and a terrifying mask. But the smaller me wasn’t afraid. He knew I wouldn’t hurt him.

I knelt down in front of myself and put my arms around him, pulling him close and giving him a gentle hug. I told him it wasn’t his fault. That he hadn’t done anything wrong. Sometimes people hurt us and we didn’t deserve it, and all we could do was accept it and move on.

My next self got the same treatment, the one after I found in the alley and led home before it got dark. I put him to bed, making sure he didn’t have to see our dad. I forgave myself for the mean things I said, for the lies I told, for the petty cruelties I was ashamed of. I accepted them, and I let them go.

I hadn’t been dwelling on all these things, of course. I didn’t spend my time reminiscing about stealing a piece of candy when I was eleven. But they were always there. Always part of me. Little cracks in my spirit too fine to even notice. Not my soul, but my self, my mind or ego or whatever you wanted to call it.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Because in thinking about my humanity I’d remembered something Zeke had once told me, about what Ascendants really were. We weren’t people, not really. We looked like people, and we felt like people, but we were only stories. Walking tales of tragedy. That was the whole purpose of Authoring your Chronicle. Now, I obviously couldn’t do that right now, I wasn’t even close to A-rank.

But I was pretty sure this process was important. Seeing what I was in all it’s ragged glory. Accepting myself for my flaws. This was something I needed to do before forming my Chronicle, I was sure of it.

I didn’t rewrite my story, but I did reframe it. I read over the old chapters and put them in context. I picked out the ways they’d shaped who I was now. The ways each incident affected me, how it informed who I was as a whole. How a lie I told made me more reticent to trust, how a betrayal made me quick to anger in certain situations.

Each new truth took me higher, further, one hand up to the next ledge, one foot on another spike of stone. I was three quarters of the way up now. The tears were gone, all cried out, and my screams had died down. I was quiet now, only the sound of the pouring lava and the hiss of burning flesh and air on superheated metal. It wasn’t a super pleasant combo, so I got back to my climb.

I knew I was on the right track, though. In all the other trials, the pain had worn me down, had broken and eroded me. But this time I felt…reforged. Remade in a new image. I felt more whole the higher I went. I didn’t know if all the trials were supposed to work like this or if this last one was special, but I suspected it was the latter.

All the suffering up to this point, the agony I’d gone through, it had been preparing me, had been readying me to push through this indescribable torment and see this for what it really was. A chance to patch the cracks.

At about eighty percent of the way I finished. Or rather, I got to my current self. I reached the end of my pain, catching the agony of a split second before as I finally finished picking myself apart and cleaning out the muck. Once that happened, the pain become all encompassing, it consumed me, the pain of the mind meshing with the physical to create a resonance. Now that I wasn’t distracted anymore the two joined together into a tapestry of torture greater than the sum of its parts.

I considered using Gluttony, but it felt…wrong. Like I’d be missing the point. In fact, stopping ten percent short, I considered what I’d done up to this point, and made a possibly stupid decision. I let Mornax drop.

The wave of terrible suffering that crashed over me was worse than anything up to that point, almost enough to break me…but it also felt right. Cleansing. Purifying. Like working out really hard. The pain you feel sucks but its a good pain. It means you’re growing. I put one hand in front of the other, gritting my teeth because the screams were bubbling back up, and I climbed.

Each pull was lost in a sea of misery, devoured by anguish and wrecked by woe. They took no time at all, and in the same way took ten times longer than I could have ever imagined. Eternity in an eyeblink. Until finally, before I could even process it, it was over.

I was lying on my side, on top of the basalt cliff. I’d pulled myself up and crawled out of the river of molten crystal, which had drained away when I removed myself, leaving me raw but unharmed.

Or at least, uninjured. I’d been harmed plenty. My entire body was raw, like an exposed nerve, ever brush of skin against the inside of the armor was like being flayed and lit on fire. I considered healing it, but it felt like I needed to let it fade on its own. So I sat there, breathing hard through clenched teeth, and as I did, the pain faded.

Eventually, I was able to think again, to see and hear and feel, and I rolled over to get up onto my knees before staggering to my feet. Limping to the edge of the cliff, I looked out and down. I saw a few people getting close, but none actually up here. This had been the last test and I’d come out on top. I was officially the winner, and whatever points existed here were all mine.

And that hit me like a speeding shuttle. I was done. My mission was over. There was a theoretical chance I couldn’t afford a trip to the world I needed, but it was unlikely. I’d won most of the trials, so my points had to be high. I’d accomplished what I needed to. Soon I’d be leaving Rackham behind.

Which felt weird, honestly. This place wasn’t my home. I’d met some fun people here, done some crazy things. But it wasn’t…part of me. Except it was. That was part of what the Falls taught me. Everything we are is everything we were. Every experience, every place, we carry it with us. And we can put down part of the burden, accept it and render it weightless, but it’s still there.

That, I was convinced, was why we had Chronicles. To remind us where we came from. Because we might not be human anymore, but parts of us always would be. People like Zeke forgot that, cast off those parts of themselves. Which was fine for them. But I made myself a promise that I never would. That no matter what I’d remember.

The little kid crying in his room because he disappointed his dad was gone, but never forgotten. He was still here, still growing, and he would be a god someday. I was the beginning of my story as much as the end. And I would make sure to put some of those experiences down in my Chronicle when I condensed it. So they would always be part of me.

Once I accepted all that, it was like the clouds parted. Sunlight washed over the dark places in my mind, and the last of the pain faded. Sunlight was the best disinfectant, and I felt clean, reborn. I just stood there, watching the horizon as the others climbed, smiling as I gazed out over the caldera of molten glass. It really was a beautiful view.