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The wind groans through the wooden beams like a dying organ.
Each plank beneath Maelle’s boots creaks with a threat, vibrating just enough to remind her of what’s waiting below: air, nothing, air, empty space, death. The rickety tower spirals upward like a skeletal beanstalk, narrow steps nailed haphazardly to crossbeams, the vertical walls open to the endless drop. Far beneath them, the ground is a blur of grey and shadow. There’s not even trees below to maybe make you believe that if you did fall, the descent would be softened by the shrubbery (which wouldn’t happen anyway). It’s just jagged rock and gouging canyons. Nothing soft or kind or merciful.
There’s no mercy here. Even though there should have been, with what this godforsaken place is meant to represent.
There is no railing. There is no safety.
And it goes up.
So high Maelle can’t see the top—not from here, not even when she cranes her neck.
It just disappears into the fog. Into the swirling Canvas sky. Into nothing.
She’s already soaked in sweat.
She doesn’t know how long they’ve been climbing. An hour? Two hours? Three? Maybe it’s only been thirty minutes. Maybe they’re still just starting out, even though they’re so high up already.
Lune leads the pack—because of course she does. She seems completely and utterly at peace, despite the height they’re at, like this isn’t the scariest thing they’ve done on this entire Expedition. She calmly floats along, and when she does put her feet down, she moves like a river, smooth and elegant. There’s no wobble to her knees. There’s no trepidation on her face. There’s no cold sweat prickled on her brow or a tremor in her hands or a shaking rasp to her breaths. Her serenity is as awe-inspiring as it is annoying.
Verso is behind her, chugging along in the way Maelle assumes a train would. He’s nowhere near as precise and balanced as Lune is, but his mind is set in motion every time he moves his legs. He knows what he’s doing and what he wants to do, even if he stumbles. But then again, he’s immortal. Even if it were to hurt if he fell, does he really have any reason to be afraid?
Sciel is third. She’s still wearing her usual cheery expression. She cracks jokes and points out the absolutely horrible architecture of this place, always lightening the mood. Whenever she stumbles, she brushes it off with a funny comment, as if Maelle doesn’t almost shriek every single time. She’s the one who waits for Maelle to cross over or up the more treacherous parts of the tower, offering a steady hand and soothing words that are appreciated but don’t do much to soothe her anxiety.
Monoco is last, slowly trundling after them. He probably could have been further up, climbing like a mountain goat, but Maelle guesses he’s sticking behind her in case she falls. He’s much more careless in his movement, hauling his heavy wooden body around like he weighs much less than he probably does. Every time he slams into the floor or columns or shelf and makes the whole structure shake, Maelle fights the urge to yell at him or burst into tears. Or both.
And then, there’s Maelle, of course. She’s between Sciel and Monoco, trying to act like she’s not scared out of her mind.
Maelle knows that it’s pathetic. They’ve gone through worse, much worse. They’ve trudged through a field of hundreds of corpses, fought multiple horrific and nightmare-inducing monsters, faced those freaks on Visages’ island, watched people die- she even fell into a giant lake of human blood, for God’s sake!
But she can’t help it.
Her body is in fight or flight, but if she chooses flight, she knows she’ll just end up falling.
So, she has no other choice but to keep moving, even though she’s scared. Even though it hurts.
Her palms are torn up, red and stinging from scrabbling against unsanded wood. Her knees feel like jelly and won’t stop wobbling. Her arm is tingling relentlessly from how often she’s having to deploy her grapple. Her jaw aches from clenching. There’s a splinter lodged in the base of her left ring finger that she can’t get out.
Don’t look down don’t look down don’t look down—
She looks down.
The world lurches.
A sickening twist in her stomach. The sky tilts sideways. The wind whistles louder in her ears, and for one horrible second, she feels herself falling—not actually falling, but her balance tips, and she grabs the nearest post, hugging it like a lifeline, forehead pressed to the cool, splinter-frayed wood.
“I can’t— I can’t— fuck, I can’t—”
She can’t breathe. The entire tower groans again, swaying slightly in the breeze. The wood beneath her boots shifts. Not much, but enough.
Far above her, Verso stops climbing.
The thudding of his boots halts on the haphazard stairs ahead, a few stories up. Those steps look like they would not pass a single safety inspection, boards of different wood types skewed about in the vague shape of a staircase with no railing on either side to cling to, and Maelle is already not looking forward to having to wobble her way up them.
His voice drops like a stone through the wind.
“Are you alright?” he asks.
Maelle swallows, throat dry.
The tower pulses. Her knuckles go white around the beam. A bead of cold sweat slowly trickles its way down her spine.
“I’m trying,” she answers.
Verso lets out a sigh that’s stolen by the hissing wind. But Maelle still hears it.
She knows the sound of disappointment and frustration anywhere.
“I know it’s hard, but we have to keep moving,” he says. “It won’t stay daylight forever. We have to make it to the cliff up there. Unless you want to make camp out here for the night.”
Lune, a few steps above him, glances up with concern. “Verso—”
“I know, I know,” he says. “I’m only saying. Besides, it was her idea to come here.”
Maelle grits her teeth. “Shut up.”
“What?”
“I said shut up!”
Her voice cracks like thunder off the beams. The sound echoes, swallowed quickly by wind and sky. She hunches lower, panting, her chest squeezing in on itself.
This tower— this goddamn tower—
Her father made it.
Of course he did. She can see it now: the handcrafted carvings on some of the planks, delicate spirals and filigree- probably remnants of what the original structure once was before it was built up and up and up. A twisted kind of beauty in the madness. It’s his design. His idea of a challenge. Something to “test her resolve,” probably.
But he never considered the vertigo.
He never remembered how Alicia couldn’t climb a ladder without crying.
This whole place—it was meant for her.
And it’s killing her.
Sciel has doubled back. She reaches out a hand and places it on Maelle’s shoulder. “Hey,” she murmurs, gentle and grounding. “Take a second. Breathe.”
Maelle shakes her head violently. “I can’t. It’s swaying— I can feel it— I can feel it moving.”
“It’s always moving,” Lune calls down. “Wind currents. Structural shift. It’s designed that way.”
“Great!” Maelle hisses. “He designed it to make me puke and die!”
“It’s actually a good thing,” Lune says. “The swaying is to reduce wind pressure and keep the whole thing from toppling over. It’s normal.”
Maelle is about to snap back with something she hopes would be witty, but she can’t seem to get the words out.
Sciel’s hand tightens, a soft anchor. “You're okay, sweetheart.”
“No, I’m not,” Maelle spits. “This place— he built this nightmare. Papa. For me. As if I’m supposed to prove something.”
“You don’t have to prove anything,” Sciel says.
“Yes, I do!”
Her voice goes raw.
She squeezes her eyes shut, head pressed to the beam again.
There’s heavy movement behind her- Monoco has come over. He nudges her gently, then offers the waterskin. “Water. Drink something.”
Somehow, she finds the courage to pry one hand away from the beam to take it from him. The waterskin is practically vibrating as she brings it to her lips, spilling some of it down her chin, but the coolness brings her some clarity.
“Thanks,” she whispers, passing it back over to Monoco. She presses her head against the beam, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. Then another. Then another.
“Why would he build this?” she whispers. “He knew I was afraid of heights. He— he used to carry me down the cellar stairs when I was little. He knew.”
“He also knew you needed to get over such a childish fear.”
Maelle’s eyes snap open. She stares at Verso.
“Fuck you.”
Verso blinks, shocked. Maelle isn’t sure he had any malice behind his comment, but it doesn’t matter. When they’re so high up, and the wind is blowing away the protective layers she keeps so tightly wrapped over her skin, any prod feels like a stab.
“How the hell would you know?” she seethes. “You’re not really him. So how would you know what Papa wants and thinks? You don’t know him! Not like Verso did!”
“Maelle—” Monoco tries to stop her, but she keeps going.
“God forbid I be afraid of heights, a fear that is normal and doesn’t impact my daily life, so there’s no reason to get over it! God forbid I dislike Papa’s misguided attempt at making me into more than what I am! God forbid I not enjoy his screwed up menagerie that he missed the mark on so bad! Like, just because I climbed out of the fire, I guess, in his eyes, that must mean I’m good at rising!”
Silence does not follow her words. There’s no silence, not in this place. Not up here. There’s the endless howl of wind and the creaking of wood and the clamoring of the Orphelin somewhere down below. But there’s no peace. There’s no quietness.
Verso is staring at her. He looks a little pale, and she wants to make another biting comment, but then the tower sways harder than it has before, and a wave of nausea burns back the words.
Sciel rubs her back. “Deep breaths. Deep breaths, honey.”
Maelle listens to her. There’s not much else for her to do.
“Do you want to stop?” Sciel asks.
God, yes, she does. But her head shakes instead. “No. Let’s keep going. We have to.”
“Are you sure?”
Maelle nods. Swallows down the acid curling in the back of her throat. “Yeah.”
She peels her hands away from the beam she’s been clutching onto like a lifeline and forces herself forward again. One foot in front of the other. Slowly but surely.
They continue their ascent.
Fog and thick grey clouds blot the sky. Only faded tints of sunlight pierce the veil, gold slowly fading to pink. Twilight is nearing, and night won’t be too far behind.
They’re still a ways off from the cliff. Solid ground. The idea of sleeping on this rickety tower is a nightmare, but having to traverse it in the dark, even with their conjured lights, isn’t any better. Neither are poisons that Maelle wants to drink.
Keep going. Keep moving. Don’t look down.
She breathes— tries to breathe—but it feels like sucking air through cotton. The whole tower groans beneath them. A wood beneath their feet creaks and shifts. A giant nail sticking out nearly sends Maelle sprawling. Somewhere below, a plank snaps off and clatters down into the fog.
The wind rises.
The tower sways.
And up above, she sees it. Her.
The Reacher.
Not fully formed yet, just a silhouette against the mist, but its very presence pulls the eye upward. A gigantic figure with legs like branches. It’s almost frightening how she hadn’t seen it in its totality at first, somehow hidden against the gloomy horizon, despite its colossal size.
They all thought the Paintress was huge…
The Reacher is tall enough to touch the sky.
And Maelle knows it’s meant to be her.
This, like all the Axons, is his vision of the family.
The Hauler represents how Clea carries the world on her shoulders. Visages represents how Verso so often hid behind masks. Sirène represents Aline’s allure and overwhelming presence.
And the Reacher…
It’s his monument, his metaphor, his attempt to “show her who she could be.” A towering structure of ambition and poetry and empty pride. A stage on stilts. A theater set.
She knows it now.
Knows it was his way of saying: Look how high you can go if you just forget the flames. Forget the screaming. Forget that you ever fell in the first place.
You can be so much more than your scars, my darling girl.
But if that’s the case, then why, pray tell, is the Reacher’s head made out of straw?
The Reacher is a marvelous creature, truly. It’s a wonder anything of its size can stand like it is. But its head—so carefully shaped, so lovingly woven—is nothing more than a bundle of golden hay. Fragile. Flammable. Waiting to catch.
Like she once caught.
Like her scalp caught.
That winter evening. Smoke in her throat. Skin screaming. Hair curling into black threads as her face went up like kindling. The worst of the burns had clung to her skull—peeling flesh, a wound that never stopped weeping, forever raw no matter how many times they changed the bandages.
And here he was.
Renoir.
Her father.
The man who made her.
The man who made this.
Building a tower of false hope—of crooked wood and spiraling dreams—and crowning it with a creature in her name, her image, her story, and giving it a head of straw.
A joke.
A fucking joke.
It’s not an accident. She knows his mind too well. Everything he built was deliberate. Symbolic. Sentimental in the most self-indulgent way possible. This was no exception. The Reacher was meant to be Alicia reimagined—reborn not in trauma, but in aspiration. A new shape. A better one. He built the tower not to honor her scars—not really, no matter how many times he insists it’s the truth—but to erase them. Replace them with something “purer.” Something that reached higher.
He didn’t want her to remember.
He wanted her to climb.
To forget she had ever burned at all.
And in doing so, he created a creature that would burn the moment it brushed against a spark.
How fitting.
How fucking fitting.
She can feel the tower sway again beneath her. Hear Verso sigh above her in frustration. She doesn’t care.
Because now she sees it for what it is.
This tower was never built for her.
It was built for him.
For his guilt.
For his delusion.
She imagines her papa sitting in front of a blank canvas, muttering to himself, smearing strokes of paint and desperation, trying to remake her in a form he could forgive.
And what did he come up with?
A tower of dry timber. A god with a straw head.
One that couldn’t even really reach because it’s not like he gave her arms, just needy, grasping hands.
So noble. So pathetic.
So ready to burn again.
She grits her teeth and climbs higher.
She’ll reach the top.
And then she’ll meet the Reacher.
And she’ll forgive her.
Because it isn’t like Renoir ever—
CRACK.
She hears it before she feels it.
A low groan. A sharp crash.
Then, the world drops.
One of the planks beneath her left foot gives way with a dry, brittle snap. Maelle’s leg plunges through the rotted wood to the thigh, and for one breathless second, her body jerks sideways—off-balance, tilting, falling—
She screams.
A wretched, high-pitched shriek that splits the air like lightning and echoes up the whole hollow tower. Her arms flail out. She doesn’t even think—her instincts take over, animal and desperate. She clutches the splintering wood with both hands, claws at it as she slips, dragging her fingernails down the rough grain.
It’s like grabbing glass.
Dozens—hundreds—of sharp, dry splinters rip into her palms and under her nails, biting deep into the skin of her fingers, her wrists, her forearms. She scrabbles madly, too panicked to care, tearing up her hands as she tries to find purchase, to stop falling.
Another scream rips out of her throat—this one lower, ragged, closer to a sob.
Her left leg is dangling freely in open air, thousands of feet above the ground. Her other leg is safe above, but it’s folded uncomfortably, completely useless with the position she’s in. She tries to twist, tries to wriggle free, tries to haul herself up or do anything, but she can’t. She’s too weak.
She screams again. “HELP!”
She doesn’t know who she’s calling for—any of them, all of them—but Sciel’s the first to move. The woman throws herself down and grabs Maelle tightly by the arms.
“I’ve got you— I’ve got you— hold on!”
Maelle is sobbing now—ugly, broken sobs wracked with panic and pain. She can’t even see properly. Everything is swimming. Her skin burns from where the splinters went in. Her leg throbs, sharp and hot and blinding, still dangling somewhere down in the belly of the tower. She can feel the wood cutting into her thigh, the old iron nails biting into the skin as she struggles.
“I can’t— I can’t— it hurts—” Maelle cries, her blood-slick hands pawing uselessly across the planks. Her skin is torn raw, the pads of her fingers shredded, the wood already slick with red.
She’s grabbed.
Strong hands seize Maelle by the wrists, by the shoulders, by the sides, and pull, and Maelle screams again. Her thigh screams with her, a sound like tearing paper and fire. Jagged wood and nails catch in the flesh and drag down the length of her leg, carving wet, red hot trenches that overflow with blood. She’s hauled free, and they all collapse in a heap, Sciel still holding her tight.
Maelle is trembling violently, sobbing into Sciel’s shoulder. She can’t stop crying, can’t stop shaking. The pain, the shock, the terror, the thoughts of her father —it’s all too much. Her hands are a mess of blood and wood, and her thigh is swelling fast, purple blooming up beneath the skin, an ugly mix of color when combined with all the gore.
“That was too close,” Monoco mutters, which feels like the understatement of the century.
“She’s hurt bad,” Lune says, her voice calm but tight. “We need to stop and clean those wounds.”
“We can’t stop here,” Monoco says grimly, already scanning the tower above. “This place isn’t safe. We must get to the cliff.”
“Maelle—” Verso tries to say, but Lune shuts him up with a withering look.
Maelle shudders and whimpers, curled tight against Sciel’s side.
“I thought I was gonna die,” she sobs. “I thought I was gonna— I couldn’t breathe—”
“You’re okay now,” Sciel says, her voice gentling instantly. She wipes Maelle’s face with one sleeve. “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
But Maelle doesn’t feel safe.
She feels broken. Cracked through like the tower beneath her.
She doesn’t know if she can keep going, even though she knows she has to. Even though she knows this was her choice to come here.
And high above—still far, far beyond sight—the Reacher waits.
They don’t speak as they climb the final stretch to the cliff.
No one dares to.
Maelle’s still too pale, half-conscious and slumped between Sciel and Lune, who support her on either side with arms hooked beneath her shoulders. Her limp leg drags, the thigh swollen to twice its size and tender as overripe fruit. Her hands hang uselessly by her side, knuckles raw, palms crusted with dried blood and jutting with jagged slivers of wood.
Verso leads the way without a word. Monoco brings up the rear, silent and alert. The tower behind them groans and creaks with every gust of wind, as if mourning its lost passenger.
But eventually—
Solid ground.
The moment Maelle’s boot touches it, her knees give out. Sciel catches her before she hits the ground.
It’s real stone, at least—flat and cracked and gray-blue like slate, wide enough for the whole group to gather on. It juts out like a broken tooth from the side of the mountain, one of the few honest things Maelle’s touched since they started the climb. She doesn’t even care that the wind up here is howling loud enough to drown out thought. She just lies there, shivering, her eyes shut tight.
Sciel crouches beside her, murmuring something low and even. Maelle can’t hear it. Her ears are filled with the sound of her own blood, thick and pulsing.
Lune moves like she’s done this before, nimble fingers already slicked with some of the antiseptic salve they keep for field wounds.
Maelle’s hands are a horror show. Her palms are flayed with splinters of every size—some hair-thin and cruel, others thick enough to look like kindling. Her fingertips are swollen and red, the pads torn, the skin around her nails purpled and split. Bits of wood stick out in angry bristles. Dried blood flakes with every movement.
And her thigh—torn and angry—is already being propped up by Sciel’s pack, cushioned beneath the fabric of her pack. It throbs with a heat Maelle can feel even through the waves of nausea.
“Alright,” Lune says gently, brushing Maelle’s matted hair from her forehead. “This is going to hurt.”
Maelle nods once.
She doesn’t speak.
It’s not even stubborn silence. It’s just…too much.
Lune begins to pull the splinters.
She does it cleanly, precisely, murmuring soft apologies with every one. Sciel helps, gripping Maelle’s other hand whenever she flinches. It starts small—twitches, sharp gasps—but within minutes Maelle is openly crying again, not like the screams from earlier, but soft, ragged sobs that she tries and fails to muffle.
It hurts. It hurts so much.
But she doesn’t beg them to stop. She takes it. She always takes it.
Sciel works on the deeper wounds. When Lune is done removing the worst of the splinters, Sciel takes a soaked cloth and starts cleaning away the grime, the sticky blood, the flecks of debris clinging to her skin. The fabric turns red instantly.
Verso stands back from them, arms crossed, jaw tight.
He hasn’t said a thing since they reached the cliff. Maelle hasn’t looked at him once.
“I’ve got you,” Sciel is saying. “I’ve got you, sweetie. Just a few more. You’re doing so good.”
Maelle shakes her head violently. She wants to scream that she’s not doing good. That she’s terrified, ashamed, humiliated. That her skin feels like it doesn’t fit right, like it belongs to someone she no longer remembers. That her name—Alicia—is a ghost that haunts every step now.
Instead, she chokes on a sob and leans her head against Sciel’s arm.
“You didn’t deserve this,” Sciel murmurs, brushing hair from Maelle’s sweat-slick brow. “None of it. You hear me?”
Maelle doesn’t respond.
Sciel and Lune keep working as darkness slowly crawls over the horizon. Verso starts a fire. Monoco cooks a simple meal for everyone.
But there’s not silence. Because the tower is still creaking.
Then: “…I hate him.”
Lune looks up. “Who?”
Maelle is sitting against the rock. Sciel is at her side, braiding her hair.
“Papa,” Maelle says.
“Oh,” Lune says softly. She comes over to sit on the other side of Maelle, putting one hand on her shoulder.
“I hate him,” Maelle says. “For building that. For making it for me. For thinking I’d want to climb.”
“I know.”
“It’s not hope up there. It’s punishment. He didn’t build this for me to reach for the stars. He built it to watch me struggle. To test me. Like he always did.”
Sciel presses a soft kiss to Maelle’s temple. “He’s not here now, sweetie.”
“But he’s still trying to push me out,” Maelle growls. “I won’t let him. I won’t.”
She pauses. Expels a harsh breath.
“I know— I know he means well. I know he thinks the tower is beautiful. I know he thinks the Reacher is some kind of gift.”
She spits that last word like ash.
“But I don’t care.”
The others are quiet. Even Verso shifts slightly, as if listening.
“He doesn’t get to decide how I feel about it. He doesn’t get to paint me into something symbolic just because he couldn’t stand the sight of what I really became. He built this tower as a monument to a version of me that never fucking existed.”
Her voice breaks on the last word. She steadies herself.
“I was in pain. I was screaming every day. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t breathe without remembering what it felt like when my skin melted off. I-I used to smell smoke that wasn’t there. I used to pull out my own hair without realizing it. I—”
She cuts herself off. Swallows.
Lune’s gaze is soft. Sciel, beside her, sits straighter, saying nothing.
Maelle inhales sharply.
“And you know what he did?” she says. “He made me a monster with a head full of straw.”
Her laugh is hoarse and humorless.
“He wanted to show me I could reach the stars again. Great. Wonderful. But he built it on the same kindling that burned me. Do you understand how that feels?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer.
“I don’t think he meant it to hurt me. I don’t think he even realizes what he did wrong. He probably thinks the straw is poetic. ‘See? You were broken, but now you’re soft and golden and full of light.’ Fuck that. I didn’t survive to be made a metaphor. I didn’t crawl out of that fire just to be rewritten into something I’m not.”
Her throat is tight. Her hands shake.
“I hate him,” she whispers. “I hate him for trying. I hate him for caring. I hate that he made this place for me and still got everything wrong.”
The tower creaks. The smell of wood carries on the breeze.
“…But I don’t hate the Reacher.”
That gets their attention. Maelle can feel their eyes, even as hers are turned up to the huge, looming figure up above.
“You don’t?” Lune asks tentatively.
Maelle shakes her head. “I don’t. I think she’s lonely. And sad. She didn’t ask to be made like this.”
In the distance, far above them, the faint shape of the Reacher shifts. Creaks. Groans like a wounded thing.
Maelle knows she’s aware of them.
Knows she’s waiting.
And even now—even with all her fury and sorrow and shame—she feels for her.
Because she was made in her image.
And she knows what it is to burn
and rise
and be seen
and not recognized.
Verso releases a breath. “It’s an Axon, Maelle,” he says, bluntly. “It’s not a person. It’s not you.”
Maelle just stares out into the mist. Her voice is barely audible.
“I know.”
She doesn’t say the part that comes next.
But she still doesn’t deserve to burn.
She makes up her mind then.
This tower was built for Alicia.
But Maelle is the one who’s going to reach the top.