Byleth's day was about to get worse.

But one wouldn't have thought that watching him go to the restroom that afternoon. He walked slowly but comfortably across the room without wincing or without the need to stop or to sit down. It was a dramatic improvement from earlier when he'd seemed to be on the verge of dying.

Yet he was tense, and as he moved, he continued to roll the fragment of stone between his finger and thumb.

Instead of returning to his sweat-stained bed, he grabbed one of the chairs and pulled it up to the window. He gazed at the grand, golden-bricked buildings, the dramatic mountains as well as the lush green valleys and trees in the distance. He saw people strolling and marching, birds flying and horses trotting; he even saw a cat chasing a dog through the streets.

He watched everything whilst the fragment of stone dug into his skin.

A horse soon clopped along the cobbled road below, pulling a cart with it. It was a white horse with a patch of brown fur around one eye. A large, balding man sat on its back, guiding it through the streets. The cart was filled with barrels. They were empty, Byleth presumed, because if they were full then he didn't think the horse would manage to-

He heard the clopping footsteps, and then he didn't. He saw the white horse, blinked, and then only saw black. He rubbed his eyes, but it made no difference. He rubbed them again, and this time he could see his arms. They glowed green, as did the rest of his body. He looked down and saw the stone step.

The final one before the top.

"In time's flow… see the glow of flames ever burning bright…,' the high-pitched voice sang.

Byleth couldn't breathe. He turned and scrambled away in the opposite direction of the voice.

'Come…,' the high-pitched voice said, yawning. 'You are dist-… where are...'-

He mashed his eyes closed, thrashing with his arms and legs but not getting any further away. The voice spoke again.

'Hey… who… there… turn and… look….'

He collapsed on to one knee, unable to go any further. His lungs burned and his body ached.

'Hey!' the voice shrieked.

Byleth jolted around, eyes opening wide, he couldn't help it. He only looked for a split-moment, but that was all it took.

He saw beyond the final stone step. There was a large slab of stone that lay some twenty feet ahead. It had a circular symbol carved into it and was illuminated in green light. At the foot of the large slab of stone was a throne.

And that's where it sat.

Byleth jerked and tumbled backward in his chair, crashing to the floor with a thump. He winced and clawed at the ground with his fingernails, inhaling short, jagged breaths.

'Just a hallucination, just… not real'-

He repeated this multiple times, yet his breathing didn't slow, and he knew why, that excuse didn't work for him anymore. He held up the fragment of stone in one trembling hand.

'It's… it's…'-

He remained where he was on the floor for some time, staring up at the ceiling and rolling the fragment of stone in his hand.

Moira clearly hadn't heard his fall because she hadn't come in. A part of him wondered, however, what she'd say if she had done and if he'd told her about what'd happened. He guessed she'd tell him (as he'd done to himself many times) that he'd hallucinated, that he'd been through a stressful time of late and that it was a sign that he needed to continue to rest. She'd probably suggest stress was also behind his strange dreams that he'd mentioned earlier as well.

Outside, the sky started to dim.

Coming to such a conclusion was understandable, but then he wondered what she'd say if he told her that what he'd seen in his "hallucination" was identical to his recent "dreams" or "nightmares". He wondered what she'd say if he told her that his strange "dreams" were also near identical, that they were about climbing a set of stone steps, and that each time he found himself one higher than the last, that they were so vivid it felt as if he wasn't dreaming, but that he was actually in them. He thought about it and supposed that despite everything she'd learned about him so far, she'd still believe that any patterns in his dreams or hallucinations were coincidental and that the root of his problems were stress. He wanted to believe that as well, desperately, yet he no longer could.

He gazed at the fragment of stone in his hand again. It no longer glowed green, but still had a peculiar greyish green colour to it. It would look out of place in most rooms but especially in the infirmary, with its wooden walls, tables and bookshelves. If Moira were to see it, she would presume that it came from somewhere else.

And she would be right.

It's…'-

His throat tightened but he forced himself to speak. 'It's… it's…'-

He squeezed the fragment of stone in his stinging palm again.

'It's r-real. The stone s-steps and the voice a-are real.'

Outside, the bells rang, signalling the end of lessons at the Officers Academy for the day and the gradual arrival of the evening. They rang, and it made his stomach twist.

'The s-stone steps and voice are real. They are n-not dreams or nightmares, they are real, I-I was really there, and the stone I got from t-there proves it.'

It was as if he'd broken a dam in his mind. Thoughts and feelings, old and new, rushed through him.

I've always known that they were real, he thought. I just didn't want to admit it. I get taken there… and I don't know why.

Deep down, he'd known they were real from the very first time he'd seen the stone steps as a child.

'I've climbed them twice… once as a child and once as an adult.'

He remembered each step he'd climbed when he was young clearly. Back then, his "visits" to the stone steps had been separated over years, as opposed to the mere days that he faced now. Why it'd taken him so long as a child to climb them, he didn't know, but it'd been the same process of climbing higher each time and getting closer to the voice at the top.

'But back then I never got all the way to the top… because…'-

He pushed himself up off the floor and lumbered back onto the chair. He gazed out the window again, seeing everything and nothing at the same time. His mouth opened and closed several times, trying to put into words what'd been in his head for so long.

'When I was near the top… I fell down them… to the bottom… and then they vanished.'

He repeated what he'd said a few times, as if trying to convince a part of himself that believed he'd gone mad.

'I fell down the steps nine years ago on that evening.'

He thought back to that evening, when he'd been sitting on a hill overlooking a sunset with-

'With Lilia,' he muttered. He couldn't remember the last time he'd said her name and it sent a chill down his spine. He thought about that evening, the one he'd never forget. It wasn't memorable just because he'd fallen down the stone steps, but because it'd also been the evening that Lillia, Alain and Arthur had all died.

He rose and grabbed the water at his bedside table before returning to the chair. Down below, the heaving crowds of people on the streets began dissipating but he hardly noticed.

The glass of water trembled slightly in his hand.

He remembered sitting on top of the hill on that evening, overlooking the sunset. He remembered shivering in the cold wind and then he remembered Lilia putting her jacket on him and helping him to calm his breathing.

'One, two, three, four, five,' he muttered, 'back two, three, four, five, six.'

He paused after finishing the count, remembering what Lilia had said after.

"Is something troubling you?"

"I know something is tormenting you, because you are acting in the same way I did when I was scared. I do not know your problem, but I understand how scary it can feel. It can feel like there is no hope, but I promise you the feeling does not last forever."

"You do not have to tell me if you do not want to. You do not have to tell your father either, or anyone. Your thoughts belong to you and you alone, but talking to someone I trusted helped me, and I think it will help you as well."

He placed the glass onto the floor and then lowered his head into his hands.

'I tried to tell her… to ask her….'

"Why a-am I d-different?"

"A-Alain t-told you t-that I don't h-h-have a...-"

"A-Alain s-said because of... I m-might d-die early."

His gut prickled with panic in the same way it'd done back then. In his head he saw Lilia's blue eyes wide with shock. He remembered staring into them, desperate to hear her voice, not knowing then that he only had a few moments left with her. She'd hugged him, had started crying and had apologised that he'd overheard her argument with Alain, but she'd never said what he'd needed to hear, she never got chance to respond to what he'd said and had asked her.

'Because I returned to the stone steps before she could.'

Jeralt had said that he and Lilia had been attacked on the hill by bandits that evening, but Byleth didn't remember seeing anyone else, and so was sure that he'd returned to the steps just before they'd arrived.

'But something was different when I returned to the steps… it felt cold and there was a blinding light… and the voice had shrieked… like it was in pain, and then….'

He sat still for a long time. If Moira the nurse had opened the door at that moment and called for him, he wouldn't have heard her, because in the fading light of that afternoon, he was lost in his thoughts.

'The voice went silent, and the light faded… I opened my eyes and I was at the bottom of the steps.'

He remembered looking at the seven stone steps, having never felt so cold in his life, and shivered. The steps had then started to drift away from him, inch by inch, and had made him shiver more violently as they'd done so. Eventually, they'd vanished entirely and then, what felt like an extremely long time, he'd stood shivering in pitch-blackness.

'I don't know why it happened.'

But whatever the reason, it'd meant he'd missed the bandits' attack. When he'd "awoken", he'd found himself lying on the grass with Jeralt leaning over him, wide-eyed.

'He was crying… he wouldn't tell me why, but… I knew… somehow… that Lilia had died.'

He brought the glass of water to his mouth with a trembling hand and then placed it back down.

'He didn't want me to see anything, but I did. I saw the blood on the grass … it was Lilia's blood, I'm sure. I then learned that Alain and Athur had died as well. I watched him and the others bury them the next day and I watched the villagers carve gravestones for them and collect flowers for their resting spots.'

He remembered standing over their graves in the evening rain. Jeralt, the mercenary leader, the "fearless" "Blade Breaker", had stood beside him, crying.

But he himself, the Ashen Demon, hadn't.

'I…'-

"He's not normal, he'll never make friends or fall in love"-

"You're a freak"-

"My point is that you worry about his feelings and emotions, but I don't think he has much of either.'-

"… you're grasping for things in him that aren't there, you want him to be normal but he never will be."

"He's an empty shell…lifeless."

'One, two, three, four, five… back two'-

He counted and then heard footsteps go down the hallway. He fell silent, willing whoever it was to not come in, and thankfully for him, they didn't, instead continuing past the infirmary door and out of earshot. He allowed his breathing to slow again.

'Things changed when the steps disappeared.'

He thought back to the first few months after the incident. 'I felt… different.'

It'd been as if he'd lost all his desire to do anything. He'd stopped speaking to people, his father included, and only spoke in response to questions directed at him. He stopped exploring on his own in his free time and he stopped fishing with his dad and reading books by the campfires. Instead, he would sit and stare into the distance until instructed to sleep, march or fight.

'I stopped… thinking about things… and worrying… I don't remember lots after then…. it was like I sleepwalked through everything… until I returned to the steps in Remire.'

He thought about the steps again, although he now climbed them each day as opposed to over years as he'd done when he was younger, he still mostly went up them in the evening whilst he slept.

But why do I sometimes climb them in the day when I'm awake?

There were three specific occasions where that'd happened, on the hill with Lilia before the bandits' attack, in the second battle of Remire with Bayen the giant, and today when he'd been looking out the window. He scratched his chin. As he'd stopped resisting his thoughts, the answer came to him quickly.

'I can get pulled in at any time when the thing is awake. It was awake when I was a child as it was shrieking, it shrieked in Remire and today…'-

He shivered again.

'Today it was speaking, not sleep-talking. It's awake again.'

But if it's awake… then that means I could be pulled back in at any moment.

'One two'-

He counted again and again, the stone digging into his palm as he did so. When his breathing finally slowed again, he thought about the thing.

'Sounds like a young girl… but then it shouts and'-

His mouth went dry. He opened and closed it several times. 'It sounds like… a monster.'

And there was no way of avoiding it… unless-

'What if I fall down the steps again?'

He considered this, but as much as he'd want such a thing to happen, even if it meant "sleepwalking" through life again, he didn't think it would happen. Something unusual had happened on the night he'd fallen down them, perhaps linked to the bandits' ambush on himself and Lilia. He wouldn't fall down the steps this time, he was sure. For the first time in his life, he would reach the top.

And the thing would be waiting for him.

He spotted the moon in the darkening sky and it made panic prickle in his stomach. The moon signalled that the evening was nearing, and with that, he moved closer to discovering the answer to a question that'd terrified him for most of his life.

What would happen to him when he reached the top of the steps?