The Monolith endured. He was old, far older than most of his kin, but still, he thought of himself as young. The black tower reached toward the Eternal Goodness, a thin cube spire, barely three cubits in its area, at the very top there was another cube. An opal square that slowly grew larger by the year. If one looked upward from the bottom, he wouldn’t see the opal, one would need to stand on the highest mountains of Ladora, above the clouds, and stare into the distance for many miles and, perhaps, he might see a darkness glinting the in skies above them.


    He was not always so grand. He had been hardly larger than a grain of sand when he was first gifted to his mother. It seemed foolish, looking back to his childhood, a small stone, swearing that one day, one day, Monolith would become a Star. In his early days, progress was easy, he could go upward many cubits in just a month. As he grew, it became harder to force his domain upward, the amount of ((MANA)) he was forced to exude to keep his spire from toppling was ridiculous, but Sol fed him, and the higher he climbed, the purer the light became, and the more he could grow. The Lunar twins laughed at him during the night, as he siphoned off the energy they so capriciously reflected. Castor and Pollux watched him with uncertain gazes. But Monolith was not deterred. He could feel Mazre’s hold on him begin to loosen, he could see himself ever growing closer to the stars.


    Perhaps this was why he never thought to look below him. If Monolith had looked, he would’ve seen the elves. He would’ve seen them come from the sea, fleeing their birthplace of Litone. He would’ve known of their curse. He would’ve seen them fight wars over whether it was moral to take more than one wife, in the hopes of sooner bearing a son. He would’ve seen the Bastard Prince exiled to Litone, bringing with him his daughter-wives and slaves. He would’ve seen the small black pillars that they used to mark their gravestones. He would’ve seen their crimes, their virtues. He would’ve seen them, over centuries, cast out their habits of sin, and accept the curse of Mailon. He would’ve seen that the sun didn’t only shine for him and he would’ve known that, as he slowly reached upward toward Sol, Sol’s children had made their home at the base of his spire.


    But Monolith did not look. Monolith climbed. His only desire was to continue his progress, his only mistress was the sky. Monolith stayed unaware of the kingdom around his Domain until someone else tried to reach the stars.


    It began with a faint tingling at the base of his spire one night. Monolith thought, perhaps, that a monster or beast had been using the black rock to sharpen its claws, but he did not think this when the tingling began to grow higher.


    It was slow, perhaps it climbed a cubit a day, but it didn’t stop climbing. It never stopped climbing. Still, Monolith didn’t worry. He climbed onward himself. It was only when the itch stopped moving, when it stayed in one place, not even a twelfth of the way up his spire, that Monolith grew curious and looked.


    A woman with golden skin and eyes was clinging to two knives embedded in the black rock, her feet dangling uselessly. She breathed heavily, and Monolith felt her ((MANA)) giving way. He saw her hands beginning to slip from knife handles. And Monolith wondered why a child had tried to climb so high- when it would certainly spell her doom?


    The woman suddenly gripped the knives firmly and pressed her knees against the spire. She pulled one knife from the black rock and lifted her arm to dig it in an arm’s length higher. Then she moved the other.


    Monolith watched as the exhausted woman kept slowly pulling herself up higher. He felt puzzled. She must know that she was never going to make it. Why did she keep going? He saw the blistered and broken skin of her hands, causing the knives to become slick with puss and blood, and it didn’t match the confident expression in her eyes.


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    And he felt compassion.


    In an act not unlike carefully removing a pest from one''s home without harming it, Monolith formed a small platform underneath her, large enough to stand on, but not extravagant. The woman released her weapons, leaving them in the rock. She fell for a brief instant before hitting the platform, then sunk gracefully into a sitting position. She dangled her legs off the sides of the platform while resting her head against the spire.


    Monolith formed a spiral staircase heading downward He supposed that if her arms had taken her this far, her legs must be rested. The woman looked at the staircase vindictively and drank from her water skin. She poured water over her wounded hands and ripped the base of her shirt. She wrapped the cloth around her palms and slowly stood up.


    Monolith was about to turn away when the woman grabbed her knives once more and continued to climb. He was filled with confusion. Why would anyone keep endangering their life so blatantly? So, Monolith watched as the woman climbed, and she continued to climb, despite her weakness. And when night fell, he created her an alcove in the spire in which she slept protected from the wind. For the first time in many years, Monolith chose not to raise his spire closer to the stars that night.


    When day came, the woman still slept, into the next night and day, before she awoke. She ate a meal of water and sunlight, then she began to climb. Monolith closed the alcove behind her. Days passed in this manner, until the woman’s water skin ran dry, and she began to sleep for longer and longer. Monolith watched her while she climbed. Time seemed to pass slower than it had in his entire existence. For the first time, Monolith watched the world through the eyes of another.


    It was only inventible that the woman would reach the pinnacle. Perhaps it had taken her longer than Monolith had thought it would, but eventually, she dug her knives into the lip of the spire. And pulled herself onto its top. She lay beside the opal square and laughed. Her hands were black with unhealed scabs, her frame was emaciated and she was smiling.


    Then the woman stood up. She looked upon all of Ladora, across oceans she saw the vast red sand deserts of Ridoum, she saw the peaks of the Inth in Litone, she saw the ancient trees of Mori. She stood upon the highest place on Mazre. She had completed the achievement that she had set out toward so many moons ago. Monolith beamed with pride for a reason that he couldn’t decipher.


    The woman jumped.


    And the dungeon watched in horror as she fell.


    It took the woman three hours to hit the ground, but she died before then. Monolith wasn’t sure if her heart had stopped, or if she had given up on breathing. It seemed that she fell slowly. As if time itself was reluctant to let her hit the ground she had spent so long avoiding. But she did, eventually, hit the ground. There was a sort of wet slapping sound as every bone in her body shattered at once. The dirt gave way somewhat around her, and her flesh flattened around the small crater moving almost like gelatinous liquid, between the force of the impact and the destruction of her skeletal system, what remained of her internals had been turned into a slurry of bodily fluids partially trapped within a damaged sack of skin. The only thing left of the woman who scaled Monolith was an organic splatter on an abandoned road of a kingdom long ago lost to plague.


    Monolith screamed. And he has yet to stop screaming since.


    A simulacrum of a dragon prowls around the Monolith. Dragons cannot carry the Rot, but if they could, perhaps this is what it would look like. It was as big as a house, with black stone bones sticking out of the scaleless golden skin that was too small for it. Its eyes were sunk back into its skull, far too small for its face. Perhaps they had once been gold, but now they were a milky white. A black stone frame for wings stuck out of its spine, but it almost looked as if the attempt had been abandoned halfway through, once whatever twisted creature had designed such a monster realized that it wouldn’t have enough organic material even to attempt flight. It had claws like knives and disturbingly omnivorous teeth.


    It was silent, except for on the rare nights when both Ritchi and Herel slept, when the monster would look to the stars, unblemished by moonlight, and keen.