She was fragile. And she was running.

She had to. There was no other option. That didn’t make it any less terrifying.

She loved the rush, even though it made her bones wobble and her skin shiver. Maybe that was the strangest thing about her — the way fear made her feel alive.

She tore across the wet, ruined grass, with no clear direction, clutching only at her purpose. The fierce wind slashed her cheeks, stripping them of color — from ghostly, petrified white to heavy, burning red.

She ran and ran until, on the distant horizon, she spotted it: a skeletal building, battered but defiant, the only one left standing in a world already fallen.

Without pausing to catch the breath she so desperately needed, she kept pounding the tangled growth beneath her feet, each step hammering down with fierce, reckless force. As if everything depended on it. It did.

Crossing the threshold — where crumbling walls bowed inward and shattered windows gaped like wounds — she slowed. Not because she needed to. She no longer cared about needs.

She cared about consequences. She cared about punishments.

She cared about protecting what little she had left.

She scanned the hollow shell around her but froze completely.

Slowly, cautiously, she stepped forward. Eyes sharp. Ears straining.

Body coiled to strike. Heart raging in her chest.

Glass crunched beneath her boots — a sharp, brittle sound. Somehow, it soothed her. It always had.

That's how she knew: this was her place.

Her refuge.

Her salvation.

She climbed the first seven floors without once looking back, pausing only for a breathless, awkward moment before forcing herself onward.

She had to reach the top.

She would not stop.