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"Remember your Kingdom," the voice pleaded, and its weight was minuscule, feather-soft against Ash's shoulders. He breathed a little easier. "...and why you were created into this world. Without it you will be lost."

The reaper laughed and nothing came out, silence compounded ontop of stillness, and he once read a book like this but with sight, Blindness, and--

"Without it you will become discarded and thrown away."

He was not the one who had been discarded. He was real. There was a body, flesh and bone and fear and organs pressed into a skin, sharp teeth, green eyes, loyalty, devotion, love that shakes the earth--

"You are a fragment that I created."

Lies, falsehoods, and this borrow was one that was on loan, that was the fragment, but Ash knew that Thackery's body laid still in the real one, the true one, still as the dead and--

"Without me, you will cease to exist in this world."

The world cracked, spilling over at the seams with blackness. Ash continued.

To enter, she'd lose her speech? Well, maybe it wont be all that bad if she got her hearing back. Speech wasn't that important right? Wrong. Stepping forward did not gain her hearing back. Opening her mouth to curse, nothing came out, she couldn't even feel her throat vibrating.

Below him was darkness, the bodies of other drifting souls, and an alarming amount of stairs.

She was back to counting steps. It was the only thing to keep her mind from thinking. To stop her from turning around. That and this absolute conviction that she had to get to the Voice and stop it.

Was The Voice calling to the others like it called to him? A flare of jealousy ignited in Thackery's chest. He didn't like the implications of that, yet Henry - and the others climbing around them - really did seem to have such a sense of purpose. He didn't like it one bit.

Finally catching up, he stretched up towards him and yanked on his shoulder so he would pay attention to him, crippled by his inability to let loose a hellish torrent of spiteful accusations and horribly venomous names.

When he assumed he had his attention, he repeatedly jabbed a pointed finger at him, brows knit and face as angry and frowny and miserable as he could manage. He continued the gesture until he was sure that the 'you' part of his sentence had gotten across before pointing to his chest, pausing, opting to make a heart with his hands instead, and pantomiming a violent destruction of said hand-hard. He finished it by 'throwing' the heart onto the step where he stood, stomping it so fervently that he almost slipped off of the steps again.

His display completed, he folded his arms and raised his brows, his best attempt at: 'explain yourself right now, traitor.'

She looked around her, noticing a scuffle near her. She side stepped it, not wanting to get involved, nor to be knocked off the stairs. That's all she needed, to start over...if she didn't die from the fall. She was pretty high now.

The voice promised him everything, but it could offer nothing that Ashford's heart desired.

Because what he desired-- or at least, his desire's face, was standing in front of him, pantomiming a great deal of negative things.

He pressed his palm to the base of Thackery's neck, grip harsh, and started dragging the False King up the stairs. Two birds, one stone. A death toll chimed in the form of the rhythm of his heart.

Looking up, she saw the 'light at the end of the tunnel' as it were. She looked at the new doorway with a mixture of interest and fear. What would she lose this time?

The Voice seemed to echo her thoughts. "If you tread further, then you will see only disappointment. I wish only for one True King. I do not wish for anything else. What will you gain from reaching me other than what you already know?"

'I'll know what you are. I'll know what I am. I'll know the truth...I hope.' She snarled back at the Voice mentally.