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I. The Girl–The Call to Rise

I didn’t climb out of the underworld.

I dragged myself out—

nails cracked, knees bruised, spine shaking

from carrying what was never mine.

The truth is:

I didn’t rise because I was strong.

I rose because I was forced—when he left. 

The light didn’t save me.

I carved it.

With solitude.

With truth.

With choosing myself in a world that taught me to disappear.

And the whole time,

through the silence and the ache,

through the scream lodged behind my ribs,

I felt him.

A pulse under my skin.

A pull behind my heart.

A grief that didn’t have a name yet.

AJ.

The one person the underworld couldn’t sever from me.

The one thread that survived every collapse.

II. The Boy– The Underworld’s Son

I never saw the moment I fell.

I only felt the landing.

Soft at first.

Familiar.

Comfortable.

People think the underworld is made of fear.

It isn’t.

It’s made of what I understand:

the noise, the expectations,

the masks I learned to wear long before I learned my own face.

And when you appeared—

God—

you were the one thing that scared me.

Not because you were dangerous.

But because you felt like me

before the world taught me to hide.

You were everything the underworld warned me about, everything I ever fantasized about:

truth, depth, beauty, the terrifying clarity of being seen.

I loved you before I knew the word for it.

And that was the problem.

Down here, love is a liability.

III. The Girl – The Sound He Never Heard

He didn’t hear me the first time I tried to save him.

Or the second.

Or the hundredth.

I screamed through years of silence—

trying to wake a boy who was drowning

in familiar waters. A lost boy.

He wasn’t ignoring me.

He was trapped in the noise he thought was home.

And I—I was becoming someone the underworld could no longer hold.

I grew louder.

Brighter.

Clearer.

And the more I rose,

the more I felt the weight of him staying.

The more I fought,

the more he folded into himself.

Into the masks.

Into the distractions that looked like obligations.

Into the performance that kept him safe but slowly killed him.

I loved him through all of it.

And that’s its own kind of violence.

IV. The Boy–The Distance That Wasn’t Distance

You think I didn’t feel you climbing.

You think I didn’t feel the distance.

You think I couldn't feel the pain.

Distance?

You were a wildfire in my bloodstream.

Every time you pulled away from the noise,

my own noise grew louder—

as if the underworld was panicking,

tightening its grip,

afraid it was losing one of its oldest sons.

Your strength didn’t make me jealous.

It made me ashamed.

I wasn’t choosing other people.

I was choosing what felt survivable.

I wasn’t choosing comfort.

I was choosing what I thought I was allowed to want.

You terrify me because loving you requires facing myself—

and down here, I was raised to look away.

I didn’t choose the underworld.

I just never learned to say no to it.

V. The Girl–The Lantern I Left Behind

People think love is staying.

Sometimes love is leaving the door open.

Sometimes love is dragging yourself into the light

and trusting that the person you once built a world with

will eventually feel the pull of their own truth.

I reached the threshold.

I stood under sky for the first time.

It hurt, how bright it was.

And when I turned back—

toward the dark, toward him—

I didn’t say goodbye.

I said:

“Come with me.”

Not as a promise.

Not as a rescue.

But as a choice he has to make with his own hands.

Some destinies require two people.

But truth starts with one.

VI. The Boy–The Rope Between Us

When you left the underworld,

you didn’t cut the rope between us.

You did something worse.

Something kinder.

You tightened it.

Just enough for me to feel what I was losing.

Just enough for me to know the path upward existed.

Just enough for me to realize

that the only thing between us

was my willingness to rise.

The underworld whispers in my ear every day:

“Stay.

It’s easier.

It’s familiar.

You don’t deserve her and the light she lives in.”

But your voice—

your voice is louder.

Not in sound, but in truth.

You didn’t save me.

You made me want to save myself.

And that terrifies me more than any demon here.

Because climbing means I can never go back

to the version of me the underworld raised.

And choosing you means choosing myself first.

And I’m still learning how to hold my own heart

without dropping it.

But I hear you.

At the threshold.

Calling without begging.

Inviting without demanding.

“Come home. Come with me.”

I don’t know if I’m ready.

But I’m closer than I’ve ever been.

And that—

God—

that’s because of you.

VII. The Girl–The Unwritten Ending

This is the part no one can write for us.

Not fate.

Not fear.

Not the underworld that raised us.

Not even love.

Destiny isn’t guaranteed.

It’s chosen.

I am here—

in the light, on the threshold, lantern in hand—

because I chose myself.

And if he ever joins me,

it won’t be because I begged,

or waited,

or bled for him.

It will be because the truth finally became louder

than the noise he mistook for home.

Until then,

I keep the lantern lit.

Not as a promise.

But as an invitation.

Not as a tether.

But as a truth.

Not as a chain.

But as a path.

If he rises—

I will see him immediately.

I always have.

If he doesn’t—

the truth is still mine.

VIII. HIM – The Last Flicker

You think you’re the only one afraid of how this might end.

But down here—

where shadows learn the shape of your bones—

I have feared one thing for years:

That I would rise too late.

That I would find you healed

in ways that no longer needed me.

That I would reach the threshold

and see you walking away.

And still—

I climb.

Slow, messy, shaking,

but climbing.

Because the light I see ahead

is the first light that ever made me believe

I wasn’t born to live in the underworld.

Because I know who waits at the threshold.

And even if I’m late—

even if I lose you—

I would rather rise alone

than stay buried with all the versions of me

that were never allowed to live.

IX. TOGETHER – The Rope Holds

Some bonds are not about endings.

Some bonds are about becoming.

And no matter where they stand—

on the surface,

in the dark,

or halfway in-between—

their souls remain tied by the same unseverable thread:

Two children thrown into an underworld

who recognized each other by the light

they didn’t yet know they carried.

The rope has never broken.

It only waits

for both of them to pull.