They say the air gets thinner the higher you climb.

They don’t warn you about it, just watch to see if you choke.

But they never say what happens when you learn to live without air.

When I stood in the center of Olympus, hearing the crowd’s jeers. That… that was the moment I learned.

So come on boys, let’s fucking climb.

Klaus Way, you climb like it’s a stage.

Every rung a spotlight. Every scream a cue.

But stages collapse, Klaus, and the freaks you murdered were the ones still holding the ladder steady.

Now you climb on corpses, smiling through the blood, and calling it love.

But devotion doesn’t breathe, Klaus.

Not when you’ve strangled it.

Tombstone, you never climbed at all.

You once were thrust out of the river and into the free sky. And what did you do?

You looked down and missed the weight, the chains, the ferry.

So you bound yourself again, called it destiny. But really?

You just can’t stand the sound of your own breath.

Nox, you tried to light the ladder on fire.

You bombed the Pantheon and called it survival. You told Felix to open his eyes.

But enlightenment doesn’t come from explosions. It comes from silence.

You wanted to rise, so you lit the floor beneath you, but smoke rises too.

And now it’s in your mouth.

Mister Sunshine, you were never climbing.

You were floating, high as a fucking kite. The kind of happiness you don’t question until it’s gone.

Now the needle’s dry. And the sky is terrifying.

You’re not smiling anymore, Sunshine. You’re blinking into the brightness, wondering how high you really are…

…and whether the fall will finally hurt.

And Jackson Cade…

You found out Arcadia is in your blood, that the man who raised you isn’t the man who made you.

And now every step feels stolen. Every moment feels like it belongs to someone else.

You can’t trust anything, so you climb because you think you should.

But up here, there’s no should.

There’s only silence asking you who you really are.

You’re all gasping now, suffocating on trauma.

But me?

I don’t climb for glory. I climb because I’ve got nothing left.

No freaks. No chains. No chemicals. No family.

Because why you boys have been panicking in the thin air of your own secrets, I’ve been rising.

And now, the ring is fading beneath me. The air is still thin. Always will be.

But I finally understand the answer.

It was never about what I did. It’s not about a briefcase that only contains a ticket to keep climbing.

It’s about not stopping the climb. It’s about surviving the climb.

Because the climb is the answer.

There is no destination. No summit. No final breath of clean air.

There is only the climb.

The reach. The ache.

And if all I ever have is the next rung under my hand, then that’s all I need.

Because while they choke beneath the weight of who they are, I am already free.

Not because I made it to the top.

But because I never stopped climbing.