Not everyone wants to be the boss. Being the person everyone trusts with the hard part is its own kind of top.

One obvious ladder exists and it suits a particular kind of person, which is not everybody. Another route runs alongside it: becoming so good at the difficult part that you are the one they come to, with more freedom and less of the management you never wanted. That is not a consolation path. In most places those people are harder to replace than the ones in charge.

Ask yourself honestly whether you want to run things or to do the thing well. If it is the second, pick the hardest piece of your work and get genuinely good at it.