Chapter 15: The Tower Crown
The door of light faded behind them.
Anterz and Elaria stood in a chamber without floor or walls—only a single spiral stair rising into a sky that wasn't sky. The stars above moved too slowly. The moon was below them. Gravity shifted with every step.
Rayn was gone.
Not dead.
Just... missing.
But Anterz could feel his presence somewhere above, faint and flickering like a candle behind glass.
He took the first step.
The Tower groaned.
---
Each footfall echoed like thunder. The stairs twisted, widened, bent sideways, folded upon themselves. With each step, the space around them changed.
One level showed an empty battlefield—thousands of rusted swords stuck into black soil.
Another opened into a cathedral without roof or walls, filled with weeping statues of forgotten gods.
Another was a room made of mirrors.
In that one, Anterz saw himself as he might have been: a smiling boy in a city still whole. His hands empty. His back straight.
Elaria touched the mirror.
And it cracked.
"I don't want him back," she whispered.
Anterz nodded. "He didn't survive. We did."
---
The next level was the last.
A flat stone bridge stretched forward to the Tower's crown—a wide circular platform of polished black, surrounded by stormclouds that didn't move. At its center stood a throne of jagged mirror shards, and beside it…
Stood her.
Sivrael.
The Mirror Queen.
She wore a crown of spirals, her cloak trailing into reflections. Her face shifted constantly—woman, man, child, stranger—until it settled into one the boy had seen before.
A girl from his first dream.
The laughing one beneath a sun that no longer existed.
"You've come far," Sivrael said.
Her voice sounded like every voice he had ever trusted.
---
Elaria stepped forward, blade drawn.
"We passed your trials."
"No," Sivrael said, smiling. "You passed your selves."
She walked down from the throne, barefoot, each step blooming mirrors that cracked under her weight.
"You, Anterz. You chose pain. You chose not to ascend. That means the Tower is truly yours now."
Anterz narrowed his eyes. "Then why are you still here?"
Sivrael's form flickered.
And stopped being beautiful.
---
Her body unfolded like origami in reverse.
Limbs grew too long.
Eyes multiplied and vanished again.
Her face split down the center, revealing teeth where no mouth should be. Shards of her crown bent like claws.
She wasn't a queen.
She was a guardian.
And she had held this place too long.
> "Because," she said, voice cracking like glass, "I am the last wall between you and the end."
---
She raised one hand.
A storm of reflections burst from it—blades, shadows, memories weaponized.
Anterz moved first.
Valteris screamed red.
He charged through the storm, slashing aside phantoms of himself—versions broken, mad, monstrous.
Sivrael met his blade with one of her own—a long, silver-edged mirror wrapped around her arm.
It didn't clash.
It reflected the blow—sent it back.
Valteris hissed.
> "She bends choice. Twist her lies, or fall into them."
Elaria attacked from behind.
Her silver blade carved through one of Sivrael's arms—but it regrew instantly, laughter spilling from the wound.
---
"Do you know what I really am?" Sivrael asked as she struck.
Anterz barely blocked, sliding back across the stone bridge.
"I'm not a queen. Not a god. I'm the voice inside your doubt."
She raised her arms.
Mirrors shattered across the sky.
And every person Anterz had killed stepped from the shards.
Faces he barely remembered. Faces from battles past.
Children.
Soldiers.
Old men.
"You killed them," Sivrael whispered. "Do you deserve to finish this?"
---
Anterz dropped to one knee, visions hammering his skull.
Then Elaria stepped beside him.
She raised her hand—and shattered the nearest mirror.
"You're the lie," she said. "He already paid."
Sivrael lunged.
Elaria caught the Queen's wrist—and her blade plunged straight through her own reflection.
A scream tore through the sky.
Sivrael stumbled.
Anterz rose.
His eyes burned gold and red.
"I remember them all," he said.
He swung Valteris.
And broke her arm.
---
The Queen fell back.
Bleeding light.
No longer invincible.
"You're not supposed to remember," she hissed.
"That's the point," Anterz growled. "I chose pain. I chose to live with it."
He charged.
His blade met her chest.
And this time—it cut.
---
She fell to one knee.
The throne behind her cracked.
"You win," she whispered.
Elaria didn't lower her blade.
Sivrael looked up.
"Then go. Sit. Finish it. Rule the ruin or end it."
Anterz didn't move.
He looked at the throne.
Then turned his back to it.
"No."
He looked up.
"There's something above this."
Sivrael laughed—this time softly.
"There is."
And with that, she broke apart.
A final mirror fragment floated in the air.
And reflected only one thing.
The stars.
---
Far above the Tower, a gate opened in the sky.
One that had not opened since the Fall.
Behind it… something waited.
Divine.
Dead.
Dreaming.
And now—awake.
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