Tower Floor:
[Unregistered] — Access Level: Forbidden
Integrity: Collapsing
Status: Outside Tower Framework
Memory Contamination: CRITICAL
There was no door.
The Tower simply… stopped. One moment Kael had walked through the sacrifice chamber, and the next he stood in a place that should not exist.
No stone. No metal. No architecture.
Just black glass.
It stretched endlessly, as if the Tower had unfolded into a mirror that reflected nothing at all.
And beneath his feet, a faint heartbeat pulsed—dull, irregular, alive.
"What is this place?" Sael whispered. Her voice echoed strangely, repeating behind them as if someone else was walking nearby.
Kael didn't answer.He was too focused on the air. It was wrong—thick with static, brittle with pressure. And the floor responded to each step not with sound, but with memory.
A footprint triggered a flicker: Lira, standing over a grave.
Another step: the cult's black altar, Kael kneeling, bleeding into a bowl.
Another: Sael's first smile.
"This place is made of… fragments," he said. "Things the Tower buried."
"Things it wants buried," Sael corrected. "Why did it send us here?"
A monolith appeared ahead—tall, razor-edged, pulsing with fractured glyphs.
Etched across its base:
THE FLOOR OF LOST VERSIONS.THE KAELS WHO FAILED.
Kael stepped closer.
The surface shimmered, then showed him.
Himself, dressed in high cult robes, laughing as he executed a child.
Himself, broken and chained, begging the Tower for a second chance.
Himself, kneeling before the Architect, whispering "Erase me. Please."
"None of them are real," Kael muttered.
"They're all real," said a voice behind him.
He turned.
There was a throne at the far edge of the black field—one that hadn't been there a moment ago. Upon it sat another Kael. Older. Paler. Wounded in ways that didn't heal.
His eyes were cold glass. His skin etched with sigils.
"I am the one who accepted the Tower's offer," the other Kael said. "I gave up my name. My memories. I let go. I was free."
Kael stepped forward.
"You're a shadow. A trick."
"No. I'm peace. And you're the fool who keeps climbing."
The air pulsed.
Between them, a circle of obsidian symbols ignited. A ritual combat ring—from the cult. Kael hadn't seen one in years.
"If you want to climb higher," the other Kael said, rising from the throne, "kill the version of yourself that chose peace."
He drew a sword that shimmered with glyph-light—half data, half memory.
Kael mirrored him. Drew steel.
⚔️ BOSS ENCOUNTER: NULL-KAEL
Identity Class: Fragmented Echo
Threat Level: Unpredictable
Specialization: Memory Counter-Strike
The fight was brutal.
Null-Kael knew all his moves—because he'd once made them.
Every strike Kael launched was met with an echo, a mirror. His pain was turned back on him. Every hesitation cost him blood.
"You don't even remember why you're climbing," Null-Kael hissed.
"No," Kael growled, pushing forward, "but I know what I refuse to become."
He feinted. Cut low. Drove the point of his blade through Null-Kael's side.
Glass shattered. Light bled out.
"You'll just become me," the echo whispered, crumbling. "All of us do."
Kael didn't answer.
He took the dying shard from his other self's chest—a core of condensed memory.
And as he absorbed it, his vision shattered—Visions of other Towers, other timelines, other Kaels flooded in.
He saw one version kneeling beside Lira's corpse.
Another who led the cult into the Tower and burned the sky.
A Kael who climbed alone and reached the top—only to forget his own name.
MEMORY SHARD ACQUIRED: NULL-KAEL
Traits Unlocked: "Mind Anchor," "Crisis Recall," "Flicker Counter"
Identity Stability: 79%
As the Obsidian Path fractured around him, Kael turned to Sael.
She hadn't moved.
But her eyes shimmered now—like mirrors.
"Sael," he said, stepping forward.
"...You saw what you needed to see," she replied flatly. "We all do, eventually."
He reached out—but her image rippled, distorted.
"The Tower is rewriting me," she whispered. "We're too deep."
And then she was gone.
No sound. No scream.
Just absence.
Kael stood alone in the void.
The Tower spoke again—calm, cold, undeniable:
Floor 34 Unlocked.
Warning: Climber's Identity Structure Falling Below Safety Margin.
Recovery No Longer Possible.
Kael didn't care.
He walked toward the fracture in the sky.
Toward the next trial.
Toward himself.