The bone door slammed shut behind us, the muffled boom rolling through the corridor and reverberating for several seconds, growing fainter as though descending through the bowels of the tower itself.
Then only silence remained.
Not the ordinary silence of an abandoned place, but something heavy and drawn-out, as though the Tower had just closed its mouth after swallowing us whole.
I stood still for a few moments, forcing my eyes to adjust to the gloom.
There were no torches or crystals. The little illumination we had came from reddish lines embedded in the black walls, pulsing at intervals far too slow to resemble any kind of technology.
Sahger remained near the entrance while Tsukumo stepped forward twice.
A small fragment of bone, previously wedged between two stones, broke loose from the wall and floated before his fingers for several seconds before dropping.
"Gravity is normal here," Tsukumo concluded.
I passed my fingers in front of my face without feeling the slightest movement of air.
"There's no airflow in here."
Sahger crouched close to the wall, dragging the metal tip of his glove across three deep parallel grooves carved into the floor, disappearing beneath the corridor's thin layer of sand.
"And something came through here," the hunter pointed out.
"Claws?" I asked, moving closer.
"Probably."
I looked down the dark stretch of corridor.
We started walking, sand crunching beneath our boots.
Kazekiba remained sheathed at my waist, while Sahger kept his spear close to his body.
Tsukumo walked several meters ahead in absolute silence.
The corridor extended toward a broad staircase crowned by a single symbol carved into the stone.
The first floor.
We climbed without incident. It took less than two minutes for the ground to come alive.
That was the only way I could describe it.
The layer of sand ahead of us slowly rose, like a chest drawing breath.
I stopped. Tsukumo did too. Sahger spun his spear.
The sand exploded.
A massive jaw burst through the floor, dozens of curved teeth snapping shut exactly where Tsukumo stood—or rather, where he should have been.
He had simply vanished from that spot.
The creature, with four unnaturally long legs, a low body covered in thick plates, and no visible eyes, tore across the corridor, slammed into the wall, then immediately began digging its way back underground.
"Sand worms. They feel vibrations," Sahger said.
The creature broke through the floor again, but this time I was waiting.
I twisted and drew Kazekiba just far enough for a few inches of steel to clear the sheath.
Compressed wind detonated beneath the beast, launching it upward.
It crashed hard against the ceiling before falling several meters away.
I didn't attack again.
The creature immediately burrowed away.
Sahger studied the freshly opened hole.
"So we don't need to look for them."
"No," I replied, fully sheathing the sword.
"We just need to make them look for us."
On the third floor, we found six.
On the fifth, eleven.
By the seventh, I stopped counting.
The beasts moved through the sand beneath the stone as though the inside of the tower were some underground ocean, but we learned quickly.
Tsukumo controlled the field.
His heavier steps drew most of them toward him, and whenever the worms lunged, he crushed them beneath sudden bursts of gravitational force.
I handled things differently.
By striking the tip of Kazekiba's sheath against the ground, I sent continuous vibrations through the stone, luring them toward me before cutting them down as they surfaced.
On the eighth floor, the tactic worked better than expected.
The sand began to ripple violently.
Twelve separate ridges moved toward us at once.
Sahger stepped back until his shoulders touched the wall.
Tsukumo extended both hands.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the gravity throughout the corridor went insane.
The sand collapsed downward, and the creatures were ripped upward.
Several monstrous bodies burst through the floor at once, floating helplessly in the air.
I gripped Kazekiba and pivoted on my heels.
"Tatsumaki."
The corridor roared.
A column of wind erupted around me and expanded into a brutal spiral before splitting into dozens of smaller currents, each sharp as a blade.
The beasts were hurled into one another, heavy bodies spinning through the air as the currents slammed them into walls and columns.
The impact made the tower itself tremble.
When the wind faded and the dust settled, none of the creatures attempted to return beneath the sand.
Silence took over as Sahger stared at the devastation.
Then at me.
"What was that?"
I looked at him while sheathing Kazekiba.
"Secret."
There were no beasts on the ninth floor.
There were cells.
Small.
Dark.
Most stood open, though some remained locked.
As I passed one, I noticed markings across the stone.
Tallies covered every inch of the wall.
Dozens—perhaps hundreds—of years recorded by fingernails against rock.
My pace slowed as a phantom weight settled across my shoulders.
Sahger noticed.
"This floor looks abandoned."
"I know," I replied, forcing myself to keep walking.
That didn't make the answer any easier to swallow.
The symbol X above the entrance to the tenth floor was cracked.
From that point onward, the sand and stone disappeared, replaced entirely by glass walls.
It looked as though someone had turned an entire palace into mirrors and buried it inside the heart of the tower.
My reflection walked beside me.
Dozens of them, scattered across every angle.
Some were larger.
Others subtly distorted.
Tsukumo raised one hand.
Every reflection copied the gesture in perfect synchronization.
"I don't like this," he said.
We continued.
On the twelfth floor, the reflections began to lag behind.
At first, it was only a blink—a fraction of movement lost.
Then they became independent.
My reflection in the glass stopped while I kept walking, but the moment I noticed the anomaly, I froze.
The image watched me from beyond the polished surface.
Then it smiled.
I didn't.
On the fourteenth floor, I found Silver.
The sight stopped me immediately.
He stood in the middle of the mirrored corridor, arms crossed, wearing his usual cold, cutting expression.
"Return to Lavinsk," the illusion commanded.
"You're not here."
"You shouldn't have left."
"That's not how he talks either."
The copy of Silver tilted its head slightly.
"Laura is dead."
My grip tightened around the sword's hilt until my knuckles cracked.
The nearest mirror fractured beneath the pressure of my aura.
A swift strike split the image apart, dispersing the illusion.
A few meters farther ahead, the air suddenly turned cold.
"Suki?"
My entire body froze.
I didn't need to look to recognize that voice.
Slowly, my heartbeat stumbling, I turned my head.
Laura stood only a few steps away.
Long, tangled hair.
Red eyes.
Dirty.
Clearly exhausted.
But alive.
She took a trembling step toward me.
"You took your time," she murmured, extending a bloodied hand.
My chest tightened.
I stepped forward.
Then again.
And stopped.
The creature stopped at exactly the same instant, moving not like a person, but like an echo.
I looked over her shoulder toward the large mirrored panel behind her.
"Laura's" reflection was smiling.
The face in front of me wasn't.
I slowly released the air from my lungs.
The thing tilted its head, its voice warping slightly.
"What gave it away?"
"You almost got it."
The malicious smile finally spread across the false face.
"Almost?"
I drew Kazekiba in one motion.
"She would've insulted me first."
Compressed wind burst from the blade, shattering every mirror in the corridor at once.
The crash tore through several floors as thousands of fragments came raining down around us like glittering shards.
When I turned around, Tsukumo was standing before his own reflection.
The copy was on its knees, covered in wounds.
"You failed all of us," it gasped.
Tsukumo's expression didn't shift by even a fraction.
"You talk too much."
He closed his hand.
The space around the mirror imploded, reducing the illusion to powdered glass.
Farther down the corridor, Sahger had gone completely still.
The silhouette of a woman stood before him, but the diffuse lighting kept me from seeing her face.
Only pale hair moving in a wind that didn't exist.
Sahger didn't move.
He simply watched the apparition open its mouth.
I couldn't hear what she said.
A metallic flash cut through the darkness.
The hunter's spear pierced the glass directly through the apparition's chest.
The image collapsed without a sound.
Sahger pulled the spear free and kept walking.
"Who was she?"
"No one."
Tsukumo walked between us.
The heat of the eighteenth floor hit us before the door had even opened completely.
It wasn't just temperature.
It felt like atmospheric pressure.
Breathing took effort, the dense air scraping against the throat.
Red veins ran through the black stone walls, resembling magma trapped beneath the tower's skin.
I had barely taken three steps when a creature dropped from the ceiling.
It was an abomination shaped from blackened bone and incandescent sand, rising with a repulsive series of cracks.
Then another appeared behind it.
And another.
"Finally. Something simple," I muttered, igniting a small flame in my left palm.
That was a mistake.
The walls reacted instantly.
Every red vein flared in unison, and the corridor's temperature doubled.
I extinguished the flame immediately.
"It absorbed it," Tsukumo observed, narrowing his eyes at the living walls.
"I noticed."
Sahger lightly touched the metallic tip of his spear to the stone.
The metal hissed and darkened where it made contact.
"Energy."
Tsukumo nodded.
"The more we release, the worse it gets for us."
I looked at the heat demons advancing toward us.
They came all at once.
The first tried to tear my head off with blazing arms, but I slipped beneath the strike.
Kazekiba flashed, cleanly cutting through one knee joint.
The creature toppled.
Tsukumo seized the opening, multiplying its weight for half a second and slamming it into the ground.
Sahger moved past me with a flawless thrust, dropping the next aberration.
I struck my palm against the floor, channeling the smallest amount of earth I could manage.
A rough stone pillar erupted beneath another demon's leg and knocked it off balance.
Tsukumo shifted the gravitational vector, hurling the creature into the wall, and Sahger's spear pinned it there before it could fall.
Not a drop of energy wasted.
On the twenty-third floor, however, the game changed.
A much larger beast smashed through the side wall and charged blindly at Tsukumo.
He flowed around the first two attacks, but the third changed direction in midair and caught him by surprise.
The incandescent claw struck his shoulder hard enough to send him crashing into a structural column.
"Tsukumo!" I shouted.
"I'm fine," he answered immediately.
The fabric of his coat had been scorched away, revealing a severe burn beneath it, but he was already standing and resetting his stance.
The creature drew back to attack again.
Sahger stepped into its path.
What happened next was almost difficult to follow.
The green-tipped spear moved in three beats.
A heavy deflection against the monster's arm.
A turn that opened its side.
Then a deep thrust already waiting exactly where the creature tried to retreat.
The demon collapsed.
I watched the hunter with reluctant admiration.
"What spear art do you use?"
"Mine."
He never took his eyes off the corridor.
Sahger lazily sidestepped another smaller attack.
"I invented it."
That caught me off guard.
I remembered the weeks I'd spent with the elves learning their own spear techniques.
Impressive.
Tsukumo appeared behind the hunter.
"Left."
Sahger ducked.
My blade swept through the space above him, dropping the demon that had tried to ambush him from behind.
"Thanks," the mercenary muttered.
The transition on the twenty-ninth floor was abrupt.
The heat vanished all at once, sucked into the walls, cooling the surroundings so violently that our breaths became clouds of vapor.
A staircase waited farther ahead.
Narrow.
Built from dull stone.
Flanked by rusted chains.
Above it, carved into the entrance arch, was the first symbol I actually recognized from our survival lesson around the fire.
An open hand crossed by a straight line.
Prisons.
Tsukumo noticed the change in my expression.
"Now we reach the important part."
Sahger rested the shaft of his spear across his shoulder.
"We still don't know if she's here."
I climbed the first step, my boots suddenly feeling heavier.
"I know. But someone was."
The thirtieth floor reeked of oxidized metal and abandonment.
There were only doors.
Endless, claustrophobic rows of them.
Some carried plaques with names erased by time.
Others had nothing but scratched numbers.
On the thirty-first floor, the cells were larger, more like pits.
On the thirty-second, we found the first hooks and instruments of torture.
On the thirty-third, I found the first sign of life.
Or almost.
I stopped before a half-open door and rapped my knuckles against the frame.
"Hey."
No answer.
Inside the darkness of the cell, a gaunt figure sat chained against the wall, so still that cobwebs already stretched between its knees and the stone floor.
I didn't need to enter to know the answer.
I kept moving.
It was on the thirty-fourth floor that I found the marks.
Four enormous grooves carved into the corridor wall.
Deep.
Long.
Made in desperation.
My body locked up.
Tsukumo stopped beside me and studied the scratches for a long moment.
"They aren't hers," he said.
I looked at him, anxiety mixing with anger.
"How do you know?"
I stared at the marks and reluctantly admitted he was completely right.
They weren't Laura's.
Laura's claws were thinner.
The tower proved more dangerous on the thirty-fifth floor, when it tried to strip away what we still had left.
My energy wasn't suppressed through brute force.
It simply stopped responding, as though some master key had locked our spirits shut.
Tsukumo studied the dark walls.
"Containment system."
Strange metal plates had been embedded in the ceiling.
Ancient machinery.
Corroded by time.
Yet still active, humming at a low frequency.
I walked toward the nearest plate and gripped Kazekiba's sheath firmly.
The sword answered with the familiar weight of perfect steel in my hands.
Sahger released a short sound through his respirator.
Maybe a laugh.
Maybe exasperation.
We advanced using nothing but physical strength.
Curiously, none of us became sluggish or uncertain.
Perhaps because none of us had been foolish enough to learn how to fight while relying entirely on powers.
The first test came around the next corner.
A humanoid guard with its face hidden behind a smooth metal mask, gripping thick barbed chains.
The creature swung the weapon in a lethal arc toward my head.
It brought the heavy chains down across Tsukumo, striking him cleanly.
The chains broke.
Tsukumo seized the creature and ended the exchange with a brutal punch.
I entered from another guard's blind side, intercepting its chain with Kazekiba before it could reach my neck.
Using the leverage, I drove a kick into it and sent it crashing apart.
Sahger finished the last one from behind, burying his spear into the exposed joint at the neck.
The guard fell.
When the final metal mask hit the floor, I braced a hand against my knee, my breathing finally heavy in my lungs.
Tsukumo brushed some dirt from his torn coat.
Our energy began returning like a thin stream of freezing water on the thirty-sixth floor.
On the thirty-seventh, however, something else caught our attention.
A continuous scraping sound.
Metal slowly dragging across stone.
I stopped.
Tsukumo turned his head as well, and Sahger adjusted the sensors on his helmet.
Beneath the metallic dragging came the faint sound of labored breathing.
"Someone's alive," the hunter said.
We followed the ghostly trail of sound until the corridor opened before titanic doors of black steel.
At their center, embossed into the surface, was the same prison mark.
I pressed both palms against the freezing metal and pushed.
It didn't move.
Tsukumo touched the dark grooves running through the frame.
"Something extremely heavy is preventing it from moving from the other side. Chains, maybe. A security counterweight."
Tsukumo and I struck the door together.
The impact tore it free and sent it crashing into the chamber beyond.
The thirty-eighth floor looked nothing like a prison complex.
It resembled a profane cathedral built to worship something that should never have been named.
Oblique columns rose until they disappeared into the unreachable darkness overhead.
The twisted walls resembled grotesque skulls melting into one another, while dozens of rusted chains crossed the vast chamber like steel webs.
And there, in the center, someone was waiting.
The sight stopped me cold.
A girl.
Emaciated.
Her pale skin was almost translucent, and long, filthy black hair concealed part of her face and shoulders.
Old scars traced her arms and legs, contrasting against the miserable scraps of fabric that had once been clothing.
Chains as thick as an adult's arm bound her weakened wrists and ankles directly to the uneven stone floor.
But it was her back that held all my attention.
Wings.
Two enormous black-feathered wings rested behind her.
Both were badly damaged.
One struggled to remain partially open.
The other hung at a painful angle, unable to rise.
The girl heard us approaching and slowly lifted her head.
Her eyes didn't belong in that rotten place.
Crystal blue.
Intense.
Almost violent.
They were clouded with exhaustion, yet somehow remained alive.
Something still burned behind them that the chains had failed to extinguish.
I stepped toward her.
She recoiled instantly, stopped only by the restraints around her wrists.
"We're not here to hurt you," I said, softening my voice and keeping my hands away from my weapons.
She didn't answer.
I approached more carefully.
That was when I noticed her hands.
Her fingers twisted.
The skin tightened.
Thick, dark claws emerged from the tips, sharp and defensive.
My heart skipped.
I looked closer.
Similar.
But not the same.
The curvature of the bone-like blades was different.
I knelt several meters away, ignoring the smell of old blood.
"Hey."
She tried to keep the claws raised defensively.
Her strength failed first.
Her fingers trembled, and her hand fell toward the damp stone.
"It's okay."
I touched the thick metal restraints near her.
"We're getting you out."
Her cracked lips moved in an inaudible whisper.
I leaned closer.
"What?"
Her blue eyes shifted past my face, focusing on the thick darkness beyond the doorway we'd broken through.
"Careful... they... eat people."
The heavy rattle of dragging chains shook the profane chamber.
I stood immediately.
Tsukumo was already scanning the shadowed balconies.
Sahger spun his spear into a defensive grip.
Three massive doors along the sides of the chamber blew outward.
The Executioners entered.
They looked nothing like the guards from the lower floor.
They were towering suits of armor built to inspire fear, draped in funeral-black leather, their faces hidden behind pointed masks resembling the skulls of carrion birds.
They carried enormous axes, toothed steel hooks, and heavy chains.
"They knew someone would eventually try to rescue her," Tsukumo said, his cold eyes measuring the distance.
"Then let's disappoint them."
The first Executioner ignored the gap between us and launched its serrated chain straight for my neck.
I ducked beneath it, hearing the hook smash into the stone floor behind me.
The other two monsters surrounded Sahger, their massive silhouettes looming over the mercenary.
His dark spear looked almost fragile beside their oversized axes.
Sahger ignored the difference in raw strength.
With a precise pivot, he slipped past the first sweeping strike and drove his spear into the opening beneath the attacker's arm.
Turning on the balls of his feet, he used the shaft to redirect the second enemy's axe, already moving clear of its path as the weapon buried itself uselessly in the floor.
I drew Kazekiba as my opponent tried to reel its chain back in.
I intercepted the flying blade.
The impact traveled from my arms all the way down to my boots, cracking the tiles beneath me.
Fire pulsed angrily through my veins in response to the pressure.
Red lines began burning across my forearms.
The Executioner growled behind its mask and raised the axe.
I focused the heat, drawing all that searing fury along Kazekiba's polished blade.
"Kazan no Ikari."
The flames didn't explode.
They hissed outward in a thin, surgical whip of blinding scarlet, cutting only across the armored monster's chest and neck before dispersing into the air.
The chamber flashed crimson for a heartbeat.
Several meters away, Tsukumo opened both hands, intercepting three more enemies descending from hidden columns.
He isolated them in an instant.
The first was dragged straight toward the rocky formations high above.
The second slammed into a side pillar.
The third suddenly became so heavy that its armored legs buckled beneath its own weight.
"Right!" Tsukumo warned, without needing to specify who the opening belonged to.
Sahger was already there.
Two piercing thrusts, aided by a shift in gravity from Tsukumo, drove the spear into the fallen Executioner's helmet with mechanical precision.
The smoke slowly cleared.
Sahger rested his stained spear across his shoulders.
Tsukumo exhaled long and hard.
I hurried back to the prisoner.
I knelt.
"It's over."
Her crystalline eyes drifted across the fallen figures before settling on mine.
"For now," she corrected weakly.
I had no answer.
Tsukumo manipulated the massive steel restraints, removing the pressure from her pale wrists while Sahger broke apart the external mechanisms and I kept her upright so she wouldn't collapse onto the stained floor.
When the final restraint around her wings struck the stone, the black feathers trembled.
One weakened wing shifted, trying to fold against her back.
She bit her lip against the pain.
"Easy," I advised, supporting her narrow shoulders.
"What's your name?"
Silence held for what felt like five endless seconds.
For a moment, I wondered whether shock had buried the memory or whether fear had stolen her voice.
Then those striking blue eyes found the flickering light reflected in the dark floor.
"Havelyn."
The name alone meant nothing to me immediately.
What came next hit much harder.
"Havelyn... Daughter of Karana."
My mind went blank.
Karana.
I knew the weight carried by that name.
Not from drunken tavern stories.
Not from children's tales meant to frighten students before sleep.
I'd heard that name whispered in Lavinsk.
I looked sharply toward Tsukumo.
He looked as though he'd been struck by something invisible.
The severity in his expression told me he'd recognized it too.
Havelyn closed her exhausted eyes and let her head fall against my arm.
And there, holding the weakened winged girl against me, I finally understood what we'd found.
A noble.
Havelyn.
Daughter of Karana.
The Queen of the Skies.