The sky was grey when I woke. No sun, no rain—just stillness. The kind that comes before something breaks.
I walked across the beams of the Abyssal Frame. It felt heavier today. Alive. The structure wasn't just reacting to me anymore… it was listening.
Then I heard it.
Three knocks. Clear. Hollow. But there was no door.
I turned. A man stood at the edge of the site. Clean robes, no dirt on him, no sound when he walked. His presence felt out of place. Like someone from a world that followed rules I had already broken.
"You built this?" he asked.
I didn't answer.
He dropped a scroll between us.
The seal on it wasn't from the Guild… but it was familiar. A forgotten sigil, buried deep in my memory—one I'd seen in my father's study when I was still a boy.
"You were summoned," he said. "You ignored it."
I picked up the scroll and unrolled it.
It was a drawing of my own structure—but broken, falling, twisted. At the bottom, a single line was written:
"When the foundation rots, the tower becomes a tomb."
I looked up.
"Who sent you?"
The man smiled faintly, like someone who already knew the ending.
"Someone who built higher than you ever will… and saw what's waiting at the top."
He turned, walking into the fog.
But just before he vanished, he said:
"He remembers what you were. He fears what you're becoming."
Then he was gone.
I stared down at the scroll.
If he meant my father… then he finally noticed me.
I placed the scroll at the heart of the Abyssal Frame.
Then I kept building.