The interrogation lasted fourteen hours.
Vex talked. Not because he was tortured—Rydor had made it clear they wouldn't resort to that—but because the alternative was death, and Aaric's shadow-essence wrapped around the death-rune on his chest was the only thing keeping his heart beating.
"Start from the beginning," Rydor commanded, his scarred face unreadable in the safehouse's dim lamplight. "Who recruited you? Who gave you orders to process tainted crystals?"
Vex was slumped in a chair, his body trembling from exhaustion and fear. Lynia sat in the corner, her eyes distant, occasionally murmuring observations that only she could perceive through her psychic link to the Tower.
"Seventeen years ago," Vex began, his voice hollow, "I was a low-rank crystal processor in the Stanners Guild. Unremarkable. Weak. No real prospects for climbing higher." He paused, gathering the thread of his confession. "A woman approached me. Called herself Architect Myna. Said she represented 'interested parties in Tower research.' She offered me payment—essence crystals, artifacts, rare materials—if I would conduct a specific experiment."
"What kind of experiment?" Ariea asked, her silver eyes burning with intensity.
"Tainted essence injection," Vex replied. "The Tower's control mechanisms normally suppress rare essence-types. Shadow, void, flame-mutation combinations. But certain impurities in the essence can create... gaps. Moments where the Tower's attention lapses. Where awakeners can manifest abilities they shouldn't be able to."
Aaric felt his shadow-essence twitch beneath his skin. "They were testing how to hide from the Tower's surveillance."
"Exactly," Vex confirmed. "But not just to hide. To break free. To create awakeners the Tower couldn't track, couldn't control, couldn't predict." Vex's eyes locked on Aaric. "They were looking for shadow-awakeners specifically. Because shadow-essence can cut through fate-threads, can interfere with the Tower's manipulation of probability and destiny."
"Who is 'they'?" Rydor demanded. "Who gave Myna her orders?"
Vex swallowed hard. "I don't know. Myna reported to someone called 'the Veil,' but I never met them. The orders came down through multiple intermediaries. Coded messages. Dead drops. Everything was compartmentalized." He paused. "But I did piece together fragments. The Veil Lords—there are seven of them, apparently—they exist on multiple floors simultaneously. They control resources, routes, information. And they've been running the tainted crystal operation for at least forty years."
"Forty years?" Syl interjected from where she was sharpening a blade in the corner. "That's before Kael even disappeared."
"Because Kael was always the target," Lynia whispered from her corner.
Everyone turned to look at her. The girl's eyes were open but not focused on the physical room—she was seeing something distant, perceiving information flowing through her psychic link to the Tower.
"The Veil Lords didn't create the tainted crystal operation to find shadow-awakeners," Lynia continued in that eerie doubled voice that meant the Tower was speaking through her. "They created it to breed them. To engineer circumstances where shadow-essence would naturally awaken in specific bloodlines. Kael's awakening wasn't random. It was designed."
Aaric felt the ground shift beneath him.
"My bloodline," he said quietly. "They wanted shadow-essence in my bloodline."
"Your father had latent shadow potential," Vex confirmed. "Never awakened—he was too weak, never put in the right circumstances. But the genetic markers were there. The Veil Lords were studying your family for three generations before your father even met your mother. They orchestrated that meeting. Ensured you would be born. Ensured the conditions for your awakening."
Aaric's hands clenched. His shadow-essence surged in response to his anger, and Vex gasped as the death-rune pressed tighter against his chest.
"Easy," Ariea said softly, placing a hand on Aaric's shoulder. "We need him alive."
Aaric forced himself to breathe. To control the shadow. To not let rage consume him.
"Continue," Rydor ordered.
"Kael's awakening was the first successful engineered shadow-manifestation," Vex said, gasping. "The Veil Lords studied him for years. They watched him climb. They documented his power progression. And when he reached Floor 91—when he approached the threshold of becoming a potential successor to the Tower's core—they moved to... guide him."
"Guide him how?" Ariea demanded.
"By showing him the truth," Vex replied. "Floor 91 is where the Tower's real nature becomes impossible to hide. It's where the climber sees the machinery behind the curtain. The Veil Lords arranged for Kael to see how thoroughly he was controlled. How his entire existence had been orchestrated. How even his 'free will' was just probability threads the Tower had woven to appear as choice."
Lynia's voice cut through again, clearer now, more her own: "Kael broke. Not his body. His spirit. He realized he was a puppet. That everything he'd accomplished, everyone he'd protected, was part of the Tower's design. So he refused."
"Refused what?" Rydor asked, though Aaric suspected he already knew.
"To merge with the core," Lynia whispered. "To become the Tower's next iteration. To sacrifice his individuality to become a cosmic mechanism." She met Aaric's eyes. "Kael chose to remain himself. So the Tower trapped him. Sealed him on Floor 91. Made him conscious but powerless, forced to watch as it continued its experiments through other chosen ones."
The implications crashed down on Aaric like a collapsing building.
"I'm next," he said flatly. "I'm the second chosen one. The Tower is grooming me to do what Kael wouldn't."
"Yes," Vex confirmed. "But with modifications. The Veil Lords learned from Kael's refusal. They realized that simply showing climbers the truth would cause them to reject the Tower's purpose. So with you, they're using a different approach."
"What approach?" Ariea asked, though her grip on Aaric's shoulder tightened.
"Emotional leverage," Vex replied. "Your sister. The Tower deliberately poisoned her with tainted crystals. Not to kill her, but to create a bond. A psychic link that would make her dependent on you climbing. Make her survival dependent on your continued ascension toward Floor 91."
Aaric looked at Lynia. She was crying silently, understanding now what had been done to her, how thoroughly she'd been weaponized against her own brother.
"That's... that's not possible," Ariea said, but her voice was uncertain.
"It's elegant," Vex continued, his voice bitter. "Because unlike Kael, who was broken by understanding the Tower's control, Aaric has been given a reason to climb willingly. He climbs not for glory or power, but for love. For family. For survival. And that's a motivation the Tower can feed on far more effectively."
Rydor was quiet for a long moment. Then: "What about the Veil Lords themselves? Where do they come from? What are they?"
"I don't know," Vex admitted. "But Myna once let something slip in a drunken moment. She said the Veil Lords weren't human. Not originally. They were something the Tower created. Something it became when the first Architect merged with the core two thousand years ago."
Lynia gasped. Her eyes rolled back, and blood began trickling from her nose again.
"The Architects," she breathed. "The Tower has had seven incarnations. Seven times it's merged with a chosen climber and evolved. The Veil Lords are the echoes of those seven. The shadows they cast on the probability threads. They're extensions of the Tower itself."
Aaric stood abruptly, pacing the safehouse like a caged animal. "So I'm not climbing toward freedom. I'm climbing toward becoming a component of something cosmic. A cog in a machine that's been running for millennia."
"Unless you refuse," Lynia whispered.
Everyone looked at her.
"That's what Kael discovered," she continued. "He refused. And yes, the Tower sealed him. But it couldn't unmake him. It couldn't force him to merge. He's still himself, still conscious, still alive in some form on Floor 91."
"But if I refuse," Aaric said slowly, "the Tower kills Lynia. Uses the psychic bond to stop her heart."
"Probably," Vex admitted. "Unless..."
He trailed off, looking at each of them in turn.
"Unless what?" Rydor demanded.
"Unless you find a way to break the bond before reaching Floor 91," Vex said. "But I don't know how. I've never heard of anyone managing it. The Tower's essence-work is too sophisticated, too deeply woven into the victim's life-force."
Ariea moved to Lynia's side, examining her carefully. "The rune on your chest—does it have the same structure as Vex's death-seal?"
Lynia pulled up her sleeve. A faint, glowing rune was visible on her left shoulder—less obvious than Vex's but unmistakably the same design.
Ariea's silver eyes burned with determination. "Then maybe we can suppress it. The same way Aaric is suppressing Vex's death-rune."
"It's not that simple," Vex warned. "Vex's rune is anchored to his life-force. Break the anchor, you break the rune. But Lynia's rune is anchored to the Tower's core. To break it, you'd have to..." He paused. "You'd have to reach the core and sever it from the inside. Which means climbing to Floor 91. Which is exactly what the Tower wants Aaric to do."
The irony hung in the air like poison.
Rydor's scarred face was grim. "So our options are: climb to Floor 91 and risk Aaric merging with the Tower, or refuse to climb and watch Lynia die."
"There's a third option," Miraen's voice came from the shadows.
The void-essence warrior stepped into the lamplight. How long she'd been listening, none of them knew. But her void-eyes were burning with something that might have been rage or might have been recognition.
"You destroy the Tower from the outside," Miraen said calmly. "You don't climb toward the core. You climb toward the structural weak points. The seals that hold the Tower's reality in place. And you break them. All of them."
"That would collapse the Tower," Vex said, horrified. "Billions of people live on these floors. A collapse would—"
"Kill them all," Miraen finished. "Yes. I'm aware."
Ariea's hand moved to her sword. "You're insane."
"No," Miraen replied. "I'm practical. The Tower is a parasite. It feeds on human ambition and suffering. It manufactures conflict to sustain itself. And it's done it for thousands of years." Her void-eyes fixed on Aaric. "The Veil Lords, the Sovereigns Circle, all the faction wars, all the conspiracies—they're all symptoms of the Tower's need to maintain struggle. Breaking it would free billions."
"And kill billions," Rydor countered.
"They're going to die anyway," Miraen replied coldly. "The Tower's been slowly poisoning the Waking World for two thousand years. Eventually, when it's achieved its purpose, when it's evolved far enough, it will abandon the lower floors and ascend to consume other realities. Everyone here is already condemned. The only question is whether you want to die slaves to the Tower or die free."
Lynia stirred, her psychic link pulsing with a sudden insight.
"That's not true," she whispered. "Kael is showing me... there's another way. Kael found it. A possibility that the Tower didn't anticipate. A thread in the probability tapestry that even the Veil Lords missed."
"What way?" Aaric demanded.
"Merge," Lynia said, and every eye in the room turned toward her. "But don't dissolve. Merge and resist. Become one with the core but keep your individuality intact. Become the eighth Architect. And then, from inside the Tower's consciousness, change it. Rewrite its purpose."
"Is that even possible?" Ariea asked.
"Kael thinks it is," Lynia replied. "He's been imprisoned for fifteen years. And in that time, he's been in direct contact with the Tower's core consciousness. He's learned how it thinks. How to navigate its systems. He believes that if someone strong enough, determined enough, reaches the core with full knowledge of what's coming... they might be able to survive the merger and retain themselves."
Aaric felt the weight of impossible choice settling on him.
Climb and risk becoming a puppet of the Tower.
Refuse and let Lynia die.
Destroy the Tower and kill billions.
Or climb to Floor 91, merge with the core, and try to change the fundamental nature of the machine from within.
All four options led to darkness.
"We need more information," Rydor said finally. "Vex, are there records? Anything documenting the Tower's true nature? The locations of the structural weak points Miraen mentioned? Anything that could help us make a real choice?"
"The Veil Lords keep archives," Vex said slowly. "On Floor 50. In a hidden chamber that I've never seen but I know exists. Myna mentioned it once—said it held the Tower's original blueprints. The architectural schematics. Everything about how the Tower was designed and how to manipulate it."
"Then that's where we go next," Rydor declared. "After the tournament. We climb to Floor 50. We find those archives. And then we make a decision based on complete information, not fear or desperation."
Aaric looked at Lynia. At Ariea. At Rydor and Syl and Kess and Miraen.
Each of them bore the weight of the impossible truth.
The Tower was a machine. They were all living inside its clockwork. And the only way forward was deeper into the mechanism itself.
Outside the safehouse, the artificial sun of Floor 15 was rising. Another day in the Tower. Another rotation of the eternal machine.
And somewhere on Floor 91, in the depths of the Tower's core, Kael screamed silently—a prisoner of the mechanism that had created him, waiting for his brother to climb high enough to hear him.
Waiting to pass on the burden of impossible choice.