The climb to Floor 30 took three days of relentless ascent.
They didn't follow the official routes. Rydor knew passages through the Tower that weren't mapped in any guild directory—ancient tunnels carved by civilizations that predated humanity's arrival, shaft systems that ran parallel to the main floors, hidden elevators powered by essence-stones older than recorded history.
The team moved like a shadow through the Tower's depths, leaving minimal traces, triggering no alarms. Nightveil's operatives cleared motion-sensing wards. Syl disarmed mechanical traps with surgical precision. And Aaric's shadow-essence provided camouflage, dampening heat signatures and obscuring them from essence-detection systems.
But the climb was taking its toll.
By the time they reached Floor 25, exhaustion was setting in. Climbers were sleeping in shifts, eating cold rations, pushing their bodies beyond comfortable limits. The threat of pursuit kept them moving—the Sovereigns Circle had realized the tournament forfeit meant Aaric's team was ascending, and hunters were being dispatched to intercept.
It was on Floor 27 that they encountered the first guardian.
The creature wasn't a normal beast. It was something the Tower had made—a hybrid amalgamation of essence-forms, stitched together from multiple creatures and animated by pure magical force. It blocked their passage through a vital tunnel, and there was no way around it.
Rydor called for a halt.
"We fight," he said simply. "There's no other choice. We can't backtrack. We can't go around."
The guardian was enormous—easily twenty feet tall, with bodies of three different creatures merged into one grotesque form. Stone-armored front, flame-scorched sides, and something that looked disturbingly like shadow-essence coiled around its spine.
"That's impossible," Ariea whispered, staring at the shadow-component. "The Tower shouldn't be able to weaponize shadow-essence. Shadow-essence is antithetical to the Tower's control systems."
"Unless the Tower is learning from Aaric," Lynia said, and her voice carried that eerie doubled quality again. "Unless it's adapting. Creating defenses specifically designed to counter the variables it didn't anticipate."
The guardian moved.
Rydor and Ariea met it head-on, their 4-star essences blazing in tandem—stone clashing against kinetic acceleration, immovable force meeting irresistible speed. The impact echoed through the tunnel like thunder.
But the guardian was relentless.
For every blow Rydor landed, the creature regenerated. For every strike Ariea redirected, it adapted. And the shadow-essence component wrapped around its core, absorbing damage, redirecting attacks, using techniques that Aaric recognized—patterns he'd developed, methods he'd pioneered.
The Tower was fighting him with his own shadow-essence.
"Aaric!" Rydor roared, already bleeding from a gash across his shoulder. "This is your battle! It's your essence! You have to be the one to end it!"
Aaric stepped forward.
He felt Lynia's psychic presence suddenly expand, wrapping around him—a desperate connection that bridged the gap between his consciousness and his sister's, between present and the echoes of Kael's imprisoned mind on Floor 91.
And through that bridge, he felt something.
Not instruction. Not control. But understanding. A knowledge that bloomed in his mind like a dark flower—techniques that Kael had developed over fifteen years of imprisonment. Methods of shadow-manipulation that went beyond simple construct formation.
Aaric raised his hands.
The shadow-essence flowed from him differently this time. Not as external constructs, but as extension of his will. He wove shadows into the space between his fingers, creating patterns that looked like nothing so much as threads of pure darkness.
Then he pulled.
The shadow-component of the guardian shrieked—a sound no creature should be able to make. Aaric was pulling the shadow-essence out of the guardian's form, severing its connection to the creature's body, unweaving the very threads that held it together.
The guardian convulsed.
The stone components began to crumble. The flame-scorched sections cooled and crystallized. And the shadow-essence, torn free from its artificial anchor, dispersed into the air like smoke.
The guardian collapsed into inert components—just dead flesh and mineral matter, no longer animated by the Tower's will.
Aaric staggered backward, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
His body was burning. Not from pain, but from change. His shadow-essence was responding to the power he'd just channeled, catalyzing something deep within him.
"It's happening," Lynia whispered, tears streaming down her face. "Kael is showing you how to break through. He's pushing his own essence into you through our link."
Ariea caught Aaric as his knees buckled. His skin was darkening—not visibly, not obviously, but there was a change in how light interacted with him. A subtle shift in his relationship to shadow itself.
"He's breaking through," Rydor said, understanding flooding his expression. "To 3-star."
The transformation took fourteen hours.
They barricaded themselves in a side chamber while Aaric's body underwent the metamorphosis. His essence was evolving, ascending to a new tier of power. And the process was violent in its intensity—his cells breaking down and reforming, his consciousness fragmenting and reknitting, his relationship to shadow-essence fundamentally rewriting itself.
Through it all, he could feel Kael's presence. Not intrusive, not controlling, but guiding. Teaching. His brother's consciousness, fragmented and imprisoned in the Tower's core, was using Lynia as a conduit to pour centuries of accumulated knowledge into Aaric's ascending mind.
When the transformation completed, Aaric could see in ways he never had before.
The world was no longer just physical space. He could see the threads of shadow that existed in every corner, every darkness, every absence of light. He could see how those threads connected to probability, to fate, to the Tower's control systems.
And he could see them.
The death-seals and psychic bonds appeared as glowing constructs to his new vision. Vex's death-rune was a cage of pure essence. Lynia's psychic link was a golden thread connecting her heart to Kael on Floor 91 and simultaneously to the Tower's core consciousness.
And he could cut them.
Not metaphorically. Literally, using shadow-threads as scalpels, separating components that were meant to be bound together.
The realization made his breath catch.
"What do you see?" Ariea asked, watching him carefully.
"Everything," Aaric replied, his voice different now—deeper, resonating with harmonics that suggested his vocal cords had been restructured at the essence level. "I can see the Tower's architecture. The welds where reality has been fused together. The seams where the machine's control systems attach to individual climbers."
He looked at his hands.
His shadow-essence was no longer confined to his skin. It extended invisibly around him now, creating an aura of darkness that stretched several feet in all directions. And it was no longer just defensive. It was perceptive. Through it, he could sense essences, trace movements, perceive the probabilities branching from each possible action.
"New abilities," Rydor said, studying him with a general's appreciation. "What can you do now that you couldn't before?"
Aaric stood and extended his hand.
A shadow-construct formed—but it wasn't the crude, physical blade he'd relied on before. This was something else entirely. A weapon made of pure shadow-essence, capable of cutting through essence-wards, capable of affecting things that existed partially in the realm of probability rather than physical matter.
"I can see the Tower's threads," Aaric said quietly. "I can weave them. Reweave them. I can cut bonds that the Tower designed to be permanent." He looked at Vex, who was still being held under guard. "I can remove his death-seal. I can free him from the Tower's control."
Vex's eyes widened with desperate hope.
"I can do something else too," Aaric continued, looking at Lynia. "I can see your psychic link. I can see how it's anchored to both Kael and the Tower's core. I can potentially break it. Free you from the leash without needing to climb to Floor 91."
Lynia's hand went to her mouth. "But then you wouldn't have a reason to climb."
"I would have a better reason," Aaric replied. "The truth. Kael's freedom. A choice that's actually mine, not the Tower's design."
Ariea stepped forward, and there was something like awe in her silver eyes. "You're not just a shadow-awakener. You're something else. Something the Tower didn't anticipate. A climber who can see its machinery and choose whether to participate."
"The eighth chosen one," Rydor said, understanding crystallizing in his expression. "Not someone who will merge with the core and continue the cycle. Someone who might be able to break the cycle entirely."
But Miraen's voice cut through the moment like a void-blade: "Which makes you immediately more dangerous than you were an hour ago. The Tower will escalate. The Veil Lords will realize their carefully designed plan is unraveling."
She was right.
As if in response to her words, the tunnel began to shake.
Not a small tremor. A violent upheaval, as though the Tower itself was convulsing. Cracks appeared in the stone walls. Essence-stones embedded in the structure began to destabilize, their power leaking into the surrounding space.
"The Tower is collapsing the passage," Lynia gasped. "It's trying to bury us. Trying to—"
"Move!" Rydor roared. "Everybody up! We climb now!"
They ran through the crumbling tunnel, the ceiling falling behind them, the walls cracking open to reveal something that looked disturbingly like machinery beneath the stone facade. Aaric's new shadow-sight let him see the Tower's true nature for the first time—not a structure made of rock and earth, but a vast construct of essence and probability, held together by threads and seals and the wills of ancient architects.
They burst through a sealed door and emerged on Floor 28, gasping and bleeding.
Behind them, the passage collapsed entirely.
But the collapse didn't stop there. The instability spread, causing aftershocks across multiple floors. Essence-stones continued destabilizing. The Tower's infrastructure was literally rejecting their presence.
"It's fighting us now," Ariea said, blood dripping from a gash on her forehead. "The Tower has declared us hostile."
"Then we respond in kind," Aaric replied, and his shadow-essence flared outward—a beacon of darkness that cut through the Tower's systems like a knife through silk.
Every essence-detection ward on Floors 25-30 suddenly went blind. Every tracking system malfunctioned. Aaric had just announced their position, their power-level, and their defiance to every faction in the Tower simultaneously.
There was no more hiding.
The real climb had begun.
On Floor 50, in a hidden chamber beneath the coliseum's foundation, the Veil Lords convened.
Seven figures wrapped in void-essence and ancient authority, their minds interlinked through probability threads that the Tower had woven for two thousand years.
"The eighth chosen one has awakened," one of them said, its voice like the grinding of cosmic gears.
"Earlier than predicted," another replied. "The probability threads were clear. He wasn't supposed to break through until Floor 40."
"The sister," a third voice observed. "Her psychic link to the imprisoned seventh. She's channeling his knowledge directly into the eighth. It's creating a cascade effect, accelerating the timeline."
"What are our options?" the first voice demanded.
"Kill him before Floor 40," a younger voice suggested—one that sounded almost human. "Dispatch Architects before he gains more power."
"Killing him will trigger the sister's death-seal," another replied. "And if she dies, her psychic link to the seventh will collapse. The seventh will stop channeling. And the eighth will become unstable, unpredictable."
"Then seal him," the eldest voice commanded. "Use the same mechanism we used on the seventh. Trap him on a lower floor. Make his sister's survival dependent on compliance."
"We tried that on Floor 27," one voice responded. "He broke through the guardian. He's already beginning to see our threads."
Silence fell.
The Veil Lords understood, in that moment, that their carefully designed plan had encountered a variable they hadn't accounted for.
A climber who could see the machine and choose whether to climb it.
A shadow-essence user who could cut the very threads that held the Tower together.
And most dangerously: a young man willing to tear down an entire civilization's hierarchy if it meant freedom for the people he loved.
"Escalation," the eldest voice declared. "Full containment protocols. Activate the Floor 50 gates. If the eighth reaches the archives, if he learns what we truly are, the entire structure collapses."
The other Veil Lords assented.
And across the Tower, the hunt reached a new fever pitch.