The first thing Aaric felt was pressure.
Not on his skin—on his mind. A soft, constant weight, like a hand resting on the back of his skull, testing how he would react.
Then the light faded.
They stood on polished black stone, arranged in perfect concentric circles. Above them was no sky, no sun—only a vast, domed ceiling of mirrored glass that reflected them from impossible angles. Dozens of Alaric's. Dozens of Arieas and Rydors and Lynias, scattered in shards of light.
But the reflections were wrong.
In several, Aaric was older, scarred differently, wearing armor he'd never seen. In one, he was alone. In another, Lynia wasn't there. In a third, he stood on a mountain of broken Tower machinery, eyes hollow.
Floor 35.
Not a dungeon.
A decision space.
"This isn't a normal floor," Miraen said quietly, void‑essence pulsing faintly around her fingers. "We're inside a construct. Layers of illusion over a real environment."
Lynia shivered. "It's… talking. Not with words. With possibilities."
Aaric turned slowly, taking in the impossible chamber. There were no doors, no visible exits. Only the mirror‑dome above and the perfect circles below.
On the outermost ring, carvings glowed faintly—symbols he didn't recognize, but his new 3‑star sight did.
"Timelines," he murmured. "These are… branches. Paths the Tower ran. Scenarios."
The pressure in his mind increased, just a fraction.
"Trial floor," Rydor guessed. "Psychic. It wants to see how we choose when shown certain outcomes."
Syl threw a knife at the nearest mirror.
The blade hit smooth glass and sank in without a sound, vanishing as the reflection rippled once and then settled—unchanged, except Syl was no longer in that version of the scene.
"Right," she muttered. "No stabbing the weird ceiling. Noted."
A voice—not the Veil Lord's, not Kael's—whispered through the chamber.
Not language.
Concept.
Aaric understood it anyway.
SHOW.
The mirrors shifted.
Images cascaded across the dome like thrown cards.
Aaric saw himself leading a war on Floor 50—shattering guild halls, cutting down Sovereigns captains with shadow‑inversion, his face hardened, eyes distant.
He saw another version on Floor 91, hand pressed against a pulsing core of light and darkness, Lynia's body lying still behind him. Ariea gone. Rydor dead. Only him and the Tower.
He saw himself merge.
Or fail.
Each reflection was a different answer.
"Stop," he said, jaw tight.
The images slowed.
"But it's not just showing you," Lynia whispered, voice thin. "It's pushing. Nudging your emotions. Seeing which ones you flinch from. Which ones you accept."
"Then we don't play its game," Kess said. "We find the exit and break something important."
Aaric looked down at the floor.
The rings weren't mere decoration. Each one pulsed with a different pattern—faint, but clear to his new perception. At the center, a small circle waited, blank and dark, like an eye.
"Everyone off the inner circles," he ordered. "Outer ring only. Don't step into a pattern unless I tell you."
They moved.
The pressure in his mind shifted, curious now. The Tower… no, the floor's local intelligence, was recalculating.
"You want to test me?" Aaric muttered under his breath. "Fine. But we'll do it on my terms."
He stepped deliberately onto the second ring.
The world blinked.
Aaric stood alone.
No Ariea, no Rydor, no Syl, no Lynia. Just him, in a ruined hall that felt like a future echo of the same chamber—mirrors shattered, stone cracked, blood on the floor.
Kael sat against a broken pillar.
Older. Tired. More shadow than flesh.
"You chose wrong," Kael said.
Aaric blinked. "Is this… you, or the floor using your face?"
"Does it matter?" Kael asked.
"Yeah," Aaric said. "It does."
He focused.
His domain pulsed outward—not as power, but as filter. The shadow‑field washed over the scene and peeled back false layers. Half the wounds vanished. The blood patterns changed. Kael's eyes lost some of their exhaustion and became too smooth, too even.
"Not him," Aaric said. "Good try."
The illusion cracked.
He stood back on the second ring, his team ringing the outer circle, watching him with varying degrees of alarm.
"You dropped," Ariea said tensely. "For three seconds, you weren't here. Just… a silhouette."
"Floor tried to run me through a branch," Aaric replied. "Show me a future where I screw up. Guilt‑trip me into compliance."
"Did it work?" Syl asked.
"Almost," he admitted. "But I'm getting used to being someone else's experiment."
The pressure in his mind sharpened.
PUSH.
Another ring lit up—third from center.
"Don't," Rydor warned.
"I have to," Aaric said. "If we just stand here, it'll keep ramping up pressure until someone else breaks. At least when it's me, I can see more of what it's doing."
He stepped onto the third ring.
This time, he felt the hook.
Not visual.
Emotional.
The world didn't change. His friends stayed exactly where they were. But part of him was elsewhere, seeing a version of himself kneeling beside Lynia's body, watching her chest fail to rise. Hearing the Tower voice whisper: YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HER. YOU CHOSE NOT TO.
Rage surged up, hot and blind.
He wanted to tear something apart. The Tower. The Veil Lords. Himself.
Aaric clenched his hands hard enough to draw blood.
Shadow flared—but inward, not out.
"No," he said, voice low and shaking. "You don't get to use her against me. You already did that once. That's over."
The hook slid, probing for a new angle—Ariea's death, Rydor's sacrifice, Syl's betrayal, Miraen's defection. Each an emotional landmine. Each a weapon.
He did something he hadn't tried before.
He didn't push it away.
He pulled it in.
Shadow‑essence wrapped around the emotional hooks and absorbed them, like poison drawn into a filter. He didn't deny the fear. He took ownership of it.
"Yes," he said, each word deliberate. "I am afraid of those things. Any sane person would be. But fear isn't your tool. It's information."
The pressure faltered.
The third ring went dark.
Ariea let out a breath she'd been holding. "What did you just do?"
"Turned the test into data," Aaric said slowly, feeling his heartbeat start to steady. "It's not just adjusting based on my reactions. I can adjust based on what it tries. It's… a feedback loop."
"Can you break it?" Miraen asked.
"Not yet," he said. "But I can overload it."
He stepped to the fourth ring.
This time, the chamber responded instantly.
Images flooded the mirrors—Aaric as warlord, as puppet, as martyr, as Architect. Lynia in chains, free, erased. Ariea dying for him, because of him, instead of him. Rydor torn apart by Veil Lords, by Tower guardians, by Aaric's own shadow gone berserk.
All at once.
No time to process.
The pressure in his mind spiked, trying to force an emotional breakdown.
Instead, something else snapped.
Laughter.
Not from him.
From Rydor.
"Really?" the captain chuckled—it sounded harsh and half‑mad. "This is your big weapon? Showing him all the ways he can fail?" He spat on the stone. "Newsflash, you cosmic tin can—we already live with that every day."
Kess barked a laugh of her own. "You want to terrify me with dying in battle? That's all I've ever expected."
Syl grinned, sharp and reckless. "You can't threaten me with betrayal. I grew up assuming everyone would sell me for a crystal."
Miraen's void‑eyes glittered. "You're trying to test individual response in a group context. Your model is old. These aren't isolated chosen ones. They're a team."
Lynia lifted her head, eyes glowing faintly. "He's not alone. That's where your past candidates broke. You took everything from them before offering 'ascension.' You don't know how to handle someone who refuses to climb without others."
Aaric felt it then.
The Tower's confusion.
Not anger. Not fear.
Genuine lack of understanding.
Its models were based on solitary champions—heroes it broke, rebuilt, and offered merger to. Its trials were calibrated around individuals whose only meaningful bonds had been severed.
Aaric had walked into its test with people who refused to let him carry the burden alone.
"Yeah," he said, stepping off the fourth ring back to the outer circle. "You picked the wrong generation for that script."
The mirrors flickered.
One by one, the most dramatic futures faded—war‑lord Aaric, core‑merged Aaric, weeping‑over‑Lynia's‑body Aaric. The dome shifted to show only one sequence now:
Him.
Floor 50.
A door half open.
Light beyond.
An invitation.
The pressure in his mind steadied, focused.
CHOOSE.
The word wasn't sound, but it was unmistakable.
Not between fates this time.
Between paths.
Continue toward the archives and accelerated truth.
Or step sideways—leave the designed Architect path altogether, vanish into unknowns the Tower hadn't gamed out yet.
"Everyone see that?" he asked.
"No," Ariea said immediately. "We just see you and a door."
"Same," Syl said. "You're getting the special treatment."
"Because only you can open it," Lynia whispered. "It's keying off your signature. Your… candidate status."
"What happens if I don't?" Aaric asked, looking up at the reflected door.
The answer pressed into his mind.
Delay.
Resistance.
Counter‑moves.
The Tower would keep throwing floors like this at them—tests, traps, delays. It wouldn't stop them reaching Floor 50, but it would bleed them the entire way. By the time they got there, they'd be half‑dead, half‑broken, easy to steer.
"What if I do?" he asked.
Instant repositioning.
He saw it—a direct line into the Floor 50 region. Not the heart of the archives, but a side access. Closer than any climber had ever reached at his star rank.
Faster.
More dangerous.
Rydor's voice was low. "Well?"
"It's an offer," Aaric said. "Skip the normal climb. Take their shortcut to Floor 50's outskirts. We'd be ahead of schedule—and surrounded by Veil Lords and core systems sooner than expected."
"Or we slog it out, bleed on every floor until then," Kess said. "No guarantee we survive that either."
"What does Kael think?" Ariea asked.
Lynia went still.
She closed her eyes.
For a long, terrifying moment, she didn't breathe.
Then she exhaled slowly.
"He says," she murmured, "every Architect so far walked the long path. The Tower needed time to isolate them, cut their ties, study their flaws. The direct route was always there, but it never offered it. Not once. Not in two thousand years."
She opened her eyes.
"It's offering it now because it's afraid of giving you time with other people," she finished. "Afraid of what that does to its scripts."
Aaric looked at the door in the mirror.
At his distorted reflection reaching for it.
At the people standing around him, very real, very breakable.
"Long path, we die slowly," he said. "Short path, we die fast."
"Or don't," Syl said. "Don't forget that part."
Rydor's hand came down on his shoulder, steady and heavy. "It's your call, kid. Your story. Your brother. Your sister. We signed up knowing you'd have to make choices like this."
Ariea didn't speak.
She just stepped closer, close enough that their shoulders brushed, silver aura mingling faintly with shadow.
Whatever door he chose, she was clearly going through it with him.
Aaric took a breath.
Then another.
He thought of Lynia's small hand gripping his. Of Kael raging against the core. Of countless climbers ground through this machine in exchange for a chance at meaning.
"Alright," he said at last. "If the Tower is scared of me having time with you all…"
He raised his hand toward the empty air.
"…then we don't give it what it wants."
He did not open the door.
He did something else.
Instead of accepting the pre‑made passage, he reached up with his 3‑star sight, found the thread that connected the door to its destination, and yanked it down.
The chamber shook.
Stone, mirror, and light all warped as he forced a slice of Floor 50's path into Floor 35's construct—not as a neat portal, but as a tearing overlay. Reality de‑synced, two floor‑logics grinding against each other.
The Tower's surprise slammed into his skull like a storm.
"What did you do?" Miraen shouted, grabbing for balance as the ground twisted.
"I refused the test," Aaric grunted. "And stole the tool."
Cracks spiderwebbed across the dome.
Through them, for just a heartbeat, they saw something beyond: an impossible corridor of white light and black shadow, lined with doors.
The archives weren't just a room.
They were a network.
Then everything broke.
The sphere collapsed inward, shadows and mirrors imploding as the Tower cut the floor off its main systems rather than let the corruption spread.
Weightless.
Falling.
Not down.
Sideways.
Into an unplanned space the Tower hadn't named yet.
Aaric had forced a misroute.
The Tower was scrambling to categorize it.
As they tumbled through non‑space, Lynia's voice reached him, thin but fierce.
"Kael's laughing," she shouted over the rush. "He says this is the first new thing that's happened in centuries."
Then the fall ended.
They hit stone.
Cold, solid, real.
Aaric opened his eyes to dim light, dust, and the faint pulsing of sealed mechanisms.
Rydor groaned. "Where are we?"
Lynia stared at the wall.
At the symbol carved into it.
Not the Veil Lords' sigil.
Older.
Sharper.
A circle with a vertical line split down the center, flanked by seven smaller marks.
"The original Architect's mark," she whispered. "We're not in the Tower's active floors anymore."
She looked at Aaric, eyes wide.
"We just crashed into its back rooms."