THOOM… THOOM…
The leviathan carried them through the night.
Its vast back rose and fell like a living continent, each breath a slow tide that lifted the survivors and set them down again. Salt crusted their skin. Exhaustion dragged at bone and marrow. No one spoke much—words felt borrowed from a world that had already ended.
Leo sat near the ridge of a bone plate, knees drawn up, the Shadow Shard resting across his lap in its harmless iron-ring form. The shadows clung to him thicker here, drinking in the Spire's crimson glow as they drew closer.
They whispered.
Fragments only—hunger, memory, warning.
He watched the tower grow.
At first it had been a distant needle of red light. Now it consumed half the sky, veins of pulsing scarlet threading through coral and bone. The structure wasn't built—it had grown, spiraling upward in defiance of gravity, wider at the base than the peak.
Lightning crawled endlessly around its midsections.
Each flash revealed carvings the size of city blocks: endless processions of chained figures marching into open maws.
Soul refinement.
He had heard the phrase from Aurelion Vale, but seeing the Spire made it real.
They bring us here to be cracked open, Leo thought. Souls peeled like fruit. The Spell reads what's inside—potential, flaws, memories—and decides what to keep… what to burn… what to twist into something useful for whatever waits at the top.
He had always been disposable.
Street kid. Orphan. Thief when hunger demanded it.
No one had ever looked at him and seen value.
The Spell had looked anyway.
Slave.
Birth of the shadows.
Faceless sun.
What will it see if it gets inside me?
Nothing worth keeping. Just another shadow for the machine.
Something inside him recoiled.
Not fear.
Defiance.
He had survived by being overlooked—slippery, stubborn, unrefined. If the place wanted to strip that away, it would have to kill him first.
Aurelia dropped beside him, silent despite the barnacles. Her broken spear had been lashed to a longer shard of cage-bar—crude, ugly, lethal.
"We reach the base by dawn," she said quietly. "The leviathan drops us on the outer reef. After that, we walk."
Leo nodded. "And inside?"
"Circles," she answered. "A spiral. Down as much as up. Each one refines something different—body, mind, soul. Most break early."
She paused.
"The ones who reach the center… come back changed. Stronger. Cleaner."
Her silver eyes hardened. "Not always themselves."
Lightning flared.
For a heartbeat, her reflection fractured in its light.
"My sister entered three years ago," Aurelion continued, voice flat—weather-report calm. "She was fifteen. Strong Aspect. Strong will. The family thought she'd conquer it."
She swallowed once.
"She returned six months later. Perfect control. Perfect technique."
A beat.
"She looked through me like I wasn't there. Haven't spoken since."
Leo turned fully toward her.
"That's why you're here," he said.
Not a question.
Her jaw tightened. "The Spell took me the day after I turned eighteen. I've been waiting to reach the Spire on my own terms ever since. If there's even a fragment of her left inside…"
Her grip tightened on the spear.
"…I'll find it. Or I'll burn this place down trying."
The raw edge in her voice surprised him. Until now, she'd seemed forged from ice.
Leo looked back at the tower.
Family, he thought. I never had one to lose.
Maybe that made him luckier.
Or just emptier.
No one waited for him outside. No one would notice if he vanished forever.
Here, that absence felt like armor.
Nothing to leverage.
Nothing to refine away.
Lyr crawled closer, staying low against the leviathan's shifting hide. His clever fingers were bloodied from prying loose barnacles—potential tools, potential weapons.
"Thalassa's briefing the others," he whispered. "From what returned Awakened remembered."
Leo listened.
"First circle is physical," Lyr said. "Pain thresholds. Endurance. Regeneration tests. They heal you just enough to break you again."
He hesitated.
"Second circle is memory. Your worst moments. On repeat. Until you accept them… or crack."
"And the third?" Leo asked.
Lyr swallowed. "Souls. They pull your Aspect out. Stretch it. Cut pieces away. Some come back stronger."
A pause.
"Some come back hollow."
The shadows coiled tighter around Leo's ribs.
"There's a rumor," Lyr continued softly. "One survivor—goes by Kael—claimed he reached the fourth circle. Said there's a heart chamber at the center. A shard older than the Spell itself."
Aurelia's eyes narrowed. "Kael's a legend. Half the stories say he lied. The rest say he died."
"Doesn't matter," Leo said quietly. "If there's even a chance…"
He didn't finish.
Rewrite my Flaw.
The idea lodged in his chest like a second heart.
Slave.
Child of Shadows.
The shadows had shielded him, obeyed him—but they also pulled. Toward obedience. Toward deeper darkness.
Every time he used them, the brand burned deeper.
What would I be without it?
Free?
Or just another kind of monster?
Doesn't matter.
I'll choose my chains.
The leviathan rumbled beneath them, a sound that vibrated through bone.
Dawn bled across the horizon—crimson, of course.
They were close enough now to see the reef: jagged coral teeth encircling the Spire's base, waves smashing eternally against them. Shapes moved in the surf—guards, or things that had failed refinement and been cast out.
The great beast slowed, turning broadside to the reef.
Its voice rolled through them one final time.
"Delivery complete. Enter… or remain as chum."
No one hesitated.
One by one, the fifteen survivors slid down its flank into the churning shallows. Warm water thick with red algae closed around them. Coral sliced skin. Barnacles tore flesh.
They waded ashore onto a beach of crushed bone-sand.
The palace loomed above—judgment made flesh.
Leo was last.
He paused at the edge of the leviathan's back, staring at the lowest gate.
A cavernous maw framed by titanic ribs.
Doors of living coral grinding open.
The shadows rippled—eager and afraid.
This place will try to own me, he thought. It's what it was built for.
He tightened his grip on the Shadow Shard ring.
I've been owned before.
And I'm still here.
Leo leapt into the water, swam the final distance, and stepped onto the bone-sand beside Aurelia.
Behind them, the leviathan submerged without a sound.
Ahead—
The first circle waited.
Pain.
Endurance.
The beginning of refinement.
Fifteen souls walked forward.
Leo's inner voice was steady now. Almost calm.
Let them try to refine me.
I'll refine them right back.
The Crimson palace swallowed them whole.