I looked at the raven, its purple eyes reflecting the cold starlight of the engine room. If I killed it now, I'd be blind to the Kingdom's movements. If I ignored it, they'd eventually send an army that would get in the way of my climb.
"A seat at the table," I repeated, the words tasting like ash. "Tell your King I'll meet his representative. But not in his 'Temporary Town.' We meet at the Border Threshold—the neutral zone between the Gears and the Second Floor."
The raven let out a sharp caw, dipped its head, and dissolved into a cloud of purple mist.
"Are you sure about this?" Lyra asked, her hand instinctively hovering over her mana-core. "Kristov is Level 12, just like you. But he has thousands of people behind him. It's a trap, Jin. It has to be."
"Of course it's a trap," I said, adjusting the straps of the Architect's Fracture. "But even a trap has a fault line. I want to see how he thinks. I want to know if he's a King, or just a man playing house in a graveyard."
The Border Threshold: The Neutral Zone
We traveled for hours, ascending through the "Lung" of the floor where massive bellows pumped air to the upper levels. Finally, we reached a wide, circular platform of white marble—a jarring contrast to the rusted iron we had lived on for a week. This was the entrance to the Second Floor Ascension.
Waiting there was not an army, but a single woman.
She wore pristine white light-armor and carried a staff made of weirwood. Above her head, her stats flickered:
[PLAYER: ELARA - LVL. 11]
[CLASS: HIGH PRIESTESS / SECOND-IN-COMMAND]
She looked at me, her eyes widening as they landed on the Architect's Fracture on my arm. She didn't see a weapon; she saw a piece of the Tower's soul forced into the shape of a gauntlet.
"You're Jin," she said, her voice surprisingly soft. "Marcus said you were a monster. But you look... tired."
"I'm rested enough," I said, stopping ten paces away. Lyra stayed back, her barrier already half-formed just in case. "What does Kristov want? I don't have time for politics."
Elara stepped forward, holding out a small, velvet pouch. "He doesn't want to fight you. He wants to buy your silence. The Kingdom is fragile, Jin. People are starting to realize that 'Easy Mode' is a dead end. If word gets out that someone like you is thriving in 'Death Mode'—that there are materials like Star-Steel just sitting in the Gears—the Kingdom will collapse into a civil war for resources."
She opened the pouch. Inside were three [Gold-Tier Mana Crystals].
"Take these. They'll boost your Level instantly. In exchange, you stay in the Gears. Don't come to the Second Floor. Don't show the others that there's another way to climb."
I stared at the velvet pouch, the glow of the gold mana crystals reflecting in my eyes.
The offer was staggering. For most players, those crystals represented months of grinding—a shortcut to power that would make the climb to the Second Floor a breeze.
I didn't reach for them. Instead, I looked Elara straight in the eyes.
"Why?" I asked, my voice flat. "If Kristov is the King, and you have an army of thousands, why are you so afraid of one man in the dark? Level 11 and 12 aren't gods. If I'm a threat, why not just send your 'Pillars' to execute me?"
Elara's hand trembled slightly, and she pulled the pouch back, closing it. Her composure cracked, just for a second.
"Because the 'Kingdom' is a lie, Jin," she whispered, glancing back toward the white marble stairs of the Second Floor. "We tell them they're safe. We tell them that if they follow the Six Pillars, everyone survives. But the Tower doesn't work that way. The 'Easy Mode' gate is already narrowing. The resources are drying up. If they find out there's a 'Death Mode' survivor who found Star-Steel and God-Cores... they won't stay in the Hub. They'll rush into the Gears."
She looked at the rusted, turning machinery behind me.
"And they will die. Thousands of them. They aren't like you. They don't have your class, and they don't have your... whatever it is that lets you stand in the ruin without breaking. Kristov wants to save them by keeping them ignorant. He's building a cage to keep them alive."
"A cage is still a cage," I said. I took a step forward, the Architect's Fracture humming as it sensed my rising intent. "You're not saving them. You're just making sure that when the cage finally breaks, they'll be too weak to run."
I reached out and pushed the pouch back toward her chest.
"I don't want your crystals. And I'm not staying in the Gears. I'm going to the Second Floor, and I'm going to find out what the Architect is really hiding behind those white walls."
Elara's face went pale. She tucked the pouch away and gripped her weirwood staff. "Then you've chosen war, Jin. Kristov won't let you disrupt the order. If you step onto the Second Floor, you'll be labeled a 'Calamity.' You won't just be fighting monsters; you'll be fighting the world you left behind."
"Good," I said, walking past her toward the stairs. "I've always been better at breaking things than building them."
I stopped halfway up the white marble stairs. The realization hit me like a cold draft. I turned back, my eyes narrowing as I looked at Elara.
"Wait," I said, my voice dropping an octave. "I never told anyone my class. Even in the Kingdom's Hub, my status only shows my level and the title 'Death Mode Survivor.' How do you know I'm a Ruin-Breaker?"
Lyra froze beside me, her eyes darting between us. The secret of my class was my greatest weapon; if the Kingdom knew exactly how my powers worked, they could prepare for them.
Elara's grip on her weirwood staff tightened until her knuckles turned as white as the marble. She didn't look at me. She looked at the 7\bigstar mark on my hand, her expression shifting from fear to a strange, mournful pity.
"Because you aren't the first," she whispered.
I felt a jolt of electricity run down my spine. "What?"
"Kristov isn't just a Level 12 Fighter, Jin," she said, finally meeting my gaze. "He is a Herald of the Dawn. He serves a 6\bigstar deity. My Goddess, the Mother of the Grove, is a 5\bigstar. We have access to the Records of the Fallen."
She took a shaky breath.
"The Tower has existed for eons, Jin. Thousands of civilizations have been brought here before yours. Every time the Architect selects a contractor, they are given the same class: Ruin-Breaker. And every single time, that person reaches a certain floor and... they break. Not the Tower. Themselves."
She stepped closer, her voice barely a breath.
"The Records show that the Ruin-Breaker is the 'Reset Button.' When the Tower becomes too cluttered with 'Kingdoms' and 'Safe Zones' that refuse to climb, the Architect sends a Ruin-Breaker to shatter the foundations and force everyone upward or into the grave. Kristov knows your class because he knows your purpose. To him, you aren't a player. You're a natural disaster."
She looked at the Architect's Fracture on my arm.
"He knows you're going to destroy everything we've built. That's why he's afraid. He's not trying to save the people from the monsters; he's trying to save the world from you."
This revelation changes everything. I wasn't just "lucky" to get a hidden class; I was chosen to be a demolition expert for a god who thinks the current players are moving too slowly.
[NEW KNOWLEDGE UNLOCKED: THE ARCHITECT'S CYCLE]
You are the latest in a long line of 'Erasers.' Your class is designed to force the 'evolution' of the Tower by destroying stagnant societies.
I didn't move. The white marble stairs, which had felt like a path to progress moments ago, now looked like a trap set by a God who had played this game a thousand times before.
I pulled my hand back, looking at the 7\bigstar mark. It wasn't a badge of honor; it was a brand.
"A reset button," I repeated, a low, dry chuckle escaping my throat. "So the Architect isn't cheering for me. He's just waiting for me to blow up the 'stagnation' so he can start a new batch of sheep."
Lyra stepped toward me, her face pale. "Jin... if what she says is true, then every time you use your power, you're just doing exactly what that God wants. You aren't a player. You're a 'System Event.'"
I looked back at Elara. She stood there, her weirwood staff pulsing with a soft, protective light, waiting for me to either crumble under the weight of the truth or charge like a mindless beast.
"You're wrong about one thing, Priestess," I said, my voice turning ice-cold.
"What?" she asked.
"The Architect might have designed the class, but he didn't design me." I gripped the Architect's Fracture. The gauntlet hummed, vibrating against my skin as if it were sensing my rebellion. "He wants me to be a tool that breaks others? Fine. But I'm going to start by breaking the script he wrote for me."
I turned away from the stairs. I wasn't going to the Second Floor. Not yet.
"Jin? Where are you going?" Lyra asked, hurrying to keep up as I headed back toward the dark, grinding machinery of the Forgotten Gears.
"If the Architect has done this before, then there are 'remnants' of the previous Ruin-Breakers in the floors they couldn't pass," I said. "The Kingdom is focused on the Second Floor. The Architect is focused on the 'Reset.' That means the one place nobody is looking is the Void Space between the gears."
Instead of climbing, I dropped back down into the engine room. My Architect's Eye flared to life, but I didn't look for fault lines in the walls. I looked for the residue of my own class.
If other Ruin-Breakers had been here, their vibrations would have left "scars" on the machinery—echoes of a frequency that only I could hear.
[SEARCHING FOR: CLASS-SPECIFIC RESONANCE...]
[MATCH FOUND: 400 METERS BELOW SECOND-GEAR AXIS]
"There," I pointed to a massive, vertical shaft that seemed to lead nowhere but the abyss.
"We're going down?" Lyra asked, peering into the dark. "But the goal is the top!"
"The goal is the truth," I replied. "I'm not entering the Sky-Garden as a 'Calamity' for the Kingdom to hunt. I'm going to find the gear that stopped the last Ruin-Breaker. I'm going to learn how to keep from breaking myself."