Descending from the eleventh floor, Veyne expected pain. Or perhaps mockery. But when his foot touched the new threshold, nothing happened.
No sound. No sensory feedback. Not even the familiar pressure of the Tower's oppressive atmosphere.
Just—nothing.
It took him three more steps to realize something was wrong.
He wasn't standing on anything.
His boots made no contact with any surface. He floated—not in air, but in absence. An expanse of pitch black stretched infinitely beneath him, above him, around him. No light source. Yet he could see.
He turned.
The door he came from had vanished.
He was alone in void.
Revelation Instinct triggered.
[Floor Designation: The Null Span]
[Trial Type: Conceptual – Spatial Discontinuity]
[Warning: Failure here equals total identity erasure]
He clenched his jaw. This wasn't just psychological. It was metaphysical. If he failed here, he wouldn't die. He would cease to have ever been.
A pulse of light blinked in the distance. He moved toward it.
Except—his body didn't move.
His mind did.
One blink. Then another. Each time, closer.
A path of sorts emerged. Fractured shards of moments—frozen scenes, glinting like broken glass suspended in time.
In one, he saw himself laughing. A child, untouched by fate.
In another, he stood over the corpse of a man he had once sworn to protect.
Each memory was a stepping stone.
He understood then—the floor had no physical laws. Only mental ones. He could walk by willing intent.
So he walked. Through himself.
Scene after scene, some triumphs, most failures. In one, his hands were soaked red with power; in another, he held a child, shielding it from a fire.
Each scene cost him.
He began to feel himself unraveling. His name blurred at the edges. His purpose dimmed. He stumbled.
And the floor laughed.
Not audibly. But in how it twisted the next scene.
He stood before a mirror again—but this one didn't reflect him.
It showed Her.
The one he had failed. The only person he had sworn never to forget.
"Veyne," she whispered. "Do you even remember what my voice sounded like?"
He did. Until now.
He reached for the memory—but it slipped through his grasp.
"No," he growled. "No, you don't get to take that."
The black void around him thickened, trying to smother that thought, extinguish the fire.
But something inside him screamed back.
Devouring Insight activated: Override Authority – Echoheart Stabilization
Light surged from within him. Not external. Internal.
A spark of who he chose to be, not what the Tower told him.
A new fragment formed before him:
[Memory Keystone: Sorrow-Anchor – Lock 1 Truth Against Oblivion]
He seized it, embedded it in his own mind. The void shrieked.
The floor trembled.
And then—he fell.
Or rose. It was hard to tell. He burst through layers of forgotten truths, his own voice echoing in reverse.
Then he landed.
Not on stone. On glass.
Beneath him, countless versions of himself stared upward.
Some smiled.
Some wept.
One tried to claw through the floor.
A voice—no, the Tower's voice—finally spoke.
"You do not fear being lost. That makes you dangerous."
He answered aloud.
"I don't fear it. I just won't allow it."
The void shattered.
And Veyne stood within a circular chamber—walls made of black stone, the ceiling a dome of stars. The twelfth door appeared ahead, carved not from wood or metal but memory itself.
He was shaking.
But he was whole.
[Trait Gained: Sorrow-Anchor – Immune to identity loss and false memory floors]
[Skill Gained: Step Through Self – Teleport through frozen memory anchors once per floor]
As he reached for the door, a final whisper crawled along the edge of his mind.
"You are choosing who you are. But the Tower remembers who you were."
He placed his hand against the next gate.
And it opened.