Tower Log Update:
Stratum 3 — Wound Spiral (Unstable)
Status: Critical Deviation
Correction Units: Offline
Temporal Threads: Frayed
Architect Intervention: Imminent
The golden eye in the sky blinked.
And the Tower flinched.
Stone twisted. The sky fractured again. Platforms above folded inward like origami blades.
Kael stood still, blood drying on his hands. The eye stared down—not with hatred, not with wrath.
Just calm observation.
"It sees you," Sael whispered, trembling."That's not the Tower. That's the Architect. It built this… before the world you knew ever existed."
Kael narrowed his gaze. "Then why hasn't it stopped me?"
Sael shook her head.
"It wants to see what you'll do. You're the first one to last this long while still remembering."
Kael turned from the sky.
The Spiral bridge had begun to reform beneath him—fractured runes glowing dimly, showing paths that no longer made sense. Hallways to nonexistent floors. Doors with dates instead of numbers.
> [Door 4.72 — Memory Leak Detected]>
[Door 5.∞ — Recursion Error]>
[DOOR: OBSIDIAN PATH - LOCKED (KEY: KAEL, UNBORN)]
The Tower wasn't just reacting.
It was trying to escape itself.
"What now?" Sael asked.
"We climb," Kael replied, stepping toward the most unstable path. "If it's coming apart, we go through it before it seals again."
As they moved forward, the Spiral began to hum—low, like a heartbeat inside a coffin.
And then—
A new figure stepped into their path.
This one wasn't made of smoke or code.
It was a child, no older than ten. Pale, dressed in gray robes. Black ink poured from their eyes.
They looked up at Kael.
"You were not meant to climb," the child said quietly."You were meant to end."
Kael froze.
Because the child's face was one he recognized.
His own.
"What… is this?"
"One of your early simulations," the child-Kael said. "The Tower used me to test mortality. To test pain. I died 13,042 times before they made you."
Sael stepped back, shaken.
Kael stepped forward.
"Then you're a failed version."
The child shook his head.
"I'm the prototype."
He reached up—
And the sky split open again.
This time, a vision poured out: dozens of Kaels, in thousands of Towers, living and dying and looping and screaming—never reaching the top.
"We were never meant to survive," said the prototype. "We were meant to hold the seal."
Kael's blood went cold.
"What seal?"
"The one beneath the final floor," the child said, smiling. "The one the Architect buried here, long ago."
"And now, because you remember… it's waking up."
The child vanished.
The Tower roared like a storm swallowing a cathedral.
And Kael realized:
He wasn't just breaking the Tower.
He was undoing the reason it was built.
[System Error]
Tower Core Lock Level: RED
Architect Attention: Engaged
Next Floor Access: Conditional
Require Choice: Kael must sacrifice a piece of his past to proceed.