It began with footsteps. Crunching softly on red petals. Falling like snow.
Ayato looked down. The floor of this new chamber—Floor 23—was made entirely of withered rose petals, knee-deep in places, blood-hued and faintly glowing. He walked forward, and each step uncovered faces beneath the petals. Yui. Kenta. Daichi. Airi. Mio. Smiling in moments before their suffering.
Ayato's heart clenched.
'Each step a memory, a ghost, a wound.'
Each time his foot pressed into the petals, he saw glimmers of what he'd lost. Sometimes just a hand or a smile; sometimes a whole scene—blurry, bittersweet, always haunted by what might have been. He kept moving because it was the only thing he knew how to do.
The garden whispered with every breath. No system prompt. No timer. No instructions. Just… "remember."
Ayato's gaze lifted. Kazuki stood across the field, alive. Intact. Not the fragile, exhausted boy from the past floors—but whole, awake, older. There were no wounds. No pain. Just an ancient tiredness in his eyes.
"Ayato," Kazuki said softly. "Do you remember the promise?"
Ayato blinked. "Which one?"
Kazuki raised his hand—and the garden bloomed near him. Suddenly, memories erupted like flowers: Ayato shielding Kazuki from bullies in primary school. Laughing with Yui under sakura trees. The bloodstained desk after Daichi's betrayal. Mio crying while holding a mimic's skin. Kazuki vomiting after his first kill.
"You said we wouldn't become monsters," Kazuki whispered. "But we have. Haven't we?"
Ayato wanted to lie. To say: No, we're just surviving. But that would be another petal falling off the truth.
'We became what the Tower needed, not what we wanted to be.'
He spoke out loud, voice quiet and real. "We became what the Tower needed. But not what we wanted."
A blossom trembled. Petals rustled. Memories bloomed, bled, then vanished.
Kazuki sat down in the petals. Ayato followed. For a moment, the garden was still. No Tower. No games. Just silence. Just ghosts. It was peaceful and terrifying in the same breath.
Kazuki stared at his hands. "Sometimes I think I remember other versions of us," he said. "In other Towers. Other deaths. You always walk ahead. I always hesitate."
Ayato didn't answer. Fragments flashed in his mind: cycles, recursions, the class doomed to repeat, over and over.
'Why do we keep coming back? Why do we never learn?'
"What if we're not meant to escape?" Kazuki asked. "What if the Tower is just… what we deserve?"
Ayato clenched his fists. Not in anger—just a refusal to surrender.
"No," he whispered. "Then we break that fate."
Kazuki looked at him. For the first time since Floor 5, he smiled—small, weary, but real. "You still believe we're not beyond saving?"
Ayato smiled too, a broken, honest thing. "I believe regret means we're not gone yet."
The petals began to rise, swirling into a windstorm of memory, guilt, and warmth—every confession scattering into the soft, shimmering air. Kazuki stood, brushing petal dust from his knees. "Let's walk again. Together."
Ayato nodded. As they stepped toward the exit, the petals fell into two golden trails, guiding their path—not clean, not redemptive, but honest. Every footstep made a promise. The Tower had teeth, but those teeth would never be satisfied if memory survived.
A system update chimed deep in the air:
Act II Complete: "The Teeth Sink Deeper"
Ayato: Trait Evolved – Iron Creed → Karma Anchor
Kazuki: Trait Unlocked – Cycle Echo
Next Act Unlocked: Act III – Reverse Awakening
"Those who carry memory… may rewrite fate."
Ayato breathed. The burdens remained. But so did hope.
'Maybe carrying the truth—everything ugly, everything beautiful, every scar and every laugh—maybe that's all anyone can ask for. Maybe that's how you fight the Tower. Not by winning, but by remembering.'
He looked at Kazuki, side by side at the threshold.
Neither of them looked back.
And together, they stepped forward.
(Chapter 30 End)