As he crossed the dimensional breach—ejected against his will by the Guide at the end of the first floor—Kael had no choice but to be carried away.
His body, almost fully recovered,drifted without resistance,as if the universe itself refused to grant him a moment's respite.
The void stretched around him in unstable swirls,and within that shifting nothingness, only one thought consumed him:
What would the next trial be?And what kind of floor lay behind this forced transition?
Nothing in his last passage had offered any clue.And the closer he drew,the colder that lack of answer pressed on his mind.
Then suddenly, Kael was struck by a searing pain in his head—sharp, brutal, impossibly precise.
It wasn't impact.Not a physical assault.Nothing tangible.
No…it was different.
A sensation impossible to locate,as if something was slowly infiltrating him.Like a foreign presence forcing its way deep into his consciousness,without his ability to stop it.
An infiltration, almost surgical,yet guided by no hand.
Everything wavered.
The contours of reality slipped from his sight.Colors unraveled.Shapes imploded.
Even silence seemed to shatter,as if the world itself had forgotten how to breathe.
Kael blinked—or thought he did.Impossible to know if he was still awake, or already falling.
It was no longer a space.No longer a place.
Only shifting fog,vast and nameless,where every element seemed about to dissolve.
He fell, endlessly,drawn into a void unlike anything he had known.
A moving nothingness, without form or substance,where neither weight nor time seemed to exist.
And yet, in that silent fall,something changed.
Space itself began to deform…to load with invisible tensions.
The fragile balance of existence shattered.
Waves of light and shadow pulsed all around him,as if two opposing forces sought to clash without ever touching.
The blacks carried crushing density, almost liquid,devouring all they brushed.
The whites throbbed with raw purity,so bright they bordered on unbearable.
The two twined, evaded, pursued each other in an impossible dance—as if the universe itself hesitated between erasure and rewriting.
Everything destabilized.
Space buckled, bent, twisted in on itself,like a surface unable to bear its own structure.
Tides of absolute darkness surged, thick, hungry, almost palpable.
Through them,gleams of whiteness so pure they turned inhumanslashed the gloom, sharp, unreal.
Black and white did not oppose.They intertwined, crossed, consumed—like incompatible truths vying for the same ground.
Kael drifted in the heart of this luminous chaos,a captive spectator of a reality reconstructing itself.
He floated.Weightless.Without flesh.Without limit.
His body seemed dissolved somewhere between falling and oblivion,replaced by naked consciousnessdrifting through an un-space.
He felt nothing.Not cold.Not breath.Not even time.
Only that slow drift,almost peaceful,toward a point unseen.
Until everything stopped.
Brutally.Like an invisible blade.Like a line crossed unseen,and regretted the moment it was passed.
He opened his eyes.
Slowly.As if his eyelids weighed a ton.
For a moment,he didn't even know what he was seeing.The light seemed too stable,too familiar.
No flares.No distortion.Just… a room.
His pupils took time to adjust,to believe what they perceived.And then he understood.
He was seated on his bed.At home.
The sheets drawn.The floorboards faintly dusty.The window half-open,letting in the grey light of an unhurried morning.
His room.Intact.Unchanged.
As if he had never left it.As if nothing had happened.
No trace of chaos.Of the Tower.Of pain.
Only that too-perfect silence…that made him nauseous.
No trace of battle.
Not a single bruise on his skin.Not a drop of blood.Not even the residual ache of burned muscles.
His breath was calm.His limbs obeyed normally.His heart beat at a rhythm almost too regular to be honest.
No pain.
And that, precisely,was the problem.
This body was too well.
As if all he had endured—every strike, every scream, every fracture—had been nothing but a dream,badly stored in the margins of memory.
And yet…
Something crept beneath his skin.Dull.Diffuse.Persistent.
Something was wrong.
He couldn't name it.No concrete flaw to point at.But everything rang too exact.Too symmetrical.Too fixed.
Like a stage play, meticulously replayed to soothe him.
Every breath felt measured.Every reflection in the glass… too clean.
Even the air seemed to watch.
KNOCK. KNOCK.
Two sharp knocks struck the door.
His name, murmured through the wood,split the air like a soft blade.
— Kael?Are you still asleep?
The voice was clear.Warm.Real.
Too real.
He recognized it instantly.Every inflection.Every breath.
Lyana.
Kael froze before the door.One foot in reality.Another still caught in the echo of the void.
His hand lifted slowly,as if touching the handle alone might collapse what remained of logic.
He hesitated.Not from fear.But because part of him already knew…what he was about to see would make no sense.
And yet,he opened the door.Without sound.Without breath.
And there, before him…
Lyana.
Standing.Smiling.Calm, as if nothing had ever wavered.
Her eyes were open.Clear. Present.Not lost in suspended sleep,not drowned in spell or curse.
Simply alive.Whole.There. Before him.
She was not in a coma.Not lying in a capsule.Not trapped between worlds.
No wounds.No traces of struggle, of fall, of blood.
Just Lyana.Awake.Safe.Whole.
As if she had risen that morningand simply waited for him to open the door.
He didn't wait another second.
His body reacted before thought.His arms wrapped around her with feverish urgency,as if all he had endured,all he had lost,had finally found an anchor.
He held her tight.As if she might vanish again.As if eternity had separated them,and he could never reclaim stolen time.
But what he expected didn't come.
No wave of warmth.No release of tension.No weight lifted at last.
Nothing.
Only an inner silence,as if his heart had forgotten how to beat right.
Instead of relief,a void.Thick.Strangely calm.Unsettling.
A hollow at the pit of his soul,that even her presence couldn't fill.
It was there,lurking beneath his skin,gnawing at his gut,pressing behind his thoughts.
A sensation unlike anything he knew.Not fear.Not joy.Not sorrow.
Something else.Older.Deeper.
A dissonance.As if two realities overlapped without ever truly meeting.As if what he held in his arms…had no full right to exist.
She lifted her hand softly,fingers sliding through his hair,with the slowness of memory.With that almost unreal gentlenessfound only in dreams too perfect.
Her gesture was tender.Too tender.Almost fixed.
Then she whispered against him:
— You had a bad dream…But now, everything's fine.
Her voice was soft.Soothing.Exactly as he remembered.
And that, precisely,was the problem.
It sounded like memory.Not reality.