The Tower never repeated a rule.
When it wanted despair, it invented new laws for it.
The white light from Arin's descent hadn't even faded when the System's voice cut through the air—flat, casual, like it was reading a weather report.
[ Main Scenario — Floor 51: The Hour of Culling ]
[ Objective: Slay the player with the highest kill count. ]
[ Alternate Objective (Hidden): Survive one hour without killing. ]
[ Bonus Objective: Form a stable alliance with a conflicting attribute. ]
[ Time Limit: 01:00:00 ]
[ Reward: Trait Revelation + 1 Unique Skill Evolution. ]
[ Failure Condition: Collective collapse of allied souls. ]
Silence followed.
Then panic bloomed.
Hundreds of players glanced upward, eyes scanning the numbers that now floated above every head. Faint red digits glowed like execution marks, counting down from their personal kills.
And then—every gaze turned toward one man.
[ The Harvester of Death — Kill Count: 11,924 ]
A ripple of fear moved through the crowd like the spread of fire through dry grass. Some stepped back; others tightened their grips on weapons. Even Do-hyun, who had once fought beside him, flinched.
Arin stood beside Hae-won—her light trembling between gold and blue—and for a heartbeat, she felt the entire Tower's hostility turn on him. She could hear the hatred, the primal calculation of players realizing what the rule demanded.
If they killed him, they would be free.
If they didn't, he would kill them all.
Hae-won's expression didn't change. His silver hair caught the dying glow of the Tower's lamps; the two chains at his wrists hung loose, swaying, humming just beneath the speed of sound. He looked neither angry nor resigned—just tired, as if all of this had been written before.
He glanced sideways at Arin.
"You should leave."
"The rule says alliance," she said, forcing her voice to steady. "If we're both alive by the end of the hour, we both clear."
He looked at her, long and unreadable. Then a faint smile cut across his lips—something caught between pity and admiration.
"You really did come back from Heaven different."
The ground beneath them pulsed, the world rearranging into the new floor:
A shattered city of glass and rain. Every surface reflected something else—the dead, the living, the versions of themselves that could have been. The sound of thunder rolled endlessly, but no lightning came.
The moment the transition finished, the System chimed again.
[ Timer: 00:59:59 ]
[ Culling Commencing. ]
Screams erupted almost immediately.
Magic flared. Steel met steel. The floor fractured into chaos.
Arin's light shielded her and Hae-won as a spear of black flame streaked past. One player—ranked third in kill count—was already charging, eyes wide with desperate fury. "It's him! Kill the Harvester!"
Hae-won didn't move.
He simply raised one hand. The chain snapped forward, not fast—graceful, almost lazy—but the impact was catastrophic. The attacker was lifted from the ground and flung across the street, vanishing through a window in a rain of blood and glass.
[ Kill Count +1 ]
[ Timer Penalty: None. ]
The red number above his head blinked once, shifting from 11,924 to 11,925.
Around them, the crowd broke. Some fled. Some lunged. The Tower's rule was simple: everyone wanted him dead before the hour ended.
Arin swallowed hard. "You're not supposed to—"
"I'm not allowed to kill," Hae-won interrupted quietly. "It said survive an hour without killing. That one wasn't me."
Her eyes flicked to the corpse—frozen midair, eyes wide, a faint black chain embedded in his throat.
He wasn't dead because of a direct strike. The city itself had reacted, magnifying Hae-won's defense. The Tower had decided to kill on his behalf.
Even mercy was being punished.
"Every rule here is designed to make me fail," Hae-won murmured, scanning the reflections around them. "The Tower doesn't want me alive."
Arin stepped closer, her divine aura spreading faintly. "Then we cheat."
He looked at her, and for a moment, he almost believed her.
She met his stare—light against shadow—and the chains around him settled, as if the presence of her soul soothed whatever madness still lingered in his.
"Fine," he said. "But if I lose control, you run."
"I'm not running anymore."
[ Timer: 00:54:22 ]
The city shifted again. Every building's reflection turned toward them—countless mirrored surfaces displaying hundreds of different scenes, each one showing a version of Hae-won's face twisted in madness, guilt, or regret. The Tower was feeding on him, using his memory as terrain.
From the mirrors, whispers began.
"You'll kill her again."
"You can't save anyone."
"You're just the same thing you write."
Hae-won's pulse spiked. His vision blurred. His chains trembled—ready to strike at phantom enemies that weren't there.
Then Arin's hand closed over his.
Her touch didn't burn this time.
Instead, light and shadow braided together.
The Tower screamed—a sharp, electronic screech like static through the mind.
[ Condition Triggered: Heaven and Abyss — Synchronization Event Detected. ]
[ Alliance Registered. ]
[ Bonus Objective Activated: Shared Survival Mode. ]
The battlefield around them froze.
Players mid-swing stopped, caught in amber light.
The rain hung suspended in midair.
Hae-won blinked, realization dawning slowly. "What did you do?"
"I didn't purify you," Arin whispered. "I linked us."
And then the light dimmed. The world moved again, but slower—like everything was breathing to the rhythm of them.
The timer continued to tick.
[ 00:52:07 ]
The Harvester of Death and the Saint of Purity stood in the center of the storm—two beings the Tower itself couldn't categorize.
Every second they survived together was a defiance, every heartbeat a rebellion against the divine architecture of the world.
But neither knew that the rule had a hidden clause:
If one of them died before the hour ended, the other would inherit their sin.
[ Timer: 00 : 31 : 04 ]
[ Midpoint — Stability Threshold Dropping. ]
[ Triggering Individual Trial: Subject CHA HAE-WON. ]
The text box bloomed across the air like a vein splitting open.
Arin turned toward him, her expression tightening—but Hae-won had already gone still. His eyes unfocused, silver pupils dilating until the reflections around them swallowed his shape whole.
The city folded inward again.
Buildings thinned into corridors. Corridors became lockers. The glass towers condensed into a single hallway that smelled faintly of disinfectant, chalk dust, and fear.
The academy.
Arin reached for him—her fingers met air. The Tower had pulled her to the edge, locking her outside the memory.
Inside, Hae-won stood barefoot in his old school uniform.
The fabric clung damp to his skin, soaked not with water but the cold sweat of recognition.
He was sixteen again.
The same cracked mirror above the sink.
The same words carved into the stall door: You don't belong here.
The whisper came before the pain.
"Merit kid," someone said, the voice layered, echoing from the lockers. "You think a scholarship makes you equal?"
Hae-won turned.
The faces stepping from the shadows were too perfect—reconstructed directly from memory. The Tower didn't need imagination; it had data. Every bruise, every insult, every night he'd stayed awake writing stories no one would ever read—it knew them.
He didn't have his chains here.
He didn't have strength or divinity.
Only what he'd been.
A boy who had once wanted to vanish.
He tried to speak. "Stop."
Laughter answered. Hands grabbed him, shoved him against the lockers, voices colliding in overlapping sneers.
"You write stories about heroes? You can't even save yourself."
"Look at you, pretending to matter."
"Even your orphanage didn't want you."
The Tower wasn't showing him ghosts. It was becoming them—forcing him to re-inhabit each heartbeat until the line between now and then disappeared.
Each blow landed with the precision of remembered pain.
His ribs remembered the angles.
His breath remembered where it should hitch.
His body remembered how not to fight back.
He felt smaller with every second—his height compressing, the walls closing, the world shrinking until even breathing became an apology.
"Say it," one of them hissed. "Say you don't deserve to live."
The boy that had once been Hae-won had said it.
He had whispered it into the sink, into the cracks, into the one notebook where his handwriting bled until the pages turned gray.
He had written it in a story once—a suicide note disguised as fiction. The same story that had later become the Tower's seed.
But the man inside the Tower now remembered something else: the chain's hiss, the fire of his later selves, the countless regressions where death had ceased to mean silence.
He lifted his head.
The hands still struck him.
The words still fell.
But he smiled—bleeding, teeth pink.
"I already died there," he said quietly.
The hallway shuddered.
Lockers bent inward, walls breathing. The illusion didn't understand defiance; it was built to sustain submission. The bullies froze mid-swing, faces flickering between cruelty and confusion.
Then a mirror cracked.
Through it, Arin's voice—thin, distant—cut through: "Hae-won! Listen to me!"
He turned.
The reflection of the hallway twisted, showing her outside, surrounded by frozen combatants. Her palms pressed against the glass, light bleeding from them. "This isn't real. It's your regression echo—fight it!"
Her words reached him through static. He raised a trembling hand toward her reflection. For a moment, the chain sigil on his wrist shimmered back into existence.
The Tower hated interference.
The next instant, the illusion retaliated—every locker door slamming open, pouring darkness like water. From it, his younger self crawled out, face blank, eyes gray.
The boy pointed at him. "If you survived, then why am I still here?"
Hae-won's throat closed.
The question wasn't rhetorical. The Tower had trapped the part of him that never grew up—the boy who'd written his own end and been forgotten.
"I didn't save you," he said.
"You abandoned me."
The darkness surged. Hands—his own—clamped around his neck. The strength wasn't supernatural; it was familiar. The raw strength of someone who wants to stop existing.
He clawed back, gasping. Every past death, every failure pressed into his ribs. The Tower's whisper followed, calm, clinical:
[ Regression Crosslink Detected. ]
[ Integrating trauma record #13 – "Academy Incident." ]
[ Outcome variable: Skill evolution possible. ]
He felt it—heat crawling up his spine, letters burning under his skin.
[ New Skill Unlocked — Transmission. ]
Allows the transfer of power, memory, or skill between regressions.
Warning: cost = personal identity degradation.
The boy choking him convulsed as the words etched into both their bodies.
Chains exploded outward—two streaks of color, black and white, red at their cores—slashing the illusion apart like the page of a story being torn in half.
The darkness shattered.
He fell to his knees, gasping, the sound of rain and battle flooding back. The Tower's hallway dissolved into glass dust.
Arin caught him before he hit the ground. "Hey—hey! You're back—"
He clutched his chest, still shaking. "No. He is."
"What?"
"My past."
Above them, faint text flickered:
[ Skill Transmission (Regression) Activated. ]
[ User may carry forward power and knowledge from prior deaths. ]
[ Cost: Fragment of humanity. ]
[ Timer: 00 : 27 : 58 — Resuming Culling. ]
The glass city flared alive again. Do-hyun's shout echoed from a few streets away. New enemies were converging.
Arin tightened her grip on him. "Can you fight?"
Hae-won's eyes lifted; the silver had gone darker, his pupils rimmed in crimson light.
The chains hummed, ready.
He nodded once.
"I can remember."
The fog settled over the battlefield like a curtain drawn to end an act.
The chains around Hae-won hummed, coiling in slow orbit as though uncertain what to strike next.
His breath rasped through broken air — not from exhaustion, but restraint.
Across the cracked marble of the Tower's plaza, Yun Arin stood beside him, one hand pressed to her ribs, her light still flickering faintly through the dust.
It was over, or it should have been.
The monsters were dead.
The scenario timer had reached zero.
And yet… the world didn't reset.
Instead, a single new prompt appeared, soft and white against the ruin:
[ Condition Fulfilled: Opposing Force Detected. ]
[ Initializing Narrative Balance Protocol. ]
[ Introducing Variable: 0. ]
From the mist, footsteps — unhurried, deliberate — echoed closer.
A figure walked through the haze, barefoot, untouched by blood or dust.
He wore no armor, no weapon. Only the faint shimmer of sanctity — the light of someone who had never taken a life.
The System didn't need to identify him. His aura spoke for itself.
[ Modifier: The Healer. ]
[ Record: 0 Kills. ]
[ Threat Level: Undefined. ]
Arin stiffened beside Hae-won. "Who…?"
The man's voice was calm — too calm.
"You've changed a lot since the first loop, Cha Hae-won."
That name, spoken so plainly, made the air tighten.
Hae-won turned his gaze up, eyes dull silver under the fractured sky. "And you are?"
The man smiled without warmth. "The one who remembers every life you've taken. The one built to end you."
He stopped a few paces away, tilting his head slightly. "I suppose you could call me the protagonist."
The chains stirred restlessly, reacting before Hae-won did.
Their edges gleamed with faint red-white light — beautiful, terrible, alive.
[ Modifier Activation Detected: Harvester of Death ]
[ Status: Autonomous. ]
The Healer's expression hardened. "You don't even realize what that means, do you? The Tower's stopped testing you — it's preserving you. Every kill you've made is written into its core, and it needs you to keep writing."
Arin stepped forward, voice sharp. "He's not the monster you think he is. He's trying to—"
"To what?" The Healer's gaze didn't shift from Hae-won. "Redeem himself? Rewrite what he's already destroyed? That's what monsters say when they've run out of victims."
The light at his fingertips grew brighter — not flame, but cleansing, consuming radiance.
It erased shadow as it moved. Even the System text wavered, lines of code breaking apart around him.
"Your story," he said softly, "ends here."
Arin's chain of light flared instantly, wrapping around Hae-won as she threw herself in front of him.
Her breath came ragged. "You don't get to decide that."
The Healer's eyes softened almost imperceptibly. "You shouldn't have come back down from Heaven, Yun Arin. You were supposed to stay uncorrupted."
Then his gaze returned to Hae-won.
"You think death has made you special? It hasn't. You've only harvested pain — for everyone. Every regression you made spawned another path, another world dying slower than the last. You are not the savior of those worlds. You are their infection."
For a heartbeat, Hae-won said nothing.
Then, with a faint tremor in his voice, he asked, "Then what are you?"
"The cure."
A blinding pulse of white rippled outward, erasing color from everything it touched.
The chains screamed in answer — a metallic roar that shook the ground.
Hae-won staggered, half-drowned in light and memory. Visions split his mind — each death, each reset, each scream he had forced into silence — and he realized what this man truly was.
Not another player.
Not a god.
But the living embodiment of every unfinished story he'd left behind — every narrative path his regressions had corrupted.
The Enemy of Every Path.
The one thing even a narrator could not rewrite.
The System's voice, trembling, confirmed it:
[ Narrative Collapse Risk: 88% ]
[ Directive: Balance Required. ]
[ Objective Update: Survive for One Hour. ]
Hae-won lifted his head, blood dripping from his chin. His voice was quiet, steady, inhumanly calm.
"So this is the balance you want?"
The Healer's light flickered, steady and absolute.
"This is the balance the world deserves."
And as the white horizon fractured, Arin tightened her hold on him — whispering through clenched teeth, "Then we survive. Together."
The Tower shifted again, preparing to erase or save them both.
Somewhere above, faint echoes of their allies finally broke through the fog.
But by then, the first clash between death and healing had already begun — and the world itself leaned forward to watch which story would end first.