When the light receded, the Tower stood still.
No voices. No countdown. Only the mechanical echo of his breath.
Hae-won wiped blood from his lip, tasted iron, and lifted his gaze to the stair spiraling endlessly ahead.
The number "51" glowed faintly above the next gate, its sigil pulsing like a heartbeat.
[ Floor Transition Complete. ]
[ Current Stage: 51 → 52 ]
[ Mechanic Reinstated — Pendulum Ascent. ]
[ Additional Clause Detected — Regression Protocol Unlocked. ]
He froze.
For a heartbeat he almost laughed — the kind of laugh that breaks ribs instead of freeing air.
After all the cycles that had stripped him bare, after declaring him trapped, the Tower now whispered the same offer it once had:
A way back.
A rewind button on suffering.
Except the color of the System text wasn't the clean white he remembered.
It was red-gold, bleeding at the edges like a wound that wouldn't close.
Arin stepped up beside him, face still pale from the last storm.
"It's… giving it back?" she asked.
Hae-won didn't answer right away. He looked down at his hands — at the black-silver chains resting quietly around his wrists.
Their hum had changed; they were listening.
[ Regression Protocol: Unlocked under Condition. ]
[ Clause: User must complete a full Pendulum Cycle before every use. ]
[ Cost: Each activation erases one chain link. Chains broken = Soul fragments lost. ]
He exhaled, slow. "It's not a gift," he said finally. "It's a bargain."
Do-hyun, leaning on his axe, spat onto the floor. "Then break the damn pendulum again."
Hae-won shook his head. "Not yet. There's something here I haven't seen."
He set his foot on the first step.
The staircase trembled like a living thing. Each step forward warped the stone from gray to shimmering gold, and then to deep shadow. Going up was warmth; going down was cold; between them, the razor of equilibrium. The Tower had evolved — it now recorded every movement, echoing it with phantom footsteps that belonged to his past selves.
He climbed to the next landing and saw himself coming down from the opposite side — a mirror of another cycle, carrying the same exhaustion, the same hunger. Their eyes met through the transparent divide.
The other him said nothing — only raised a chain-scarred hand and pressed it to the barrier.
The barrier pulsed.
[ Temporal Overlap Detected. ]
[ Regression Integration Progress: 7 %. ]
He could feel it — the beginnings of synchronization. The more he completed this absurd up-and-down loop, the more the versions of himself would merge. And perhaps… if he reached a hundred perfect motions, the Tower's spiral might collapse into a single line.
Arin's voice echoed faintly from below. "Hae-won, what do you see?"
He almost said hope. Instead, he said, "Pattern."
⸻
Hours later — or days; the Tower no longer respected time — he had lost count of the repetitions.
Each ascent stripped a lie; each descent returned a truth.
At the halfway mark, the walls began to whisper not pain, but questions.
"Who are you if not the writer?"
"Who are you if not the failure?"
"Who are you when no one remembers?"
He didn't answer. He only walked.
At the end of the fifty-second descent, the chain at his wrist shimmered and snapped off a single link — not broken, but offered. It melted into the air and became a key of light.
[ Regression Protocol ready. ]
[ Access to Timeline Branch #52 granted. ]
The Tower's voice deepened, the way a storm deepens before lightning.
[ Warning: Regression beyond Floor 52 will summon Residual Echoes of Heaven, Hell, and Void. ]
[ Proceed? Y/N ]
Hae-won lifted his eyes, silver reflecting red-gold. "Always."
He pressed Yes.
The world folded inward.
This time, there was no pain — only a deep plunge through memory and stone.
He landed not on a reset floor, but between two realities: one where he still climbed, another where he had never left. Both bled together into a single, fragile instant.
Arin's faint cry reached him from above, the sound warping through space.
"Hae-won—what did you—?"
He smiled, tired but certain. "I'm finishing what I started."
[ Regression Acknowledged. ]
[ Harvester of Death — Clause Rewritten. ]
[ New Objective: Stabilize the Pendulum within 100 Cycles or Tower Collapse imminent. ]
Chains of Heaven, Hell, and Void flared at his back — their light slicing across the stairwell like wings made of verdict and ruin.
And beneath them, the faint pulse of the Regression Chain beat again — steady, deliberate, alive.
The climb resumed.
One step up. One step down.
But this time, the pendulum moved to his rhythm.