Hell was not fire.
It was stillness painted red.
When Hae-won stepped onto the seventy-fifth landing, the heat vanished. The air was thin and metallic, filled with the smell of iron and old incense. Pillars of ash stretched into a ceiling that never decided on a shape. Every sound came twice: once in front of him, and once an instant later from behind, as if the world were unsure which direction time should move.
[ Floor 75 — Domain of Remnant Sin ]
[ Objective : Locate the Core of Purification. ]
[ Optional : Assist or eliminate the designated Saintess. ]
He didn't need to ask who the designated saintess was.
She was already waiting.
A girl knelt in the center of the platform, haloed by dim, violet flame. Her robes were travel-stained, the hems torn by claws. She wasn't shining like the heavenly kind he'd seen from Arin's memories — she was human, and that made the light more frightening. Each time she exhaled, ash turned to gold for a heartbeat, then fell as dust again.
She lifted her head. Eyes like opals — shifting between silver and pale blue — met his.
"So," she said softly, "you're the one they call the Harvester."
Hae-won's hands tightened. The chains at his wrists hissed but did not move; they recognized her not as prey, but as something adjacent to their origin.
"Depends who's asking."
"I'm the Saintess of the Broken Flame," she said. "Chosen to cleanse the pits. To purify what shouldn't exist."
Her voice trembled on the last word — purify. It wasn't pride; it was exhaustion, as if she had repeated the word a thousand times and still failed to believe it.
He walked closer, slow, every step sinking into the crimson dust. "And what exactly are you trying to purify?"
She looked at him as though it should have been obvious. "You."
The word dropped between them like a stone through glass.
The chains stirred, low and warning.
[ Sub-Scenario: Harvester × Saintess — Divergence Path Detected ]
[ Option 1 : Assist in Purification — Sanity +10 % ]
[ Option 2 : Resist — Chains evolve toward Absolute Judgment. ]
Hae-won almost smiled. "The Tower loves its jokes."
But there was no mockery in her expression. She stepped forward — not in aggression, but in sorrow — and placed a palm just short of his chest. Heat flooded the air, the faint trace of holy mana mixing with the residual echo of his own damnation. The two canceled each other out, producing silence instead of light.
"Every floor I've climbed," she said quietly, "I've found only ruins. Voices begging for endings. The Tower told me that if I reach the seventy-fifth layer, I'd find the source of the corruption. The soul who keeps the loop alive. The one who refuses release."
Her gaze hardened. "That's you, isn't it?"
He didn't deny it. "If I stop, everything ends. And maybe that's mercy. But mercy isn't what I promised."
"Then you're not a harvester," she said. "You're a jailer."
Her hand pressed against his sternum. The touch wasn't forceful, but his heartbeat faltered under it — not because of divine power, but recognition. The pattern of her mana was familiar; it was the same resonance that had shimmered through Arin's Purification. Heaven and Hell had found a mirror.
The Saintess flinched, realizing it too. "There's another… with the same light."
Hae-won's voice was hoarse. "Yun Arin. She ascended."
For a moment, something fragile passed between them — faith meeting memory. Then the Tower answered the hesitation.
[ Event Triggered : Dual Purification ]
[ Outcome Variable : Cooperation / Annihilation ]
[ Timer : 3600 seconds ]
A low tremor rippled through the scarlet plain. Far below, the rivers of dust began to flow upward, defying gravity, swirling into a spiral around them. The countdown appeared in the air: 00 : 59 : 59.
The Saintess stepped back, drawing a staff from the ground — a weapon carved from bone and hymn fragments. "Then let's see," she murmured, "if you can survive purification."
Chains of Heaven and Hell erupted from Hae-won's arms, twin arcs crossing the air.
He exhaled, the motion oddly calm. "I was hoping you'd say that."
The battle didn't begin with violence. It began with prayer and defiance colliding — light that wanted to cleanse, and shadow that refused to be erased.
And beneath it all, the Tower whispered again:
One must yield, or both will burn.
The first strike wasn't meant to kill.
It was meant to remind.
The Saintess's staff struck the stone and sent a pulse of white fire spiraling outward. It didn't scorch — it purified. Every trace of lingering malice in the dust, every echo of regret in the air, disintegrated into faint motes of light that drifted upward like fireflies seeking heaven.
But where the light touched Hae-won's chains, it bent — as if purification met something older and more absolute.
The black-red-white chains shimmered, their links ringing faintly, half like bells, half like the sound of a blade sliding back into its sheath.
They refused to be cleansed.
They absorbed the light instead — feeding on the Saintess's flame until her glow began to dim.
"Stop!" she gasped. "You'll consume—"
"Everything?" Hae-won said softly. "That's the point."
He raised one arm. The Chain of Heaven snapped forward, wrapping around the saintess's wrist before she could react. It didn't burn. Instead, it hummed with quiet judgment — reading her intentions, peeling back the layers of her faith.
[ Skill Activated : Chain of Heaven — Subfunction : Revelation ]
[ Target's soul integrity: 91% ]
[ Sin Detected : Doubt. ]
She staggered. The flame around her flickered with colorless instability. "You—how can you—?"
"You purify lies," he said, stepping closer. "I expose them."
With his other hand, he called forth the Chain of Hell. It wasn't red — it was the deep, lightless hue of dying embers. It coiled around his wrist like a serpent, whispering.
Each movement of that chain left behind a shadow that pulsed faintly in rhythm with his heartbeat.
[ Skill Activated : Chain of Hell — Subfunction : Reflection ]
[ Reflecting emotional trauma… ]
[ Target: Saintess of the Broken Flame. ]
Her body went rigid.
In her eyes flashed scenes that weren't hers — glimpses of his world.
The cold hallways of his academy.
The laughter behind closed doors.
The bruises painted in invisible places.
And the final text message he had written on that rainy night:
"Even if I die, you'll be my next victim."
The saintess screamed. Not because of the images, but because she felt his pain — like molten lead poured straight into her mind.
She fell to her knees, clutching her chest.
"Why… why would you keep that alive?"
Hae-won's answer was quiet. "Because someone has to remember it."
For a long time, neither moved. The light between them dimmed until it was almost gray. The Tower's timer ticked in the corner of their shared vision — 00:32:41.
Then the Saintess whispered, "I came here to save them. The lost souls. I thought purifying this floor meant releasing them from torment."
"It does," Hae-won said. "By ending what they are."
She looked up sharply. "That's not salvation. That's erasure."
"And yet," he said, taking another step forward, "isn't that what Heaven calls mercy?"
Her expression faltered. She knew that tone — not arrogance, but weary knowledge. He spoke like someone who had seen gods at their most human.
He gestured at the landscape of Hell around them. "Every soul here was once human. Every one of them begged for an end, but the Tower repurposed their pain into scenery. You call it purification, but the Tower calls it fuel."
Her staff lowered. "So what do you call it?"
"Harvest," Hae-won said simply. "I take back what the Tower stole. Their power, their memory, their will. I return it to the cycle they were denied."
Her voice trembled. "You're saying you kill them."
"I free them."
The silence after that statement was enormous — as if the entire floor was holding its breath.
For the first time, she saw it: not the monster the System had whispered about, but the exhaustion of a man who had carried too many deaths without meaning. His eyes were no longer human eyes; they were stormlight trapped in a vessel that refused to crack.
The countdown reached 00:15:00.
The Tower's voice broke through the quiet:
[ Divergence Point Approaching. ]
[ Mutual annihilation or cooperation required. ]
[ Choose. ]
The Saintess drew a sharp breath, staff trembling. "If I choose cooperation, I risk falling. If I resist, I lose myself."
"Then stop choosing," Hae-won said.
He extended a hand — not in threat, but in offering. "The Tower only wins when you let it define salvation. Stand with me, and we'll redefine it."
Her flame pulsed once, then again. Slowly, her staff lowered to her side.
"You're dangerous, Cha Hae-won," she whispered. "And yet—maybe danger is the only thing Hell respects."
The Tower's system text shimmered violently.
[ Coexistence Path Chosen. ]
[ Title: "The Harvester and the Flame." ]
[ Temporary Alliance Formed. Duration: Until Purification Core is reached. ]
The environment changed instantly. The ashen plains turned to molten glass, and from beneath the surface rose a cathedral of bones and fire — the Core of Purification, where the essence of the floor awaited judgment.
As they stood before it, Hae-won noticed the faint smile ghosting across her lips. "For someone who harvests death," she murmured, "you're surprisingly gentle."
He didn't smile back. "Gentle people don't survive here. They just burn slower."
The Tower groaned above them — the sound of the next trial waking up.
The cathedral screamed.
Stone peeled away like skin under heat, and the black sun above the sky cracked open.
From the wound came the beast.
It wasn't just enormous — it was wrong.
A hundred feet of mismatched flesh, each limb forged from the bones of fallen angels, its eyes like tiny red stars orbiting a core of molten shadow. Every breath it took warped the ground, every roar warped the air.
The Saintess stumbled backward, clutching her staff. "The Core manifested a Guardian—"
"No," Hae-won said quietly, staring up at it. "The Tower's laughing."
The monster's gaze met his.
And in that instant, he understood what the Tower had done.
The face under all that ruin — stretched, distorted, but still faintly human — was his own.
He felt his heart stop.
Even the chains froze mid-air, uncertain.
The Tower's message bloomed in his vision, cold and cruel:
[ Trial of Reflection Activated ]
[ Objective: Defeat the manifestation of your repressed cruelty. ]
[ Modifier Applied: "The Bully." ]
[ Enemy Type: Adaptive Trauma Entity. Strength: Beyond measurable parameters. ]
The Saintess turned toward him. "It's you."
"No," Hae-won whispered, voice brittle. "It's what the world made of me."
The beast lunged.
Its hand — large enough to crush a carriage — came down like a hammer. Hae-won didn't dodge. He raised both arms, and the two chains flashed into motion — Heaven and Hell, twining together into a luminous double helix.
The impact shattered the ground around them. For a heartbeat, the air was full of fire, dust, and the hiss of molten stone cooling too fast.
When the smoke cleared, Hae-won was still standing.
He was bleeding from both ears. His eyes were alight with the dull, endless calm of someone who had reached understanding through agony. "So this is what the Tower thinks of me," he said.
Then he smiled.
And the smile wasn't cruel — it was knowing.
"Fine. Let's make you weaker."
His fingers snapped together, and the Tower's system froze for half a second — as if even it didn't believe what was about to happen.
[ Skill Activation: Transmission — Stage Transformation Initiated ]
[ Linked Memory Selected: 'The Day Before the Roof.' ]
[ Rewriting Entity Parameters… ]
The beast roared as the world convulsed.
Its colossal shadow trembled, compressed — shrinking, folding in on itself as if being shoved through a smaller version of reality.
When the distortion ended, the hundred-foot monster was gone.
In its place stood a teenage boy.
Average height. Cheap uniform. The sneer of a high schooler who thought pain was currency and cruelty was just "fun."
The very image of what had once cornered Cha Hae-won in the bathroom and laughed as he bled.
The Saintess's staff trembled. "That's—"
"My bully," Hae-won said, voice flat. "Or maybe what the Tower thinks I became."
The boy laughed — a sound too familiar. "What's the matter, orphan? You gonna cry again?"
The words hit harder than the beast's claws.
Hae-won's expression didn't change. But the air around him rippled, his chains vibrating at near-sonic speeds. The Saintess could feel it — the vibration was emotion given form.
It was grief and fury braided so tightly they were indistinguishable.
The boy stepped forward, jeering. "You really thought anyone cared about you? You're still that pathetic kid with no—"
He didn't finish.
Hae-won's chain moved.
Not fast — exact.
A flicker of silver light that whispered instead of roared.
It wrapped around the boy's throat.
"Funny," Hae-won murmured. "You sound smaller than I remember."
The boy clawed at the chain, eyes bulging. "You… can't… you wouldn't—!"
"Do you know what's beautiful about chains?" Hae-won said softly, tightening his grip. "They don't forget who they belong to."
[ Sub-Skill: Chain of Judgement – Empathic Overlap ]
[ Target's strength reduced to emotional equivalence. ]
The boy screamed as his body contorted — every ounce of stolen bravado leaking away until he was just a scared, trembling thing.
The chain pulsed, shimmering red and white, and the Saintess realized it wasn't killing him.
It was weighing him.
Balancing the scales.
When the boy finally stopped struggling, Hae-won released him. The body fell limp but whole, dissolving into motes of gray light that vanished into the Tower's air.
[ Trial Complete. ]
[ Reward: Emotional Stability +5%. New Subclass Unlocked: Harvester of Death. ]
[ System Comment: Your cruelty has learned to differentiate mercy. ]
The Saintess approached carefully. "You didn't kill it."
"No," Hae-won said. "Because that would've meant it still mattered."
He turned to her, eyes empty but steady. "Now, let's finish this floor."
The Tower trembled again — not in anger this time, but in acknowledgment.
As the black sun reassembled itself, text unfurled across the molten sky:
[ Floor 75 Cleared. Access to Ascension and Descent paths unlocked. ]
[ Optional Route: The Saintess's Flame – or – The Harvester's Requiem. ]
[ Choose your climb. ]
Hae-won didn't even hesitate.
He looked up at the choice hovering above him, then said simply:
"I go down."
The Saintess blinked. "Down? Why?"
"Because everything that wants to be saved tries to go up," he said, starting toward the descent gate. "Someone has to make sure what's below doesn't follow them."
The chains followed, whispering in quiet harmony.