The vertical shaft yawned before them like the throat of some ancient god. It wasn't merely tall—it was impossibly vertical, stretching upward into a darkness so complete it seemed to devour light itself. The walls were polished obsidian, black as midnight and slick as ice, their surface reflecting nothing but distorted shadows. But it was the geometry of the thing that truly defied comprehension. The shaft wasn't straight. It couldn't be called cylindrical. Instead, it bulged inward in some places, creating overhangs that jutted out like malformed vertebrae. In other sections, it leaned outward, creating voids where the walls simply vanished from reach. The architecture was wrong in a way that made the eyes ache trying to follow its contours.
The only constant, the only pathway upward, was the rope.
It hung down the center of the shaft like a lifeline thrown into an abyss—except this was no ordinary rope. It was thick as a man's arm, fibrous and organic, its surface a rough, woven nightmare of hardened strands that looked disturbingly biological. The texture reminded Elijah of tendons he'd seen in anatomy textbooks, only scaled up to monstrous proportions. As if someone had reached into the giant's body and torn out a piece of its musculature, then hung it here as the only means of escape. The thought wasn't comforting.
Elijah approached the rope first. He didn't hesitate, didn't pause to consider the implications or measure the distance. Hesitation killed. Analysis paralysis had ended more lives than bold action ever had. He reached out and wrapped both hands around the coarse fibers, feeling them bite into his palms. The texture was worse than he'd anticipated—rough enough to provide grip, but with sharp edges that promised to shred skin with sustained contact.
He positioned his body against it in a full embrace, wrapping his arms around the thick cable and hooking his legs around it in a figure-four lock. His boots, still slick with the residue of the chamber they'd left behind, sought purchase against the subtly textured wall. The obsidian wasn't completely smooth, he realized. There were microscopic variations, tiny ridges and depressions that could be felt but barely seen. Not handholds—nothing so generous—but enough friction to work with if you knew how to use it.
He began to climb.
His movements were not fast. Speed was a luxury, a expenditure of energy he couldn't afford in a climb that might stretch for hundreds of feet. Instead, his ascent was deeply methodical, each motion calculated and deliberate. Slide the hands up six inches. Adjust the leg lock. Press the boots against the wall. Transfer weight. Repeat. It was a rhythm born of terrible, focused endurance, the kind of sustained effort that required shutting down every part of the brain except the mechanical center that controlled muscle and breath.
But the body betrayed him in small ways.
A fine, tremulous shake vibrated through his shoulders and thighs—a postural tremor that was the inevitable consequence of sustained isometric tension. His muscles were locked in constant contraction, fighting gravity with every fiber. The shake was involuntary, a neurological response to prolonged strain. He could feel it, could sense the tiny oscillations that threatened to grow into larger spasms if he didn't manage his energy carefully.
He climbed higher. Ten feet. Fifteen. The sound of his breathing filled his ears, harsh and controlled.
The walls weren't static.
A handhold he'd been pressing against—a small protrusion he'd been using to stabilize his left side—suddenly retracted with a soft, wet *shluck*. The sound was organic, obscene. The obsidian had simply pulled back into itself like living flesh recoiling from a touch.
His body jerked sideways in a sharp, involuntary lunge—a myoclonic spasm triggered by the sudden loss of support. For one heart-stopping instant, his entire weight hung from his arms alone, his legs flailing in empty air. The rope swayed dangerously, pendulum-like, and he swayed with it in an ataxic adjustment, his body fighting for balance on the unsteady cable. His boots scraped frantically against the smooth wall, searching, searching—there. A new ridge. He pressed into it, re-centered his weight, and locked himself in place. His heart hammered against his ribs like a caged animal.
Keep moving.
Below him, Marcus began his own ascent.
Where Elijah climbed with methodical precision, Marcus attacked the shaft with aggressive impatience. His technique was all wrong for a long climb—pure upper-body strength, hand-over-hand, hauling himself upward in sharp, powerful movements. His feet didn't so much climb as kick, scrabbling against the wall for leverage in explosive bursts. He was a piston of motion, burning through energy at an unsustainable rate.
But it was working. For now.
Every time his boot slipped on the slick surface—and it slipped often—his entire frame shuddered with a contained, furious vibration. Not fear. Anger. Marcus climbed like he was fighting the shaft itself, like he could intimidate the architecture into submission through sheer force of will. His jaw was locked, his teeth grinding. The muscles in his forearms stood out like steel cables.
He maintained position two yards below Elijah, close enough to provide backup if needed, far enough to avoid being knocked loose if Elijah fell.
At the base of the shaft, Chloe stood frozen.
She looked up at the impossible height, tracking the dizzying line of the rope as it vanished into darkness somewhere far above. The perspective was wrong. Her brain couldn't process the vertical distance, couldn't reconcile the scale. The world narrowed to that single thread of salvation stretching upward forever. A cold wave of vertigo washed over her, making her hands clammy despite the humid air. Her fingers tingled with the phantom sensation of slipping.
*I'll fall,* a voice whispered in the back of her mind. *My grip will fail. My arms will give out. I'll plummet and there won't even be time to scream before—*
"No," she hissed aloud, cutting off the thought with physical violence.
Another voice rose in response, colder, harder, forged in boardrooms and legacy and the weight of a name that had crushed lesser people for generations. It was her father's voice, or perhaps it was her own—she couldn't tell anymore where one ended and the other began.
*You are a Halvern. Your name is a blade that has cut through steel and stone and the wills of men who thought themselves strong. Men have broken themselves on less than what you carry in your blood. Your ancestors built empires. They did not fall. They did not fail. And neither will you. Now climb.*
She bared her teeth in a silent, furious snarl—anger at her fear, anger at the shaft, anger at everything that had led her to this moment. Her hands shot out and grabbed the coarse rope. The fibers bit into her palms immediately, sharp and unforgiving. Good. Pain was real. Pain was focus.
She began to haul herself upward, her movements stiff with the effort of will over instinct, discipline over terror.
Vivian didn't move.
She stood at the base of the shaft, her head craned back at an awkward angle, her whole body trembling like a leaf in a storm. Her hands were raised halfway, fingers curled but not quite reaching for the rope. She tried to muster the internal command, tried to force her muscles to obey.
Move. Just grab it. Climb. You've come this far. You can't stop now. Just one hand. Then the other. It's simple. It's just climbing. You climbed trees as a child. This is the same. Just move. MOVE.
The words were feathers against a hurricane of fear. They dissolved into nothing, scattered by the sheer overwhelming weight of terror that had locked her joints and stolen her breath. Her vision tunneled. The rope swam in and out of focus.
Richie, breathing heavily from his own painful start—he'd managed maybe three feet before the agony in his tortured body forced him to pause—watched her. His face, usually set in a permanent sneer or twisted in poorly concealed pain, underwent a transformation. Something softened. Pity flickered across his features, then was replaced by something harder, more resolute. A decision made.
He slid back down the few feet he'd gained, his boots thudding against the chamber floor beside her. The impact sent jolts of pain through his damaged ribs, but he gritted his teeth and ignored it.
"Get on my back," he grunted, not meeting her eyes. His voice was rough, stripped of its usual venom. Just a flat statement of fact.
Vivian flinched as if he'd slapped her. The words registered slowly, filtering through her panic. Then, like a match struck in darkness, a different emotion ignited. Hot, mortified fury flooded her cheeks with color.
"Don't you *dare* patronize me, Richie Blackwell!" she hissed, the venom in her voice startling in its intensity, all the more shocking because it came from someone who moments ago couldn't string two thoughts together. "You think carrying me up this shaft will scrub the loser stink off you? You think playing hero makes you anything other than what you've always been? People only ever talked to you in Ever Thorne because your daddy was the mayor! You had his name, his office, his *shadow* to hide in! You're nothing without that name, and now even that's gone!"
The words hung in the humid air between them, sharp and cruel and designed to cut deep.
Richie didn't react with anger. He didn't lash back, didn't defend himself, didn't even flinch at the accuracy of the strike. He just... shut down.
The last of the fire in his eyes guttered out like a candle flame snuffed by wet fingers. His face went utterly blank, a slate wiped clean of everything—pain, anger, fear, hope. The insult hadn't scratched his pride or wounded his ego. It had done something worse. It had poured salt directly into the raw, gaping wound of his father's murder, the loss that defined every breath he'd taken since the Trial began.
His father, who'd been worth something. Who'd mattered. Who'd been *real* in a way Richie had never managed to be.
"Knock it off."
Elijah's voice came from somewhere above, cold and sharp as falling ice. He had stopped climbing, his body a tense silhouette against the faint greenish gloom that emanated from somewhere higher in the shaft. He looked down at them, his expression invisible in shadow but his tone conveying everything necessary.
He locked eyes with Vivian, and in that gaze was neither sympathy nor condemnation. Just cold, hard pragmatism.
"The only thing in this world that matters right now is getting out of this shaft," he said, each word precise and deliberate. "Everything else—fear, pride, whatever personal damage you want to inflict on each other—none of it matters. Can you climb, or not? Decide. Now. Because we're not stopping, and we're not waiting."
The cold finality of it broke through Vivian's panic like a hammer through glass. The shame of her outburst crashed over her in a wave that left her breathless. The stark binary choice Elijah presented—climb or be left behind—left no room for hysterics or negotiation.
With a choked sob that was equal parts fear and humiliation, she lunged forward and wrapped her shaking arms around the rope. The fibers were rough against her soft palms—she'd never done hard labor, never developed calluses, never needed to. Her grip was weak, her arms trembling.
But she began to climb.
Her movements were feeble and uncoordinated, lacking any technique or efficiency. She hauled herself upward through pure desperation, each foot of progress a small victory against the terror screaming in her hindbrain. Below her, Richie watched for a moment, his face still that terrible blank mask. Then he too began to climb again, moving like an automaton, mechanical and empty.
The climb became a brutal symphony of strain.
Muscles burned with the fire of lactic acid buildup. The rope fibers tore at already-raw palms, leaving bright streaks of blood on the organic cable. Breath came in ragged gasps that echoed in the cylindrical space, creating a chorus of suffering. The air grew thicker as they climbed, or perhaps it was just harder to breathe through the exhaustion.
Far above, barely visible, the giant's chest emblem pulsed with faint, sickly light. It glowed like a diseased star, its illumination catching the sweat that poured down their faces and made their grips treacherous. The light seemed to pulse in rhythm with something—a heartbeat, perhaps, though whose heart it might be was unclear.
Elijah had gained perhaps forty feet when the wall moved.
It wasn't a quake or a tremor. There was no warning vibration, no sound of grinding stone. The movement was deliberate, silent, and utterly smooth—the reconfiguration of living architecture.
A section of the obsidian wall to Elijah's left, positioned just above where Marcus climbed, began to bulge inward. The surface flowed like liquid made solid, rotating on some hidden axis deep within the structure. In seconds, what had been a climbable surface transformed into something else entirely.
It presented not a bump or protrusion, but a sheer, concave overhang that pushed outward into the space of the shaft. The rope, which had been hanging close enough to the wall to provide some stability, was now pushed a full three feet away from any purchase. The section stretched for at least ten feet vertically—a gap that couldn't be climbed through normal means.
It was a dead zone. Impossible to traverse directly.
Up above, the viewership counters flickered and jumped.
User 'ArchitectFan':Oh, a puzzle! Environmental shift! This is what I've been waiting for!
User 'Vulture':Finally, some real danger! Let's see who falls first.*
Elijah's mind worked in pure geometry and kinetics, stripping away emotion and fear to focus on the problem. The overhang created a gap between rope and wall. His current technique—using the wall for stability—wouldn't work. He needed a new approach.
He looked down, found Marcus's eyes in the gloom below.
No words were exchanged. Speech would waste energy and time. But something passed between them in that moment of eye contact—a grim understanding born of necessity. They'd never been friends. They'd barely tolerated each other. But survival created its own temporary alliances.
Marcus understood immediately what needed to happen. He gave a single, sharp nod.
The Maneuver began.
Marcus stopped climbing. Fighting every instinct that screamed to keep moving, to get past the danger zone, he instead planted himself. His boots searched the wall and found two small stone nodules—barely protrusions, more like imperfections in the obsidian. He planted his feet wide on them, his legs forming a stable base.
Then he locked his arms around the rope in a death-grip.
His entire body tensed, every muscle fiber engaging simultaneously. His shoulders dropped, his center of gravity lowered, and he rooted himself into the position like a tree growing roots. A deep, subsonic tremor hummed through his frame—not weakness, but the vibration of total muscular engagement. His body became a human anchor point, transforming from climber to foundation.
The rope stopped swaying. Stability coalesced around his position.
Seeing Marcus secure, Elijah didn't hesitate.
He transferred his weight, bringing his center of gravity closer to the rope. Then he released his leg lock, letting his lower body swing free. The sudden shift sent a jolt of alarm through his nervous system, but he controlled it, channeled it.
Using Marcus's fixed point as a pivot, he pushed off from the wall with both feet in one explosive movement. His legs extended fully, generating momentum. He swung out on the rope in a wide, daring pendulum arc, his body describing a path through empty air that bypassed the overhang entirely.
The movement was controlled chaos—explosive power wrapped in discipline.
As he swung, the strain hit him like a physical blow. A violent, localized tremor shook through his arms as they took his full body weight. Myoclonic flickers jumped across the muscles of his shoulders and back under the intense load, visible ripples beneath his shirt. His grip on the rope was paradoxically steady even as the muscles executing that grip spasmed with effort. The power coursing through his body was a battle between control and chaos, his nervous system fighting to maintain coordination while under extreme duress.
At the peak of his swing, on the far side of the overhang, he did the most dangerous thing he'd done since entering the Tower.
He let go.
For one heart-stopping second, he was airborne. Completely unsupported, flying through darkness, his body twisting in space. Time seemed to stretch. He could feel every beat of his heart, could sense the precise trajectory of his body through the air, could calculate with terrible clarity every way this could go wrong.
His hand shot out—paradoxically steady amid the chaos, muscle memory and training overriding panic. His fingers caught a narrow, lip-like seam in the wall that he'd spotted during his swing. The grip was immediate and absolute, his fingers finding purchase with desperate precision.
He hauled himself up with a grunt of effort that echoed in the shaft. His boots scraped against the wall, searching, finding. A ledge. Tiny—maybe three inches wide—but enough. He wedged his toes onto it, pressed his body against the wall, and secured himself.
His breath roared in his ears like a freight train. His entire body shook with adrenaline and exhaustion. But he was past the overhang.
Now anchored above the obstacle, Elijah assessed the next step. Marcus was still below, still holding his anchor position. The overhang separated them.
Elijah leaned back carefully, extending his arm down toward Marcus at the maximum reach his position would allow. His fingers stretched into empty air, creating a target.
Marcus saw the signal. He didn't hesitate, didn't second-guess. Hesitation killed.
He pushed off from his braced stance with both legs, converting his stable anchor into explosive movement. His hands released the rope as his body swung outward, following the same pendulum arc Elijah had traced moments before. His trajectory carried him up and across.
Elijah's hand shot down and clamped around Marcus's forearm.
The grip was so tight it locked instantly—a dystonic claw, fingers spasming closed with strength that exceeded conscious control. Their forearms pressed together, hand to elbow, creating a human chain. Elijah's muscles corded, veins standing out in sharp relief against his skin as he pulled with everything he had.
It was a brutal, grunting transfer of weight and survival. Marcus's boots scraped against the overhang's edge, found purchase, pushed. Elijah hauled, his back screaming with effort, his shoulders threatening to dislocate. Together, through coordinated violence, they conquered physics.
Marcus came up and over the overhang, his free hand finding the same seam Elijah had caught. They collapsed for a second on the small ledge, their bodies pressed against the wall, gasping like drowning men who'd just breached the surface.
The unspoken cooperation hung between them like another presence. Neither spoke. Neither needed to.
Up above, the viewership exploded.
User 'ParkourKing':WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL WAS THAT?! THAT WAS NOT NORMAL! YOU DON'T JUST COORDINATE THAT!
User 'Gambler':Did they just… plan that? In mid-air? While terrified? That's not panic response—that's training!
User 'CorpPrince':That's military-grade obstacle course technique. Urban warfare training. Who the hell ARE these kids?
User 'TechWitch': Running biometric analysis—their heart rates spiked but their motor control stayed precise. That's not natural teenage response under stress.
User 'Vulture': Don't care about their backgrounds. I care about what happens when the others try it.
Below, Chloe, Vivian, and Richie had watched the entire sequence with a mixture of awe and dawning horror.
Because now it was their turn.
The shaft seemed endless. The emblem pulsed brighter above them, its sickly light growing stronger as they climbed, as if it were feeding on their suffering. And somewhere in the back of their minds, each of them knew with terrible certainty that the true cost of this ascent was still to come.
The overhang waited, patient and implacable as death itself.