The final stretch of the ascent was a purgatory of exhaustion that seemed to stretch beyond the boundaries of physical endurance and into something psychological, something that broke down the barriers between body and will until they were one continuous scream of effort.
The shaft narrowed as they climbed higher, the walls closing in with each vertical foot gained until they were forced into single-file, climbing through what felt less like architecture and more like a biological passage. It was a tube of warm, pulsating metal that seemed to breathe around them, expanding and contracting with a rhythm that wasn't quite mechanical. The surface was slick with condensation that might have been moisture or might have been something else entirely—something organic that their minds refused to fully process.
The giant's heartbeat was no longer just sound. It was a tangible thrum in the air, a pressure that vibrated through their bones with each massive contraction somewhere in the depths below them. They could feel it in their teeth, in their skulls, in the hollow spaces of their bodies where it resonated like a secondary pulse trying to override their own.
The rope that had been their lifeline throughout the ascent ended abruptly, its fibrous mass fusing directly into the ceiling above them. The ceiling itself was a concave dome of faintly luminous material that resembled mother-of-pearl—iridescent, shifting between colors that didn't quite have names, creating patterns that seemed to move even when they stayed perfectly still.
Before them, interrupting the smooth curve of the dome, was an opening.
It wasn't a door or a hatch or anything that suggested mechanical construction. It was a circular iris of dark, flexible cartilage, the edges overlapping in a pattern that looked disturbingly organic. The opening contracted and expanded slightly with the giant's breathing, a sphincter-like passage that led not to another chamber of trials, not to another test of endurance or pain, but into...
Silence.
The absence of sound was so complete it felt like a physical presence, a weight pressing against their ears after the constant roar and chaos of everything that had come before.
They crawled through one by one, their exhausted bodies barely able to manage even this simple movement. Elijah first, always first, his arms shaking with the effort of pulling himself through. Then Marcus, his face set in lines of grim determination. Chloe followed, her movements mechanical, autopilot. Vivian came next, whimpering softly with each motion. Finally Richie, who seemed to move more from momentum than conscious choice.
They collapsed onto the floor of the giant's head.
The impact against solid ground should have hurt, should have jarred their bruised and battered bodies, but in that moment it felt like salvation. They lay there for long seconds, chests heaving, muscles screaming, minds trying to process that the climbing was finally, mercifully over.
The space around them was unlike anything they'd encountered in the Tower's depths.
It was a serene, hemispherical chamber that seemed to exist in direct opposition to everything that had come before. Where the previous trials had been dark, oppressive, designed to inspire terror and desperation, this space was almost beautiful in its simplicity.
The walls were smooth and warm to the touch, colored a soft white that reminded Elijah of the inside of certain seashells he'd collected as a child—a memory from a life that felt impossibly distant now. The material had a faint translucence, as if light were trapped just beneath its surface, trying to emerge.
Soft, sourceless light glowed from the walls themselves, not bright enough to hurt their dark-adapted eyes but sufficient to illuminate every corner of the space. There were no shadows here, no dark places where threats could hide. Just gentle, even illumination that should have been comforting but somehow felt wrong after everything they'd endured.
The air was still—no wind, no movement, no circulation that they could detect. It was cool against their sweat-soaked skin, a blessed relief after the humid warmth of the shaft. The smell was clean and strange: ozone mixed with something that reminded Chloe of rain on hot stone, that particular scent of a summer storm breaking against pavement.
After the roaring rivers that had tried to drown them, the grinding gears that had threatened to crush them, the terror of the vertical climb where a single slip meant death—the peace of this chamber was disorienting. The silence was almost aggressive in its completeness, pressing against their ears like water pressure, making them hyper-aware of their own breathing, their own heartbeats, the small sounds of fabric shifting and joints creaking.
It was the kind of peace that felt like a trap.
In the center of the chamber, laid out with precise geometric spacing on the smooth floor, were four objects.
Parachutes.
They weren't fancy or high-tech or anything that suggested the supernatural horror of the Tower. They were simple, military-grade parachutes with heavy nylon packs and bright red ripcords. The kind of equipment that looked utilitarian, functional, designed for one purpose and one purpose only: delivering a human body safely from altitude to ground.
Chloe, her body still trembling with residual adrenaline that hadn't yet processed they were no longer in immediate danger, was the first to move toward them. She pushed herself up on shaking arms, crawled forward on hands and knees because standing seemed like too much effort, and knelt beside the nearest pack.
Her hands ran over the tough nylon, checking the straps, the buckles, the condition of the equipment with an eye that suggested she'd seen parachutes before, maybe in some expensive adventure tourism experience her family's money had purchased. She examined each pack methodarily, her movements growing slower, more deliberate, as a terrible realization began to dawn.
She counted. Once, carefully, touching each pack as she numbered them.
Then again, hoping she'd made a mistake, that her exhausted brain had miscounted.
Her shoulders slumped, the posture of someone who'd just received a diagnosis they'd been dreading.
"Four," she said, her voice hollow in the quiet space, echoing slightly off the curved walls. "There are only four."
The words landed in the silence like stones dropped into still water, creating ripples that spread outward to touch every person in the chamber.
Everyone froze. The fatigue that had been dragging at them moments before evaporated, replaced by a sharp, cold clarity that cut through exhaustion like a blade.
The tension that had been a constant companion throughout their ordeal—the fear of the trials, the terror of the unknown, the dread of what came next—crystallized into something new. Something colder, more intimate, infinitely more horrible.
This wasn't fear of an external threat. This was fear of each other.
The five of them—Elijah, Chloe, Vivian, Marcus, Richie—stood in the peaceful chamber, their eyes moving between the four packs arranged on the floor and the people around them. Four packs that represented life, escape, survival. And one empty space that represented a choice. A sacrifice. A death sentence disguised as arithmetic.
A timer materialized on the curved wall as if summoned by their realization. It appeared out of nothing, the numbers bright red against the white surface, already counting down: 05:00.
The familiar, giggling voice of the playful little boy—the one that had tormented them with childish glee throughout their descent—piped into the room from hidden speakers, the sound too cheerful, too innocent for the horror it announced.
"Tick-tock, friends! Better decide who's staying for the bubble bath! The acid shower is reeeeally itchy when it starts! And it takes soooo long to finish! Like, hours and hours! Hee hee!" The giggle that followed was pure, unsullied delight. "Make your choice! Democracy in action!"
The horror was so mundane, so cruelly bureaucratic. A shortage. A logistical problem. A vote on who deserved to live and who deserved to die, dressed up in the language of resource allocation.
"You bastard!" Chloe screamed at the ceiling, at the walls, at the unseen master of ceremonies who orchestrated this nightmare. "You sick, twisted bastard! What kind of monster—"
Her voice cracked, the rage dissolving into something closer to despair. She wanted more words, wanted to articulate the full depth of her hatred and horror, but language failed in the face of this particular cruelty.
No response came. Just the soft, peaceful hum of the chamber—almost like white noise, like the sound of blood moving through vessels—and the relentless march of the clock: 04:47... 04:46... 04:45...
Everyone's eyes began to move.
Not meeting each other's gazes directly—that would be too honest, too revealing. Instead, they flicked sideways, peripheral vision assessments, quick evaluations disguised as looking away. Each person was calculating, weighing, measuring the others against some internal scale of worth and usefulness.
The group dynamic, the fragile alliances forged in survival, the bonds created through shared suffering—all of it evaporated in an instant like water on a hot surface. They were no longer a team. They were five individuals staring down a mathematical certainty that required one of them to die.
Elijah's mind was a cold, dark well of calculation, operating with the ruthless efficiency of a machine designed to solve problems of survival.
*Chloe gets one. That is non-negotiable. She dies, and everything I've done becomes meaningless. I get one. I am the only one who can navigate whatever comes next, the only one with the skills to handle the endgame. Marcus is strong, a resource, capable of contributing. His survival increases overall chances. Vivian is weak, physically and mentally compromised, a burden. Richie is... damaged. Traumatized beyond function. A liability that will only drag others down.*
The calculation was horrific in its clarity, and he hated himself for how immediate it was, how it required no conscious thought, just emerged fully formed from some survivalist center of his brain.
Marcus's face was a stony mask, but his eyes betrayed him, darting between the packs and the other people in rapid assessment. His strategic mind—the same one that had made him a natural leader in school, that had won chess tournaments and debate competitions—was racing through social dynamics and survival odds, running probability matrices, calculating who could be sacrificed with the least guilt, whose death would hurt the least.
Vivian had backed against the curved wall, her body making herself as small as possible, her hands pressed over her mouth as if to physically prevent the sobs building in her throat. Her eyes were wide with the terrible, perfect understanding that she was, in every conceivable equation, the weakest variable. The one who'd needed to be carried through the flooded tunnel. The one who'd frozen at the base of the shaft. The one who contributed least and needed most. She could see it in how the others weren't quite looking at her, how their gazes skated past her like she was already gone.
Richie stood apart from the group, positioned between the parachutes and the wall. But he wasn't looking at the packs. He wasn't joining the silent calculus of survival that the others were performing.
He was looking at the others looking at each other.
He saw the micro-expressions, the ones people couldn't control—the brief tightening around Marcus's eyes when his gaze passed over Richie's position. The way Elijah's jaw clenched almost imperceptibly. The way Chloe's face showed conflict but not surprise at the situation. The fleeting glances that landed on him for just a split second before moving away, too guilty to hold contact.
Glances that weren't of fear or calculation, but of cold, grim acknowledgment.
*Him. It'll be him. He's the choice. He's the sacrifice.*
Richie saw it. He saw each glance land on him like a physical weight, saw the silent consensus forming in the space between heartbeats, and then watched as their eyes flitted away, unable to hold contact with what they were considering.
A jolt went through him—not of surprise, but of confirmation. The shock and fear that had been his constant state since falling into that pit in the shifting hall, since failing every challenge, since being voted for deletion by thousands of anonymous viewers—it all melted away in an instant, replaced by a weary, final understanding.
*Of course. It was always going to be me.*
The deletion poll had been a preview, he realized. A prediction. The audience had seen what his friends were only now consciously acknowledging—that in any equation of survival, Richie Blackwell was the expendable term. The profile the Witness had created had said it: "The Weak Link." Not strong enough, not smart enough, not useful enough. Just enough of a liability that his removal increased everyone else's chances.
And now his friends—his teammates, the people he'd suffered alongside—were confirming it with their eyes, with their silence, with the calculations happening behind their exhausted faces.
A strange, calm emptiness filled him. It was like someone had pulled a plug and all the fight, all the anger, all the pain and self-pity that had been his constant companions just... drained out. What remained was a hollow shell that felt, inexplicably, light. Free, even.
He'd been carrying something heavy his whole life—the weight of being the mayor's son, the pressure of a name that meant something in Ever Thorne, the burden of expectations he could never meet. Then his father died, murdered, and that weight transformed into guilt and grief and the horrible suspicion that he'd somehow failed at being a good enough son to keep his father alive.
Now, looking at the parachutes and at the people who'd decided he was the one who should stay behind, that weight simply... let go.
He took a step forward. His movements were steady, calmer than they'd been in days. His voice, when it came, was quiet, flat, and utterly exhausted—but also, strangely, at peace.
"I'll do it. I'll stay."
The words hung in the serene air like a guillotine blade suspended at its apex.
Marcus's head whipped toward him with such speed it must have hurt his neck. "What? Why? Don't be an idiot, Richie, we can—we can figure something out—"
But his protest was weak, undermined by the guilty relief that flooded his face so profoundly it choked his words halfway through. He wanted to argue, wanted to be the kind of friend who fought against this, but the truth was written in every line of his body: he was relieved it wasn't him.
"Figure what out?" Richie said, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. It wasn't a happy smile, wasn't triumphant or brave. It was the smile of someone who has finally seen the bottom of the well they've been falling down and found it, unexpectedly, peaceful. "There are four packs. Five of us. The math is pretty simple, Marcus. It's always been simple."
He looked at Vivian, who was crying silently, tears streaming down her face as she realized she'd been spared. He looked at Chloe, whose face was etched with conflict and horror—the part of her that was relieved warring with the part that knew this was monstrous. He looked at Elijah, whose expression was unreadable, locked down behind walls of control.
"Just... go," Richie said softly. "Before the clock runs out and we all die together. That would be stupid."
"Richie, no, you can't—" Marcus started again, real anger flaring in him now, born of a friendship that went back to childhood treehouses and stolen beers and secrets shared in the dark. It was an anger at the situation, at the game, at the unfairness of it all, at Richie's resignation. "Why? Why would you just give up?! We can—we can think of something! Maybe we can all—"
"All what?" Richie interrupted gently. "All fit on four parachutes? You want to share one? Marcus, you've seen the size of those packs. They're rated for one person. Period. Someone has to stay. You know it. I know it. Everyone in this room knows it."
He met Marcus's eyes directly, and in that gaze was everything they'd never said to each other—years of friendship, of growing up together in a small town, of knowing each other's families, of being the kind of friends who didn't need to speak to understand.
"You know why," Richie said softly, and Marcus's anger collapsed inward because he did know. He knew exactly why.
Then Richie turned his back on them, walking toward the far side of the chamber with steady steps, as if giving them privacy to put on their parachutes and prepare for escape. He was accepting his fate. He was choosing it, claiming it, making it his own decision rather than a sentence imposed upon him.
He felt, for the first time since falling into the pit in the shifting hall—since that moment of helpless terror where strong hands had hauled him from certain death—a sense of freedom. The struggle was over. The debt was paid. The bill that had been accumulating since birth, since he'd failed to be the son his father deserved, since he'd been too weak to protect anyone including himself—it was all balanced now.
He could stop fighting. He could stop failing. He could simply... be done.
04:01... 04:00... 03:59...
The clock hit the four-minute mark with a soft chime that sounded obscene in its normalcy.
A soft, hydraulic hiss filled the chamber, the sound gentle and mechanical and utterly out of place in what had been perfect silence. Across the room from where Richie stood, the curved wall shimmered like heat distortion across pavement. The material seemed to thin, to become translucent, and then a circular opening irised open with smooth, biological precision.
The view beyond was breathtaking and terrifying in equal measure.
The night sky over Crestwood spread before them like a vast black canvas dusted with stars. The city lights twinkled impossibly far below—too far, so far that the distance felt unreal, like looking at a map or a model rather than an actual place where people lived and moved and had no idea five teenagers were about to jump from the head of a giant that shouldn't exist.
The exit. The escape. Salvation measured in four nylon packs and one empty space.
Wind whistled softly through the opening, carrying with it the cold bite of altitude and the promise of freedom—for those who took it.
It was time to go.
03:45... 03:44... 03:43...
The clock continued its relentless countdown, and in the peaceful chamber that smelled of ozone and rain, five teenagers faced the oldest human equation: who deserves to live, and who deserves to die, and who gets to decide.