Kael climbed higher.
Each floor felt colder, darker, as if the Tower itself grew angrier with every step he took. His boots echoed on the cracked stone, the sound swallowed quickly by the thick, suffocating silence.
He reached the next landing and found himself standing in a long, broken hallway. Pieces of shattered statues lay scattered across the floor. Some were of men, some of beasts, and others were things Kael couldn't recognize at all.
He moved carefully, shards pulsing faintly at his side. His senses were sharper now, tuned to even the slightest movement.
As he walked, he noticed something strange.
The statues... they weren't just broken.
They had been destroyed with violence.
Claw marks tore through stone. Burn patterns scorched the ground. Deep gouges lined the walls as if something massive had tried to rip its way out.
Kael's fingers brushed the hilt of his shard blade.
He wasn't alone here.
Further down the hallway, a faint glow caught his eye. A soft blue light, almost like a star, hovered in the middle of a ruined chamber.
Kael approached slowly.
At the center of the room, floating above a cracked altar, was a shard unlike any he had seen before. It wasn't jagged or rough like the others. It was smooth, perfectly round, and pulsed gently with light, as if breathing.
A single word formed in Kael's mind, unbidden.
Abyssal Memory.
The moment he stepped closer, the ground beneath him trembled.
From the broken statues, something began to rise.
The dust shifted, the stones cracked, and from the rubble, twisted figures emerged. Stone guardians, their bodies stitched together from broken pieces, their hollow eyes burning with cold fire.
Kael barely had time to react before the first one charged.
He dodged left, feeling the rush of air as a stone fist missed him by inches. His shard blade flashed, striking the guardian's arm. Sparks flew, but the creature barely flinched.
They were tough.
Kael gritted his teeth. He couldn't fight them head-on for long. Their heavy blows would crush him if he wasn't careful.
Another guardian lunged. Kael ducked and rolled, sliding behind a broken column. His mind raced.
The Abyssal Memory shard... it was at the center of the room.
He needed it.
Kael sprinted from cover, weaving between the guardians. Dust exploded under his feet as stone fists smashed down around him. One blow grazed his side, sending a jolt of pain through his ribs, but he kept running.
Closer.
Almost there.
A guardian blocked his path, raising its massive arm to strike.
Kael didn't slow.
He drew on the fire shard once more, blasting a burst of searing flame directly into the creature's chest. The guardian staggered, just enough for Kael to slip past.
He dove forward, hand outstretched.
His fingers closed around the Abyssal Memory shard.
The moment he touched it, a shock ran through his body.
Images flooded his mind. Not of the Tower, but of something deeper, older. He saw endless black skies. Stars falling like rain. A great figure standing alone in the void, its eyes burning with cold, unyielding light.
The dead god.
Kael gasped, stumbling backward.
The guardians froze.
Then, like puppets with their strings cut, they collapsed into piles of lifeless rubble.
Kael stood there, heart pounding, clutching the shard to his chest.
He didn't know exactly what he had seen.
But something had changed.
The Abyssal Memory shard wasn't just power.
It was a key.
A whisper echoed through the chamber, so faint that Kael almost thought he imagined it.
Ascend, or be forgotten.
Kael tightened his grip.
He would ascend.
He would not be forgotten.
Without looking back, he moved toward the next staircase, the Abyssal Memory shard pulsing quietly in his hand.