The passage was narrow, too narrow for a man of broader shoulders. But Veyne slipped through like ink sliding into parchment. The walls were slick, not with water but with something thicker, something that clung to the fingertips and whispered promises if touched too long.
He didn't flinch.
The corridor opened into a room lit by a ceiling that wasn't a ceiling at all, but a sky of veins suspended in translucent flesh, pulsing with distant heartbeats. The light was the color of bruises. Shadows bent away from him, subtly afraid.
In the center stood a figure.
It had no skin. Every muscle, every tendon on display, glistening like raw meat. Yet it stood straight, dignified, wrapped in a cloak of crawling rats. They moved as one, their tiny eyes reflecting the dying light above.
"Welcome," it said, and the word was not spoken but bled into the air, carried by vibrations in the stone.
Veyne stepped closer, his boots leaving no echo.
"Am I the first?" he asked, tilting his head.
The creature tilted its own, mirroring him. "You are the fifth. The others… did not linger long."
"Shame."
"Not for them."
The walls flickered. Images appeared and vanished: a man falling upward into a ceiling made of mouths, a woman screaming her own name until it broke her, a child pulling his heart out and offering it to something behind a mirror.
Veyne watched with mild interest. "Do you have a name?"
The thing chuckled, and the rats on its cloak quivered with it. "I am the Welcomer. I offer a gift to each chosen: Truth, Death, or Tea."
Three cups appeared on a table of glass bone. One was steaming. One hissed cold. The last held nothing but black smoke.
Veyne considered. Then picked up the cup of tea, sniffed it, and poured it out onto the floor.
The Welcomer smiled wider. "Wise."
"Give me Truth."
The smoke from the third cup coiled around his head. He did not breathe it in—it entered regardless, slipping through skin, nostrils, memories.
The world shifted.
He saw himself in mirrors that hadn't existed moments ago, suspended midair. In one reflection, he stood triumphant atop the Tower, eyes glowing with stolen divinity. In another, he lay shattered in a spiral of his own bones. In a third, he was the Tower, and the Tower wept.
A headache bloomed behind his eyes.
Revelation Instinct sparked. His heart skipped. For a moment, he saw the room as it truly was — not welcoming, not solid. It was hollow. A stage. A mask. The Welcomer itself was not real.
But it noticed his noticing.
"Careful," it said softly. "Some truths are anchors. Others are blades."
Veyne nodded. "Let them all be blades."
The Welcomer laughed. It began to unravel, threads of muscle and rat-flesh spinning upward, merging with the false sky. The room dimmed.
He was alone.
No. Not alone.
He turned. A door had appeared. Not a grand portal. A simple wooden frame, cracked, bleeding light from its hinges. Written above it in trembling script:
Feast of Strangers.
Veyne stepped forward, his boots finally making sound. Each tap echoed more than it should have, bouncing off walls and thoughts alike.
Before he opened the door, he looked back once.
The table was gone. The ceiling now stone. The rats? Scattered, dead.
It had all been illusion.
Yet the taste of truth lingered on his tongue, bitter and electric.
He opened the door.
And stepped into the Tower's next mouth.
The room beyond was cavernous. A banquet hall carved from fused bone, with chandeliers of spine and glass. Tables stretched the length of a cathedral, each place setting ornate and untouched.
Veyne was not alone.
Five others stood or sat in varying states of disbelief. A woman in bloodstained armor sharpened a blade with trembling hands. A boy no older than ten knelt and muttered prayers, eyes wide and unfocused. A scholar clutched pages that bled ink, muttering equations. A mercenary paced. And a priest with no tongue cried silently.
No one noticed him at first.
Until the scholar's head jerked up. "Don't sit. Whatever you do, don't sit."
Veyne smiled. Sat anyway.
The chair purred beneath him.
"We're waiting for the test," the woman said. "One of us will be chosen. Or judged. Or something worse."
"No," Veyne murmured, his voice calm. "This isn't a test."
They all turned.
He met their eyes one by one, Revelation Instinct swirling behind his gaze.
The truth slid into place.
"This is a feast."
Silence.
Then—
SHLORP.
The scholar vanished. Not screamed. Not struggled. Simply gone. The chair where he sat folded inward, as if swallowing.
The others panicked. The boy screamed. The priest fell to his knees. The mercenary unsheathed his blade. The woman stood still, muttering a name over and over.
Veyne didn't move.
He reached out, fingers brushing the tablecloth.
It was flesh.
He stood, calmly, and moved toward a far wall. He didn't run. He walked with purpose.
His Instinct flared.
A hidden seam.
He pressed it, and the wall slid open like a gill.
Behind him, the screaming resumed. One chair burst into flame. Another turned into a mouth.
He slipped through the opening, silent.
The Tower did not stop him.
Perhaps it thought he belonged.
Perhaps it knew he didn't.
Either way, the Devourer had welcomed him.
And Veyne—with a smile tinged in madness—was ready to bite back.