CHAPTER 34: THE VOID'S ANSWER**
*(Or How Shen Forged His First True Spell)*
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### **I. The Cost of Creation**
The Tower breathed.
Its walls pulsed like a living throat around them, each expansion squeezing the air from Shen's lungs. Nolan crouched behind a shattered pillar, his golden eye darting between seven converging fissures in the stone—each leaking the same thick, sentient darkness that now coated Shen's armor.
Ryulga was gone.
*Not dead.*
*Worse—expected.*
The realization burned worse than the Tower's bile dripping down Shen's back. This had always been the plan. Lure the Mediator here. Feed him to the walls.
A shadow-fanged maw split open in the ceiling.
**"Last of your kind,"** it hissed in Ryulga's voice. **"And still you *hesitate*."**
Shen's armored fingers twitched.
Something *answered* from the void between his ribs.
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### **II. The First Spell**
Magic wasn't supposed to work like this.
Not the rote incantations of academy mages. Not the blood-price rituals of warlocks.
This was *taking*.
This was *hunger*.
Shen's armor *flexed*—and the Tower's darkness *screamed* as his shadows *bit down*.
**"Show me,"** Shen growled.
The stolen power coalesced:
- *Ryulga's smirk as he carved the first sigil into a younger Shen's palm*
- *Nolan's future-self plunging a dagger into Veyl's remaining eye*
- *The Tower's birth—a wound ripped between worlds by something even older*
Shen *pulled*.
The Tower *ripped*.
And from the bleeding edges of that rupture, **he forged his answer**.
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### **III. [Voidwalk]**
Not a spell.
A *consequence*.
The air where Shen stood *ceased existing* for precisely three heartbeats.
When reality stitched itself back together, the Tower's western wall was simply *gone*—not shattered, not melted, but *unmade* down to the atomic level. Sunlight speared through the opening, illuminating the thing that had been growing in the Tower's heart:
A pulsing, fetal mass of half-formed Mediators, their fused limbs twitching in unison.
Nolan retched. **"Gods—"**
Shen's armor *shuddered*, the stolen power threatening to unravel him.
The mass opened a thousand eyes.
**"Mine,"** whispered the Tower.
**"No,"** said Shen, and *tore another piece from the world*.
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### **IV. The Price**
Creation demands sacrifice.
By the fourth [Voidwalk], Shen's left arm stopped obeying him. By the sixth, his shadows began *singing* in a language that cracked his teeth.
Nolan dragged him back from the seventh attempt. **"You're killing yourself!"**
Shen's grin was all blood. **"Told you...I don't...lose."**
The Tower *wailed* as its foundations crumbled into the abyss.
Somewhere in the collapsing dark, Ryulga laughed.
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### **V. Aftermath**
They emerged under a sky that shouldn't exist—a swirling canvas of stolen memories and broken time.
Nolan's golden eye had gone dull, its visions finally silent.
Shen's armor lay in pieces around him, its whispers still echoing:
*"More."*
*"Hungry."*
*"Again."*
He flexed his remaining hand. The air *shivered*.
Ryulga's pipe rolled to a stop at his feet, its bowl still smoldering with that familiar, treacherous light.
Somewhere ahead, the second Tower waited.
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**TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 36: *THE TEACHER'S GAMBIT***