Tower Floor 34: INTERFERENCE ZONE
Origin: Unknown
Structural Status: Overlaid
Time Continuity: Skipped (4.2 minutes)Foreign Identity Signature Detected
There was no staircase this time.
Kael emerged through the fracture in the sky—a slit of reality torn open by memory—and dropped into a battlefield already in motion.
Not Tower-made.
Not ancient.
War. Brutal and modern.
Broken iron flags fluttered from the ruined parapets. Creatures that looked like mutated knights—metal and blood fused together—fought screaming silhouettes with glowing eyes.
He crouched low, sword drawn, instincts alive.
"This isn't the next floor," he muttered. "This is a collision."
A flare of blue fire cut across the sky.
Someone had seen him.
A figure landed hard in front of him—armor scorched, breathing fast. She was human. Barely. Eyes glowing with fragmented code.
"Name?" she demanded, raising a twin-edged blade humming with heat.
"Kael," he answered cautiously. "I'm a climber. Tower-bound. Floor Thirty-Four."
She frowned. "That floor doesn't exist in this thread."
Kael blinked. "What?"
Before either could speak again, something landed behind them.
A beast of steel and shadow, stitched together with dying screams. Its mouth was a speaker grill, repeating the word "OBEY" over and over like a broken god.
[ERROR ENTITY: DEEP SCRAP KING]
Class: Interference Construct
Floor: NONE
Origin: External Timeline
The woman cursed. "It followed me again."
Kael didn't hesitate. He surged forward.
The fight was chaos. The Scrap King's limbs reformed with every cut. Its body reshaped around its own wounds, voice looping commands in ancient tongues Kael almost recognized—from the ritual books of the cult.
"This thing... it uses failed invocations," Kael shouted.
"It's not part of your Tower," she replied. "It's from mine."
Her Tower.
Kael finally understood.
"You're from a different climb," he said between breaths. "Another Tower thread."
"Not just me," she replied grimly. "Dozens of us got pulled in. And something is hunting climbers between timelines."
Together, they overloaded the creature's feedback loop—Kael striking with [Flicker Counter], the woman slamming a heat spike into its throat.
The Scrap King screamed once.
Then collapsed into rusted silence.
"Name," Kael said again, more gently this time.
The woman sheathed her blade.
"Tirien. From Thread Nine-Five-Zeta. We were on Floor 71 when it collapsed. Something reached in and pulled us out."
"The Tower doesn't allow timeline crossing," Kael said. "That's… not supposed to be possible."
"It is now," Tirien replied.
"Your Tower's been breached. That thing you fought last floor—your other self? It wasn't just your past. It was his."
Kael narrowed his eyes.
"Whose?"
Tirien looked up. The sky flickered—shadows forming a symbol Kael hadn't seen in years.
The Architect's seal. Twisted. Inverted. Defiled.
"You're being watched," Tirien said. "Something's playing with your thread. Your decisions. Your resets."
She tossed him a fragment—glowing with fractured glyphs.
"This is from your cult. But not your version of it."
Kael stared.
The emblem carved into the shard?
His own face, burned into obsidian.
"A Kael," Tirien said quietly, "from another thread.One who reached the top."
"And decided to climb back down."