The Tower was still. But it was not silent. It breathed in a language older than sound. Deep inside its spiraling form, the very laws of existence hummed. Its resonance echoed not in stone, but in significance. The Fourth Floor had begun to awaken.
Aeon stood in the central sanctum of the embryonic layer, robes fluttering even in windless stillness. His eyes were closed, his mind turned inward.
This Floor was different.
The First had tested direction. The Second tested will. The Third, identity. But this Fourth... it asked the impossible: to choose, when all paths could be wrong.
He exhaled, and the chamber responded. Mirrors shimmered into being — not reflections, but alternatives. Aeon was building the Floor from the root of paradox.
"Choice," he whispered, not to the air, but to the very intent within the Tower. "Not preference. Not whim. But existential choice."
Six doors appeared before him. Each door gleamed faintly, shifting through hues of memory, of futures untaken, of selves undone.
To test the Floor, Aeon conjured karmic echoes — fragments of cultivators from across timelines. Not illusions, but interpretive shadows formed from probability and potential.
The first projection was a cultivator named Lan Zhu, a war survivor from the Western Reaches. In life, she had hesitated once, in one critical moment, and lost everyone. In this trial, the mirror showed her leading a rebellion against fate — triumph at the cost of becoming the very tyrant she once defied.
She chose the path.
The simulation played out in accelerated karmic time. Her empire rose. Millions were spared war. But she died alone, stabbed by a child who spoke her brother's name.
Lan Zhu's projection shattered as she exited the Floor. In the Tower's lower halls, her real-world counterpart collapsed in tears.
Another trial: Bai Ren, a genius alchemist whose every creation had served others. The mirror showed him alone, cultivating in seclusion, reaching the apex of alchemy — but never saving a single soul.
He chose not to take that path.
The Tower showed him his current life — surrounded by those who relied on him, none of whom truly understood the weight he bore. He failed the trial. But he smiled.
Aeon watched silently. Not to judge. But to learn.
The patterns were becoming clear. It was not about right or wrong. It was about knowing why one chose.
Aeon faced the mirror alone.
He had yet to formally enter. Yet the Tower, as always, knew its creator.
His reflection did not show merely himself. It showed permutations: the ruler, the recluse, the betrayer, the martyr. One version of him walked among mortals, unnamed, planting seeds of thought among street orphans. Another version conquered three continents before his thirtieth year. One version wept before a ruined Tower, the bodies of those he loved surrounding him. And one… stood alone, in darkness, his eyes open to stars no other being dared witness.
He looked at each version of himself.
"Will I become you?"
None answered.
Then the mirror flickered — and showed him his current self.
He looked older. Tired. But unbroken.
The Tower's intent whispered in his mind:
"You may choose a path. Or you may forge one. But only at cost."
He turned away. Not yet.
When he returned to the Foundation, Aeon found three ancestral shades awaiting him: Veiled Mirror, Rhal the Stern, and Silksong.
They had not come by summons. They came because the Tower's pulse reached even through their seclusion.
"This floor changes you," said Veiled Mirror. "Even in designing it, your karmic shape warps."
"You force others to confront what cultivators spend lifetimes avoiding," added Rhal. "Choice without certainty. That is not a trial. That is cruelty."
Aeon inclined his head. "Is it kinder to pretend we never choose? That paths are laid before us by fate, and we merely walk them?"
Silksong's voice, always soft, asked: "What of those who shatter under the weight of regret?"
Aeon responded, quietly: "They will break. But they will know themselves."
A long silence followed.
Then Rhal spoke again. "So be it. But if they rise stronger — their foundation must not be illusion. It must be earned."
He placed his spectral palm upon the Floor's core node.
The Tower trembled. The Floor became anchored. Now, choice would carry karmic weight.
From the east came Lady Vyra of the Mirrored Vale, her eyes veiled behind emotion-weave silk. She brought with her ten Thousand-Thread Spinners — illusion cultivators who worked not in deception, but in layered resonance.
"You demand truth from illusion," she said to Aeon.
"I demand clarity," he replied. "Even if it hurts."
She nodded. "Then give me memory. Not of events — but of feeling."
Aeon placed his hand upon the Floor's crystal heart. His memories poured forth. Standing in judgment as a child. Watching entire sects bow or break. Nights when no stars answered his questioning.
The Vale spinners began their craft.
They did not weave images. They wove mirrors of consequence. Each door became not a pathway, but a living tapestry of karmic momentum. To choose one was to reject another.
The pain would not be in walking the path — but in realizing what was forever left behind.
As the illusions were being sealed, an envoy from the Empire arrived. Not with weapons, but with curiosity.
A woman in gray, known only as Archivist Nell.
She did not bow. Nor did Aeon.
"May I observe a climber?" she asked.
"Only if you climb next," Aeon replied.
She smiled faintly. "I record. I do not contend."
"Then you record from within."
And so she did.
Nell entered the Fourth Floor. Her image shimmered on the outer scrying panel, watched by her distant superiors.
Inside, she faced a version of herself who accepted promotion into the Imperial Secrets Division — a role that meant abandoning her scholarly vows.
She chose not to enter any door.
The Tower did not punish her.
But when she emerged, she was weeping.
"I thought I had no regrets," she whispered. "But it was a lie I told to survive."
Aeon sat alone beneath the illusion-branches of the Tower's inner forest — a dreamscape designed to stabilize climbers post-trial.
He stared at the mirror that hovered just beyond reach.
It still showed him.
He did not enter. He would not — not yet. But he felt the pull. The subtle gravitational ache that the Tower now exerted on his soul.
He thought of the Fifth Floor.
"If choice defines path, then what follows? Regret? Redemption? Reversal?"
He did not know.
But the Tower would.
And it was time to begin.