The Measure of the Impossible
The Tower had grown silent in a way that made every breeze feel sharp, every footstep resound like a bell struck in empty halls. Where once hopeful climbers and Imperial observers clustered close, the air now seemed to resist them, warning them away.
For days after Aeon's triumph over the Loom of Broken Futures, no one dared approach the Tower. Rumors said its walls had begun to shimmer with something alien — as if, beyond a certain height, the Tower no longer belonged entirely to the realm of human effort, but had begun brushing against something vast and unnameable.
Aeon alone remained at the Tower's heart, studying the subtle change.
He could sense it even in the base stones: a strange pulse, like a heartbeat that was not his own, vibrating with power drawn from beyond any ordinary cultivation. It felt like standing at the edge of a cosmic ocean, hearing the crash of impossibly large waves.
He turned to Grandmother Kirell, who had remained faithfully beside him.
"It's waking," he murmured.
"The Tower?" she asked.
"No," Aeon said, voice steady. "The Grand Dao is stirring. Because the Seventh will call to it."
She stilled.
"You would invite that power here?" she whispered, half in dread, half in awe.
Aeon nodded once. "The Seventh Floor cannot be climbed by will alone. It must be proven against the Dao itself."
Kirell inhaled slowly, as if drawing in lifetimes of patience. "And if you fail?"
"Then the Tower ends," Aeon said, unflinching. "Everything I have built will become a monument to hubris."
The silence rang cold.
But it must be done, Aeon told himself. The Tower had tested memory, meaning, choice, failure, even fate itself. There was nothing left but the final question: Can a cultivator's will measure up to the primordial truth of the world itself?
That was the Seventh Floor's purpose.
He stepped forward and placed his palm upon the pillar at the Tower's threshold. Symbols writhed to greet him, almost wary, almost alive. He fed them a sliver of his soul, so that the Tower could anchor his vision.
"Record this," he commanded it.
He began to speak aloud, voice ringing with a certainty no hesitation could touch:
"The Seventh Floor shall be the Apex of Eternity. A realm beyond realms, where the climber must stand before the echo of the Grand Dao itself. Here, they will confront a fraction — a sliver so small it cannot even be measured — yet that sliver will contain the truth of existence, and demand the climber's will to answer it."
The Tower quivered, as if understanding.
"There shall be no illusions on this floor," Aeon continued, voice growing stronger with each phrase. "No memory to reshape. No choice to correct. Only the absolute pressure of the Dao, crushing every impurity of spirit, every weak thought, every hidden fear."
It was not a test of illusions. It was not a mirror. It was the blade itself.
Kirell watched him with a gaze both proud and pitying. "No one has ever built such a trial," she murmured.
Aeon looked at her, a flicker of weary determination in his eyes. "Then let me be the first."
Three days later, the Tower's upper levels began to transform.
Every glyph, every flowing channel of essence, turned glassy and vast, reflecting not merely mortal cultivation but something limitless. Those who dared look upon the new floor felt their hearts seize, as if seeing the night sky without a single star — endless, empty, overwhelming.
A faint voice, unbidden, whispered in every onlooker's mind:
Abandon hope.
But Aeon would not abandon it.
He stood before the newly formed Seventh Floor's threshold, robes fluttering in a sudden, cosmic wind. The floor was not yet stable, because its heart was still missing one thing — a climber who could face it and live.
That climber would be him.
He closed his eyes, centering himself, feeling his will gather like a blade being drawn. All the lessons of the Tower's previous floors flowed through him — from the illusions of identity on the first, to the spiral of remembrance, to the Loom's fractured futures. Each had burned away a weakness.
Now, he would measure himself against the impossible.
His spirit whispered:
If you do not stand now, no one will.
Aeon stepped forward.
The threshold of the Seventh Floor yawned open, darkness waiting beyond, crackling with a pressure that felt older than the mountains, older than the sky.
As his foot crossed over, the world seemed to tilt, to fall away.
He was swallowed by the Apex of Eternity