The Weight of the Grand Dao
Aeon's first breath within the Seventh Floor nearly shattered him.
It was as if the entire universe had been condensed into that air. It carried the weight of worlds, the song of creation, the memory of everything that had ever been born or died. Even before he took another step, Aeon felt his bones protest, his soul vibrate on the edge of collapse.
The world he had entered was vast, but it was a false vastness — there were no walls, no sky, no floor that his eyes could truly fix upon. Instead, a boundless plane of roiling, colorless light stretched to infinity, pulsing like a living heart. The light was the test: a fraction of the Grand Dao's quadrillionth power, unfiltered, unshaped.
How could anything survive this?
A single moment of doubt flared through his mind, unbidden, and that moment was nearly fatal. The light responded instantly, folding around his spirit and pressing down with the force of an entire age of existence, so absolute that Aeon felt every molecule of his flesh screaming to give up and scatter.
No.
His will surged, drawing upon everything — the illusions he had broken on the first floor, the choices he had faced on the second, the meanings he had forged on the third, the spiral of the fourth, the shattered possibilities of the sixth — all of it. Aeon's spirit refused to yield.
He forced his second breath.
It was enough to stabilize himself, barely. The world pulsed, acknowledging him with a faint murmur, like a giant stirring in its sleep.
Then came the voice.
It was not a voice that belonged to any creature, yet it spoke with a clarity that left no room for misunderstanding.
Child of existence, why do you stand here?
The question seemed to echo across eons.
Aeon's lips moved before he could truly consider the answer. "Because I must."
Must?
"Yes," he rasped. His throat burned, as if speaking itself defied the law of this realm. "The Tower demands that its creator stands at its summit."
And what is your summit?
Aeon closed his eyes, fighting the overwhelming energy flooding him. "To test the impossible. To build a path for those yet to come."
Impossible? There is no impossible, only truth.
The voice felt like it was peeling him open, revealing every weakness, every fragile thought. Memories flooded him — the early days of the Tower, when he had feared failing his ancestors; the faces of those who had believed in him, their trust a burden he had barely survived; the night he had cried alone, certain he could not finish what he started.
Do you think a mortal soul can measure the Grand Dao?
Aeon fell to one knee. The pressure doubled, crushing him so completely that his vision burst into a thousand white sparks.
But he refused to break.
He remembered Sayrin, who had climbed the Fifth Floor's Spiral Path and survived the echoes of her failures. He remembered the knights of the Empire, who had crumbled and stood again. And he remembered Grandmother Kirell's steady hand, the dream-bound resilience of someone who refused to be erased.
If they could stand, he could stand.
With a roar torn from the bottom of his spirit, Aeon forced himself upright, arms shaking, teeth clenched.
"I will measure it!" he shouted, the sound tearing blood from his throat. "Even if I stand for one heartbeat alone!"
The light reacted, folding closer, as if studying him.
Then stand, mortal.
Aeon began to walk.
Every step felt like pushing against the current of a black hole. There was no ground — each stride was taken through force of will alone, each movement stabilizing itself on the edge of complete annihilation.
He could see nothing except the light, infinite and depthless. It tried to strip him of every piece of self, pressing on each thought, each emotion, each memory.
One by one, the faces of his loved ones were torn from his mind, offered up to oblivion.
His mother's lullaby — devoured.
His father's last proud words — dissolved.
The elders of the sect who raised him — vanished.
It was as if the Grand Dao required perfect emptiness.
But Aeon refused to let go of everything. If he did, he would not be himself — and then who would climb the Tower?
He reached deeper, past memory, past even will, to a spark of something nameless. A part of him that did not exist for anyone else's sake. That small flame said:
I am Aeon.
It was enough.
He took another step.
The voice returned, softer now, curious:
Why cling to name and form? They are illusions.
"Because they are my illusions," Aeon answered, voice raw. "And I choose them."
Choice. Illusion. There is no difference.
"There is. One is given. One is claimed."
The pressure shifted, almost… respectful?
Then claim your path, Aeon.
The world seemed to fracture for a moment. Space itself twisted, and suddenly a corridor of white-gold light formed before him, vast as a sun yet focused as a single blade.
This was the true trial, he realized.
The corridor was a manifestation of the Grand Dao's judgment. If he could cross it, he would have proven his right to stand among its truths — even for a single breath.
He stepped forward, and the corridor met him with a force that nearly cored out his soul.
Aeon screamed, body convulsing as his organs threatened to rupture under the weight of primal existence. His bones groaned, small cracks racing down his ribs, his blood turning to pure light.
I will not fail, he told himself, I will not fail!
Each step took centuries. Each breath was a cosmos being born and dying inside his lungs.
Yet somehow, Aeon kept moving.
He had no sense of time. There was no measure in this place — only the raw equation of will versus the universe.
One moment, he was nearly gone, mind fading into dust.
The next, he burned hotter than a star, recapturing that last shred of identity.
At times he hallucinated his father walking beside him, praising him. Other times he saw the Tower collapse behind him, all its floors turned to rubble because he had dared reach too high.
These illusions were temptations, seeded by the Grand Dao itself, giving him reasons to stop, to rest, to abandon.
But Aeon refused.
"I will walk," he croaked, lips blistered. "Until I reach the end."
There is no end.
"Then I will walk forever!"
The corridor pulsed, acknowledging him with a brilliance that should have erased all matter, but instead left him whole. It was as if the Dao, in that instant, granted him permission to continue.
At last, Aeon saw it:
A single platform of stillness, an island in the infinity of light, where no pressure weighed on him.
It waited like a throne, carved of all that was left after reality had been scoured away.
Aeon stumbled forward, fell to his knees upon it, chest heaving, mind reeling.
Then bear witness, the voice said, almost gently.
And in that moment, the Grand Dao showed him its truth.
Aeon's eyes went wide.
He saw time not as a line, but as a garden, where every branch, every leaf, was a choice. He saw every cultivator's spark of will as a flame dancing between cause and effect. He saw the Dao not as a tyrant, but as a vast, unending harmony, letting all things grow, even if they grew twisted.
He understood, then, why the Tower had been necessary. Why every floor had broken him, rebuilt him, tested every layer of who he was.
So that he could stand here, he realized, and survive seeing this.
Tears burned down his cheeks, tears of horror and awe.
He had never felt so small — or so impossibly alive.
The Grand Dao's fraction began to recede, withdrawing like the tide.
Aeon felt the pressure lift, as if a mountain had stepped away from his shoulders. The corridor dissolved.
He lay there, breathing like a newborn.
Alive.
Victorious