The crooked tower was closer than it had ever seemed, yet the walk felt endless. Each step toward it dragged at Alex's body, as if the earth itself wanted to slow him. The green light pulsing at its peak sank into his bones, setting his teeth on edge with every throb.
When he finally reached its base, he froze.
The tower's surface wasn't stone at all. It was flesh. Layers of gray hide stretched and cracked, pulsing faintly like muscle. Veins wormed across the surface, glowing dimly with the same green light as the beacon above. He reached out without thinking—then pulled his hand back before touching it. The wall twitched where his fingers had hovered, like it had sensed him.
A door yawned open.
It didn't swing, didn't creak. It peeled apart, two flaps of flesh splitting wetly, strings of sinew snapping like tendons. Beyond was only darkness.
Alex's throat tightened. Every instinct screamed don't go in.
Then the System spoke.
[Trial of the Tower Initiated.]
[Objective: Enter.]
He clenched his fists. "Of course."
With a shaky breath, he stepped forward. The door sealed behind him like a mouth closing.
The air inside was worse than outside—wet, warm, stinking of rot. His footsteps squelched on floors that felt more like tissue than stone. The walls pulsed faintly, and sometimes he thought he heard a heartbeat, slow and patient, reverberating through the tower's core.
As he walked deeper, faint glyphs glowed along the walls, their light sickly green. They twisted if he looked at them too long, words he couldn't read but that his mind still tried to understand.
"You shouldn't stare at them."
Alex spun, fists up, light flickering faintly in his chest.
A figure stood at the far end of the corridor.
Not a monster. Not a twisted abomination.
A man.
Or something that looked like one.
He wore ragged black cloth stitched together from scraps, his face half-covered by a mask made of bone. One eye gleamed pale silver, the other hidden by shadow. His arms were scarred, skin mottled with black veins that pulsed faintly, like the tower's walls.
Alex's voice came out hoarse. "You can… talk?"
The masked man tilted his head. "So can you. That already makes you less useless than most who arrive here." His tone was flat, almost bored, but his eye studied Alex sharply. "You're fresh. I can smell it."
Alex swallowed. "Are you… human?"
The man chuckled, low and humorless. "Once. A long time ago." He stepped closer, his boots leaving no sound on the pulsing floor. "Now? I'm what the Game made me."
System text flickered faintly in Alex's vision:
[Entity Identified: ???]
[Status: Unknown.]
[Threat Level: ???]
No rank. No designation. Just question marks.
Alex tensed. "What do you want from me?"
The man stopped a few paces away, tilting his head as though considering. Then he said, "To see if you survive."
Silence stretched between them. The tower's heartbeat thudded faintly around them.
Finally, Alex asked, "What is this place? Why am I here?"
The man's eye gleamed. "You still think there's a reason."
"There has to be."
"There doesn't." The man leaned against the wall, unfazed as it shuddered beneath him. "The Game doesn't care about reason. It only cares about rules. Survive, and it lets you take another step. Fail, and it eats you. That's all."
Alex's fists clenched. "Then how long have you been here?"
The man didn't answer at first. When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter. "Long enough that I stopped counting. Long enough that I stopped asking why."
Something in his tone made Alex shiver.
The man pushed off the wall and began walking past him, toward the sealed flesh-door Alex had entered through. "The tower won't wait forever. If you want to live, climb."
"Wait!" Alex called. "Who are you?"
The man paused. Slowly, he looked back, his silver eye gleaming faintly in the dark.
"They call me Remnant."
Then he was gone.
Alex stood alone in the corridor again, his pulse racing. The System hadn't warned him of danger. The man hadn't attacked. But somehow, Alex felt more unsettled by that encounter than by the monsters outside.
"Survive," he muttered, forcing himself forward. "One step at a time."
The corridor spiraled upward, winding around the tower's core. The glyphs grew brighter as he climbed, and the heartbeat louder.
At last he reached another door.
[First Floor Trial.]
[Objective: Endure.]
The door peeled open with a wet sound. Alex stepped inside—
—and the room screamed.
The walls writhed with faces, hundreds of them, their mouths open in endless shrieks. The sound wasn't physical; it burrowed directly into his skull, threatening to split him apart. He dropped to his knees, clutching his head.
[Warning: Mental Stability Falling.]
[Activate Skill: Defiance?]
"Yes!" he gasped through clenched teeth.
Light flared inside him, pushing back the voices. The shrieks dimmed, though they still clawed at the edges of his mind.
And then the faces on the wall began to move.
They stretched outward, forming bodies that peeled themselves free, dripping black ichor. Dozens of pale, eyeless forms dropped onto the floor, screeching in unison.
Alex forced himself upright, fists clenched, light flickering around him.
The first floor of the tower had begun.