Scene 1
"Good," I said. "It's progress, even if it's only baby steps."
Baam's group stumbled into the corridor like survivors who didn't understand why they were still alive. The two kids were throwing up into the cracks between stone tiles. The adults wore disgust like armor—like nausea was weakness instead of the Tower collecting its fee.
"What did you expect?" I asked, looking down at them. "That the ride with Baam would be graceful?"
A few flinched at the name.
"Sorry to break it to you, but all of you signed on to be enemies of the Ten Families the second you passed a test together."
The average ones lowered their eyes. Quiet acceptance.
The talented ones exchanged glances—fast, calculating—between Baam and the weak links. Prince didn't even hide the math. Miseng looked worse than sick. She looked like she wanted permission to disappear.
I looked directly at Baam.
"Baam. This is also your responsibility." I let the words sit on his shoulders. "Do you want to drag people across the line even if they die… or will you start making harsh choices?"
He opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
No doubt remembering Crow's words: grow up, or be left behind.
Wangnan stood a half-step behind the group like he wanted to look like a leader without standing where leaders stand. His posture tried to be brave. His eyes tried to be kind.
But kindness didn't keep a group alive.
Even Akraptor offered more value under pressure—angles, solutions, a spine made of experience—while Wangnan clung to hope like it was a weapon.
Teddy was the only one here worth training.
Teddy's loyalty was simple.
The Ten Families girl was not.
Her loyalty was entangled with higher-floor politics—contracts and names that would come due later. The kind of debt that didn't care if you were a "good person."
And Wangnan… trying his best to hide his lineage to Zahard, the way Karaka did. Same hunger. Same desire to destroy their father. Different mask.
"Karaka is still coming after you," I said. "So if you don't want these people to fall early, you'll need to make a choice concerning your morality."
Baam's eyes deepened at the silent fork I'd shoved into his hands.
"Either put some enemies down for good," I continued, "or risk your team."
I turned and left them there with the blood on their sleeves and the stink of fear in their hair.
Hwa Ryun had already turned the board into a death match.
My job was simpler.
Make sure Baam understood that surviving was not the same thing as staying clean.
Scene 1.5 — Hwa Ryun (After the death-match)
Hwa Ryun didn't look at the blood.
She looked at Baam.
Like blood was just… weather.
"Stand up," she said.
Baam's fingers twitched like he didn't know if he was allowed to.
"The path doesn't wait for you to feel better," she added—tone flat. Not cruel. Just certain.
Prince swallowed hard. Miseng looked like she might vomit again. Even the older ones kept glancing around like they expected the dead to get back up and complain.
Baam finally lifted his head.
"Hwa Ryun… that test—"
"It wasn't a test," she cut in.
"It was a door. And you walked through it."
Baam's jaw tightened. "Those were Regulars. They didn't—"
"They didn't know," she agreed instantly. "That's why it worked."
Her eye moved—just once—toward the stains on their sleeves.
"Now you understand something important," she said. "You can be gentle and still cause death."
Baam tried to speak again.
She didn't let him.
"You want me to tell you what to do next," Hwa Ryun said. "You want the last word. The one that makes it simple."
Her voice softened by half a degree—enough to feel like mercy, but not enough to be comfort.
"I don't give that word."
Baam stared.
Hwa Ryun continued anyway, because she always did—right up to the cliff.
"Karaka is coming," she said. "And the path splits."
She held up two fingers.
"One road keeps everyone close. You'll feel better. You'll sleep at night."
Her second finger rose.
"The other road keeps them alive."
A pause.
Baam's throat bobbed.
"And the cost?" he asked.
Hwa Ryun smiled a little, like he finally asked the correct question.
"The cost is you."
He waited for her to say it.
Kill.
Abandon.
Choose.
She didn't.
Instead, she tilted her head and used the one name that made the whole room go quiet.
"Lord Crow has stayed silent as long as you're breathing," she said.
"And you should be grateful."
Prince stiffened. Someone actually took a step back.
Baam's eyes narrowed. "What does that mean?"
"It means," Hwa Ryun replied, "that if you stop moving… the path that protects you stops existing."
She leaned closer—close enough that Baam could see there was no hatred in her. Only direction.
"I can show you the fork," she said. "I can tell you what dies on each road."
Then she pulled back.
"But I will not choose who you become."
She turned her gaze to the others—brief, measuring.
"Clean up," she said, like it was just procedure.
Then, to Baam again, quieter:
"Walk."
Scene 2 — The Fixer Guide (Crow)
Placing the robe over Crow's shoulders as he exited the last pool, I watched the final traces of heat roll off him like mist.
His body no longer shifted from flesh to fire.
Now… he did the opposite.
He forced the fire into flesh—pressed it down, sealed it in—like a smith hammering molten truth into a shape the Tower could tolerate.
And the moment he finished—
the shinsoo sea signature beneath this sector dropped out of the system.
Not "thinned."
Not "stirred."
Zeroed.
This wasn't my floor.
But I wasn't reading it like an owner.
I was reading it through the Tower's internal channels—the layers that only answer when something threatens to become a bug.
That wasn't path-sight.
That wasn't a Red Witch's "route."
It was system telemetry.
I am his Guide.
Just… not the kind that walks with a lantern and pretends she's only showing doors.
I was granted quasi authority to look into the Tower's moving parts—a fixer when the machine coughs, a firewall when an anomaly tries to spread.
Crow stood in the steam like a solved problem that still frightened the people who loved math.
I looked deeper—past the robe, past the "normal" he pretended to be.
His back was a map.
Scars made into art.
Art made to hide scars.
A skull sat high behind his hairline, crowned with flame-like horns—hidden where most eyes would never linger.
Across the top of his shoulder blades, the word ROCKS had been burned into him like a banner that refused to die.
Below it, twin dragons bisected down his spine—locked in permanent struggle.
And between them, a bird of fire danced through their war like it was mocking both sides.
Every line had purpose.
Every "design" covered a wound.
"Are you going to give me my clothes," Crow said, voice flat, "or just stare at my back?"
I paused—caught for a fraction of a heartbeat.
His eyes were still gold… but dulled. Heavy. Like something bright had bled into something older.
I adjusted the robe anyway. Re-centered myself.
"Why keep the scars you hide?" I asked—understanding that even if I knew his inner details, it wouldn't change the Tower's decision to tolerate him as long as it could file this as progress.
Crow's mouth twitched, almost a smile.
"Because I wasn't the one who put that much detail into covering each one," he said. "In my previous form, regrowing fresh skin would've been easy. Like a mythical beast shedding history."
He rolled his shoulders once, like memory lived between muscle and bone.
"But to the younger me… they were marks that demanded revenge."
A quiet breath.
"Even after," he continued, "they became my mark of progress. From a scared, memoryless boy… to a beast of the seas among a ship of monsters who could kill me at any moment."
Nostalgia flickered—fond, dangerous, real.
"And this name?" He tapped his chest lightly. "Crow is just what this floor can handle. A mask-name. A courtesy."
His eyes sharpened.
"My name is Ras."
He said it like he was reminding himself more than me.
"Maybe it's time to let go of attachments that can't follow me," he added, quieter. "Once my master closes my connection to this cycle… there's no walking back through the same door."
I measured him carefully.
"So you remember," I said. "You didn't arrive empty."
Crow didn't answer that directly.
He lifted one hand.
His aura pulsed—clean, refined, unnervingly controlled—and the system flinched. Not alarms. Not warnings.
The kind of silent recalculation the Tower does when it realizes something doesn't fit its categories.
Then he forced it down.
Compressed it.
Fed it into his blade.
The weapon answered from the cavern entrance like a starving thing finally hearing its owner breathe.
It flew into his palm—
and a soul-like scream rang out through the metal as if the weapon hated being owned.
"Where I come from," Ras said, voice flat, "weapons don't negotiate. Not when we use them. Not how."
His grip tightened.
"And you?" He tilted the blade like he was accusing it. "You're a double-edged sword waiting for a chance to drink my Sea."
I felt it then—faint but undeniable.
Not emotion.
A function.
Devour. Convert. Grow.
"So," he continued, and something primal flashed behind his eyes—something the reforging reignited, "let's see if you can handle it first."
The blade began to glow.
Crimson bled along its edge, and crimson flames danced like they were learning how to bite.
He nodded once in satisfaction.
"I'll name you Crimson Sun," he said.
A name wasn't decoration.
A name was an anchor.
A law.
He slid it back into its scabbard and turned toward the exit like he hadn't just rewritten a section of the Tower by existing inside it.
I followed, forcing composure back into place.
"The Tower has declared your next evaluation a cumulative test leading into the Twentieth Floor," I said. "Restrictions: only shinsoo-enhanced movement and shinsoo-based attacks."
Ras glanced back at me, eye to eye.
Then he chuckled.
"That's boring," he said. "What's it testing—whether I can keep shinsoo running at all times?"
He laughed once, like the Tower had told him to breathe.
"I've already been a grandmaster in martial arts."
He turned and walked.
And that's when the trail revealed itself.
Each step he took didn't just disturb shinsoo—
it codified it.
A bloom of heat and light pressed into the corridor behind him, refusing to dissipate, holding shape as if the Tower had been forced to accept a new definition.
First rose the dragons—long and patient, coiling through the air without touching stone, their scales made of ember-gold plates that clicked like blades being sharpened.
Then the birds of fire—fierce and numerous—each wingbeat tearing through the air and leaving scorch-sigils behind like scripture written by war.
Behind them marched demons made of flame. Not caricatures. Real war-shapes. Fire given teeth. Faces that never finished rendering because the only feature they needed was hunger.
And then—worse—the angels of fire.
Not holy.
Not comforting.
Angels with too many wings and too many eyes, halos that weren't circles but rotating rings of blades. Radiance that felt like judgment and punishment wearing the same smile.
Last came nightmares—beastlike wrongness built from warped sunlight. Wolves, bulls, crawling insects the size of regret—each one shaped from a different fear, each one prowling not for prey but for permission.
None of them were illusions.
None of them were summons.
They were laws—temporary, growing laws—each one a separate rule of madness and war written into the wake of his footsteps.
A dragon-law that promised conquest.
A bird-law that promised pursuit.
A demon-law that promised devouring.
An angel-law that promised correction.
A nightmare-law that promised collapse.
The Tower tried to read them and failed. The system flickered—quiet recalculation, silent containment protocols—and still the parade kept forming, as if the Tower had no choice but to process what it couldn't categorize.
Ras didn't look back.
He didn't need to.
He was walking forward, and the world behind him was learning what that meant.
And I—his Guide, his fixer, his firewall—followed at a measured distance, because my job wasn't to ask if he should exist.
My job was to make sure the Tower survived the fact that he did.