The low, constant roar of a hundred separate conversations in the Tower's great hall died not with a shout, but by sinking into the stone. The pressure in the air changed, grew dense and still. In the center of the wide, empty platform, a man stood. He hadn't walked there. One moment the space was empty, the next he occupied it, as if he had always been part of the floor's pattern. He was old, his robe a simple, unadorned grey that seemed to drink the hall's ambient light. His face was a landscape of quiet erosion, and his eyes held the weight of countless ascents and failures witnessed from this very spot.
Lorel felt the silence settle over her skin like fine dust. Her gaze, which had been drifting through the crowd since she entered, had already found its anchor. Gen. He stood with Liang and Madame Su, his profile familiar against the strange, glowing walls. She saw the exact moment his scanning eyes passed over her—the sudden freeze, the widening, a flicker of something unreadable before his head turned away, sharp and final, as if he'd seen a distraction he had no time for.
The hollow feeling under her ribs, the one she'd carried since Stonewatch, yawned a little wider. *He saw me. And he looked away.* The old, familiar script wrote itself in her mind. *He still sees the girl from the palace. The quiet one, the obligation. Maybe he thinks the year has only made me more of a stranger. Perhaps he believes I've grown too old waiting in his shadow.* She let the ache sit for a moment, a cold, familiar stone. Then, with the discipline beaten into her by General Mearl, she placed it aside. It didn't matter. The Tower was here. Its trials were real. This was the ground she would claim for herself, not a perch he might deign to notice.
Beside her, a sunbeam of noise cut through the solemnity. Juxian gestured enthusiastically, his clay jar a comforting, familiar weight against his chest. "—can you feel it? The spiritual pressure in this stone! It's not a building, it's a living conduit! Pulling the world's energy upward, like a great tree drinking from a hidden river! And the auras gathering here… so many distinct melodies all trying to become the same thunderous chord! It's magnificent!"
His words were a friendly, impassable wall. How did one ask a waterfall to be quiet? She had no practice in dismissing such genuine, exuberant kindness. She stood trapped in a bubble of his making, twenty paces from Gen feeling like a league.
A solid presence shifted closer. Chubbs cleared his throat, not a polite cough, but the low, warning scrape of a stone being dragged.
"A moment of your boundless insight, esteemed brother Juxian," Chubbs said, his voice a respectful rumble that held an undercurrent of 'time to move along.' He inclined his head, his expression the picture of grave concern. "My lady requires a span of clear air to steady her spirit before the great undertaking. Grand observations and deep currents are for contemplation *after* the climb, when a cultivator's mind isn't about to be poured into the forge. You understand—the right focus before a job is half the work done."
Juxian blinked, then his face broke into a smile of pure understanding. "Ah! Of course! My apologies, I am like a leaf caught in the wind of my own curiosity!" He gave Lorel a cheerful, apologetic bow and drifted back, his keen eyes already snagging on the intricate carvings of the far wall.
Lorel released a breath she hadn't known she was holding, her shoulders dropping a fraction. She gave Chubbs a look of profound gratitude.
"Think nothing of it, my lady," he murmured, puffing his chest out just a touch. "Just… managing the field. An old hand knows when the atmosphere needs adjusting."
The elder on the platform spoke. His voice was dry, like pages turning in a forgotten tomb, quiet yet layered beneath the silence, impossible to ignore.
"You are here because you seek a place on the expedition. The expedition to trace the final steps of the legend and reclaim what was lost."
A different kind of energy shot through the hall. Not the hushed awe for a celestial treasure, but the sharp, eager buzz of hunters catching a scent. Shoulders squared with greed as much as determination. Eyes glittered with the hard light of ambition, not transcendence. They were here for the Golden Touch—the greatest thief in history, whose final, unfound treasure was a siren's call to anyone who believed themselves clever or strong enough to claim it.
Lorel felt the shift. This was the pull that had drawn Baili, that had forced their trials in Stonewatch. This tangible, worldly prize. Her own secret goal—to become someone undeniable—felt both more pure and more lonely amidst this hunger.
"The Tower of Wonder," the elder continued, his gaze a slow sweep that felt like a physical touch on each of them, "is your threshold. To be considered for the expedition, you must pass the twenty-fifth floor. To be chosen, you must reach the forty-fifth." He let the numbers hang in the air, heavy as millstones.
The silence broke into a storm of hissed calculations and agitated whispers.
"The forty-fifth?" a weathered cultivator in practical leathers barked, his voice scarred from shouting orders. "On a first climb? That's… that's like being told to go out and match wits with the Golden Touch himself at the height of his craft! The man who fooled formations and walked through walls!"
Nervous agreement rippled. "The Tower's tricks are never the same," a woman with sharp, calculating eyes added. "One team faces a vault of impossible locks. Another finds a maze of shifting mirrors. Another stumbles into a gauntlet of traps sprung by ghosts. To demand the forty-fifth… they aren't picking treasure hunters. They're winnowing for survivors."
A voice cut through the doubt, cold and clean as a shard of glacier ice. "Only the weak fear a lock they have not yet picked."
Every head turned. Baili stood apart, a space of empty floor around him as if his aura of absolute certainty repelled others. He didn't address the complainers. He looked at the elder, his expression one of utter, bored conviction. "I will be the first to cross your line. And I will find the path trivial."
A wave of muttered curses and insults washed toward him. "Arrogant little lordling!" "Thinks his bloodline is a skeleton key!" But the words fell short; no one moved to close the empty space. The air around him was perceptibly colder, thinner.
Lorel shook her head from the side, a familiar mix of exasperation and a trace of fondness touching her eyes. "That's my brother," she said softly to Chubbs.
Chubbs had been staring at Baili, his earlier dinner-table bravado visibly evaporating. Lorel nudged him with an elbow. "Well? Still planning to teach him a lesson with those famous fists of yours?"
Chubbs's eyes darted from Baili's icy profile to Lorel's amused face and back. He scratched the back of his head vigorously, his expression caught between terror and a desperate need to save face. "Well. You see. The… the lay of the land has shifted," he declared, puffing out his chest just a little. "Direct frontal engagement at this… particular moment… it lacks finesse! A true master of the craft knows that triumph can be achieved through… superior positioning! And climbing! We'll beat him by getting to the top first. That's the real lesson. A lesson in altitude."
Lorel's laugh was a soft, bright sound. "Chubbs! So you're not going to fight him?"
"I didn't say that!" he said, his voice rising an octave in defensive panic. "I said the method requires a fresh approach! It's a… a two-part maneuver! Part one is the climb! Part two is… to be determined based on how part one goes!" He crossed his arms, nodding firmly as if he'd just laid out brilliant, irrefutable logic.
Lorel just shook her head, her smile widening. "You're impossible."
"I'm adaptable!" he corrected, finally cracking a relieved grin now that the subject seemed to be moving on. "It's my finest quality. That, and my impeccable taste in employers."
Their shared moment faded as the elder's dry voice scraped the hall clean of sound once more.
"When you are ready, step onto the platform. But mark this: injury within the Tower is common. Death is frequent." He let the word lie there, cold and final. "Your name, your lineage, the crest on your robe—they are ink and thread inside. They will not stop a falling spire or a guardian's fang. The weak are crushed by the weight of their own ambition or the strength of their rivals. If you harbor doubt, confer with it now. Think twice. Think five times. The Tower measures only what you are in the moment of trial, not what you might become."
A profound, ringing silence followed. The glowing white walls seemed to press inward. The lofty, shadowed ceiling felt like a lid.
Then, movement.
Two figures broke from the crowd not with a flashy technique, but with the clean, decisive momentum of a shared decision. Gen and Liang. They reached the platform's edge and jumped as one, landing with twin, solid *thumps* on the luminous surface.
The sound was a crack in the silence. Every eye in the hall snapped to them, sharpening with focus, with challenge. They had just made themselves the first target.
Gen stood straight, facing the sea of faces, that old, challenging grin on his face—a grin that looked a little too tight at the corners, a performance for an audience he now needed to convince. "The forty-fifth floor!" he called out, his voice straining for its old, effortless confidence. "Don't get lost on the way up!"
Beside him, Liang nodded once, his face grave. "Together."
A wave of derisive laughter and scornful shouts answered them. "The fallen prince and his shadow!" "Let's see how far that name carries you now!" "The Tower will scrape that arrogance off you like old mud!"
Baili didn't laugh. A faint, icy puff of breath escaped him. He stepped onto the platform, not with a jump, but with a step, as if mounting the first stair of a staircase only he could see.
Behind him, Ning moved. The plain cloth over his eyes didn't shift. He didn't touch the hilt of the sword on his back. He simply walked forward, a figure of pure, silent intent, his passage through the crowd as smooth and inevitable as a shadow at noon. He offered no boast. His purpose was in his movement, absolute and serene.
Juxian, with a final, cheerful nod to the cosmos, bounded forward, his jar clinking softly. "Well! The current calls!" he chimed, and hopped lightly onto the platform.
Lorel's eyes were on Gen. He stood there, taking the crowd's jeers on that stubborn, set jaw of his. The cold disappointment in her chest thawed, warmed by a reluctant, undeniable respect. *He's still standing. He hasn't bent. The weight hasn't broken him.* She touched the hidden letter through her robe, a talisman of her own path. *My turn.*
She glanced at Chubbs. He met her look, all street-smart wariness gone, replaced by a steadfast, solid loyalty. He gave her a firm nod. *I'm with you.*
Together, they stepped forward and climbed onto the glowing platform.
Their movement broke the last hesitation. A current surged through the hall. Young men and women, faces alight with a fear they were determined to outrun, with a hunger that overpowered caution, began to stream forward. The elder's warning echoed, but it was drowned under the drumbeat of rushing feet, the gasp of collective breath, the wild, brazen call of the climb itself. Youth, in all its terrifying, glorious hunger, poured onto the arena, ready to be tested.