Amid a desecrated cemetery—where every tomb had been torn open and left to rot—a man writhed upon the ground. His body, scarcely human anymore.
Blisters consumed his flesh, festering and swollen, as he clawed at himself in frenzied desperation—tearing skin from bone, heedless of the agony it brought. Blood and decay mingled beneath his nails as he collapsed to his knees, trembling, weeping without restraint.
It was Mathurin.
"Please… heal me… save me…" he choked, his voice breaking under the weight of his suffering. "Keep the magic if you want—only free me from this torment!"
Before him stood a young girl, clad in white, an infant cradled in her arms. Eros.
"What leads you to believe I would grant such mercy?" she asked, her tone laced with faint amusement.
"Aren't you… the goddess of love…?" Mathurin gasped, his body convulsing as pain tore through him.
Eros smiled. Then she laughed. A loud, echoing sound that lingered far too long—until, without warning, it ceased. Her expression fell into perfect stillness.
The cloth draped over the infant slipped from her arms. What it revealed was no child.
Only a small, brittle skeleton—lifeless, empty.
A suffocating presence engulfed the space. The air itself seemed to recoil, thick with something ancient and malevolent. Mathurin's breath caught in his throat as fear eclipsed even his suffering.
Then she spoke.
"My name is lust… impatience… cruelty… pride… selfishness… wrath… mischief… distrust… despair… surrender…"
Her voice deepened—no longer human, but something far older, far darker.
"Do not bind me to something as trivial… as love."
Mathurin remained on his knees, broken.
The goddess in whom he had placed boundless faith… was nothing but a cruel illusion.
And as though the despair she had cast upon him were not enough, she unleashed her viper's tongue again, each word dripping with venom.
"Your suffering bears the mark of a curse," Eros said coldly. "Your very presence offends me. To stand before me in such a state is sacrilege… an ill omen that can be cleansed only by your death. Begone, filth!"
At her decree, flames burst from the earth and coiled around him, tightening like living chains before searing into his flesh. What began as mere heat turned, in the span of a breath, into unbearable agony as the fire clung to him, spreading without mercy and devouring him limb by limb.
Mathurin screamed, his body writhing as his skin blackened and split, the flames feeding relentlessly while his strength gave way beneath the pain. Tears streamed down his face, only to vanish in hissing vapour before they could fall, as though even his sorrow was denied existence.
"I… wish I had never been born…" He wept inwardly.
The fire swallowed his voice, his breath, and at last his being, leaving nothing behind but ash scattered upon the graveyard.
Eros extended her hand.
His soul, wrenched free, was drawn into her palm—where she devoured it without hesitation, her tongue passing lightly over her lips in quiet satisfaction.
"Next." Her gaze drifted into the void, dark with anticipation.
***
In a domain that reflected the cosmos, Taro Maro cowered in silence, folding into himself like a dying star collapsing inward. His frail body weighed down not by age alone, but by a fear that had long since hollowed him from within. Death had never been a distant thought to him—it lingered behind every breath, every heartbeat, every fleeting moment of life he clung to. A sickening thanatophobia.
And yet, he had come, not for power, nor ambition, but for deliverance.
When Eros appeared before him, radiant and serene, he collapsed without hesitation, his voice trembling beneath the weight of a lifetime of dread.
"Take it away… please… this fear… or grant me eternity… anything, so long as I do not have to face the end…"
Eros regarded him in silence, her gaze neither cruel nor kind, but distant and measuring.
"To be freed from fear," she said at last, her voice soft as a fading breath, "one must face it."
Hope ignited within him—a fragile, desperate hope.
"Yes… Yes, I can do that… I must…" he muttered, clinging to her words as though they were salvation itself.
And so, she granted him exactly what he sought.
The world around him unravelled.
Light vanished, and sound followed, until even the sensation of his own body began to fade, as though existence itself were slipping through his grasp.
There was no ground beneath his feet, no sky above his head—no presence, no meaning.
Only an endless, suffocating void, where nothing ever remained.
"I… I'm still alive… aren't I…?" his voice trembled, though even he could no longer tell if he had spoken.
No answer came. No echo. No proof that he existed at all.
Panic took hold—then terror, then something far worse.
The realisation that this absence, this oblivion, was what awaited him beyond death.
"No… no, I don't want this… I don't want this—!"
His thoughts spiralled, breaking apart under the weight of a fear far greater than death itself: to vanish without trace, without memory, without meaning.
His heart convulsed violently within his chest.
Once. Twice. And then—it gave out.
The void collapsed as the illusion shattered.
Taro Maro's body fell lifeless, suspended within the hollow vastness, his eyes wide open, his expression forever frozen between disbelief and terror.
Eros looked down upon him without the slightest compassion.
For in seeking to escape death… he had been led straight into its most merciless truth.
***
Not all who entered the Tower sought power. Some came only to escape the lives that had long since broken them.
Though separated within the depths of the Tower, June and Manir carried the same burden—chains that had bound them far before they ever stepped into this place. The cruelty of Falmianberry slavery had stripped them of dignity, of future, of even the faintest hope. Magic was never their desire.
Freedom was.
And so, in different corners of that forsaken domain, they each made the same choice.
"If my soul is the price… then let it be paid."
There was no deception awaiting them. No cruel illusion to mock their resolve. When Eros appeared, she did not test them, nor did she twist their desire into torment. She looked upon them and understood.
"Very well."
What answered them was neither light nor darkness, but something gentler—an end devoid of suffering. Their bodies slowly gave way, their breaths fading without struggle, as though they had merely fallen into a long-awaited rest.
And though they died alone…
They died with the same quiet peace.
***
Levor stood at the height of his dominion. Before him stretched a kingdom without limit, its lands vast and obedient, its people kneeling in reverence to his name. Gold adorned every structure, every path, every throne upon which he sat as its undisputed ruler. Around him gathered beauty without end—voices soft, hands gentle, bodies warm—each fulfilling the desires he had long nurtured in silence.
At last, the world had bent to him. At last, he had become what he believed he was destined to be. And so, he indulged without restraint, losing himself in the endless affirmation of his own grandeur, blind to all that lay beyond his constructed paradise.
But something stirred beneath the surface, a subtle unease that he could not name. A tension beneath his skin, distant at first, almost imperceptible, growing with a slow, insidious patience. He ignored it, for a king has no reason to doubt his throne.
The discomfort deepened. Spread. Became hungry—though not his own. Somewhere beyond the gilded walls, in the unyielding reality of the Tower, his body had long been betrayed. Carnivorous growths, patient and precise, rooted themselves within him, feasting silently, consuming flesh and bone with unrelenting appetite.
A twinge of pain, a ripple of pressure—then another, and another—until his body convulsed beneath the throne of his mind's fantasy. He felt it, yet could not reconcile it with the perfection around him. The hands that stroked him, the whispers that called his name, the warmth that pressed against him—all of it persisted. The world remained beautiful, limitless, indulgent.
And still the hunger spread, gnawing, tearing, unravelling the very fabric of his being. His chest collapsed. His legs gave way. Fingers, arms, a torso, bone and sinew—each fell away piece by piece while his mind floated atop a throne of illusions, believing itself untouched.
He smiled, a hollow, unwavering smile, and murmured, "I am king…"
Then, as the last vestiges of flesh and bone gave way, the truth struck: none of it had ever been real. The kingdom, the adoration, the pleasures—it had been a cruel illusion. His mind had been enslaved, his desires used against him, while in reality, he had been consumed from within by the patient, unyielding growths of the Tower. All that remained was the echo of a crown that had never existed.
***
Eliane and Eliakim did not share the same space within the Tower, yet what bound them went far beyond distance. From the moment they stepped into that domain, the resonance of their twin souls stirred something ancient within its depths—a harmony rarely found and never wasted.
In the forbidden doctrines of occultism, such a bond was not merely sacred—it was coveted. Two lives intertwined at the level of essence itself, their existence forming a perfect convergence, an offering far too valuable to be discarded in fleeting consumption.
Eros recognised it without hesitation.
And so, while others were tested, broken, or devoured, the twins were claimed differently.
Time itself seemed to falter around them.
Their movements slowed, their thoughts suspended at the edge of awareness, as a faint, translucent veil enclosed their bodies. Neither pain nor relief reached them—only a stillness that defied understanding, as though they had been removed from the flow of existence itself.
Not granted death. Not granted mercy.
But preserved. For a purpose yet to come.
***
Two hours later, still within the Tower of Affliction—
Amid the colossal ruins of shattered deities, Leir sat in stillness, as though carved from the very stone around him. Sweat traced his form, yet he remained unmoved—detached from the unseen forces that stirred within that forsaken place.
The fragment upon which he meditated was no ordinary ruin.
It was the severed head of Athena.
Not far from him, another presence lingered.
Eros sat in quiet observation, reclining upon Ares's fallen head, her gaze fixed upon him with patient intrigue.
At last, Leir exhaled.
Slowly, he rose to his feet, his expression composed, his eyes carrying a quiet focus—a gesture that drew a flicker of interest from the fallen goddess.
"So, he endures… untouched by my illusions. What a rare specimen."