Alec knelt beside the dying man.

  “We aren’t going to kill you,” Alec said. “But we aren’t going to save you either. We don’t have the resources.”

  He placed a bottle of water—half empty—next to the man’s hand.

  “Good luck,” Alec said.

  The Reaper stared at the water. “Why?” he rasped. “You could have bought… so much.”

  “I bought what I needed,” Alec said.

  He stood up.

  “Let’s go. Floor 6 is waiting.”

  They walked toward the far archway, past the Merchant who was already polishing Alec’s axe, placing it on a display stand marked [RELIC OF THE ARCHITECT].

  As they reached the stairs, Alec stopped. He looked at a pile of rusted junk near the exit—the “bargain bin” of the Marketplace.

  He reached in and pulled out a simple, iron mace. It was heavy, unbalanced, and rusted. Common Tier.

  [RUSTED FLANGED MACE]

  [DAMAGE: 15-20]

  [DURABILITY: 12/50]

  It was garbage compared to his axe.

  Alec clipped it to his belt.

  “It hits things,” Alec muttered.

  “You’re an idiot,” Virgil said, walking beside him. But there was no heat in his voice. “A noble, stupid idiot.”

  “We kept our hands clean,” Rina said, taking Alec’s arm. “That has to count for something.”

  “It counts for being broke,” Jace grumbled, but he was walking under his own power now, the golden tether pulsing between him and Eleanor.

  They began the climb to Floor 6.

  Behind them, the Reaper watched them go. He didn’t drink the water. He reached for his belt, pulled out a small signaling device—a tracker Vane had issued.

  He looked at the squad disappearing into the mist.

  He smashed the tracker against the stone floor.

  He lay back and closed his eyes, waiting for the dark.

  3

  CHAPTER 3: THE VERTICAL MARCH

  The walls of the Tower didn’t just recede; they vanished.

  Alec West stepped off the landing of Floor 9 and felt his stomach drop through the floor.

  There was no room. There was no ceiling. There was only an endless, swirling gray nebula that stretched out in every direction—up, down, and out. Suspended in this void was a single, spiraling ribbon of white stone stairs.

  It had no handrails.

  It wound upward like a corkscrew into the mist, a floating spine with nothing but infinite gravity waiting on either side.

  [FLOOR 10: THE VERTICALITY]

  [ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD: HIGH ALTITUDE / VOID WIND]

  “Don’t look down,” Alec said, his voice snatched away by the howling wind that tore through the void. He gripped the haft of the Rusted Flanged Mace at his belt, missing the familiar weight of his fire axe so much it felt like a phantom limb ache.

  “I’m looking down,” Virgil said, his voice trembling. He pressed his back against the invisible centerline of the spiral, eyes wide. “Why am I looking down? It goes on forever.”

  “It goes to the bottom,” Rina said, checking the string on her bow. “Which is where we’ll be if we don’t move. Vane’s army cleared the path, but the wind is covering their tracks.”

  “Let’s go,” Jace grunted.

  He took a step. His boot scraped on the stone. He winced, a spasm of pain crossing his face as his weight settled on his injured side.

  Ten feet behind him, Eleanor gasped.

  She clutched her own side, exactly where Jace was hurt. The golden tether of the Life Link—usually invisible—flared into existence for a split second, a conduit of shared suffering connecting mother and surrogate son.

  “I’m fine,” Jace said through gritted teeth, pausing. “Eleanor, I’m fine.”

  “I know,” Eleanor breathed, straightening up and wiping sweat from her brow. “Keep walking, Jace. I can take it.”

  Alec watched them. The spell had saved Jace’s life in the Marketplace, diluting the constitution damage enough to keep him upright. But now, every stumble, every bruised muscle, every spike of exhaustion Jace felt was mirrored in Eleanor. They were a two-person sack race on a tightrope.

  “Virgil, take point with me,” Alec ordered. “Rina, rear guard. Keep Jace and Mom in the middle. We hug the inside curve.”

  They began the climb.

  It was a grueling, monotonous nightmare. The stairs were steep, each riser a foot high, designed for entities larger than humans. The wind was a constant physical pressure, trying to shove them off the edge into the gray abyss.

  Step. Step. Gasp.

  Step. Step. Gasp.

  They climbed for an hour. Then two. The mist didn’t change. The stairs didn’t change. The only indication of progress was the floor counter in Alec’s HUD ticking up.

  [FLOOR 12]… [FLOOR 15]…

  “How many floors is this section?” Virgil yelled over the wind.

  “Ten,” Alec shouted back. “We reach the boss door at 20.”

  “We’re exposed,” Rina called out. She was walking backward, scanning the sky—or whatever this void was. “If anything flies, we’re sitting ducks.”

  “Vane had ten thousand troops,” Alec said. “If anything flies, his archers shot it down.”

  “Vane moved through here hours ago,” Rina countered. “Respawn timers in a dungeon this size… they could be fast.”

  Screeeeee.

  The sound cut through the wind like a razor blade on glass.

  Alec froze. He looked up.

  Far above them, circling the upper spirals of the staircase, black specks were detaching themselves from the gloom.

  “Contact!” Alec roared. “Incoming!”

  The specks grew larger. They weren’t birds. They were nightmares carved from porcelain and obsidian.

  Void-Harpies.

  They had the bodies of vultures, but their feathers were jagged shards of black glass that clinked as they flew. Their faces were smooth, white masks—frozen, doll-like, and featureless except for a vertical slit of a mouth filled with needle teeth.

  [ENTITY: VOID-HARPY]

  [LEVEL: 28]

  [TYPE: AERIAL / SWARM]

  “Level 28,” Virgil cursed, raising his plasma rifle. “And they have the high ground!”

  There were six of them. Stragglers. Or a fresh spawn.

  They didn’t circle. They dove.

  “Defensive circle!” Alec ordered. “Backs to the center!”

  But there was no center. The stairs were only ten feet wide.

  “Flat against the stairs!” Alec corrected. “Get low!”

  The squad dropped to a crouch.

  The first Harpy screamed—a sonic attack that made Alec’s vision blur—and swooped at Virgil.

  Virgil fired. Pew-pew-pew.

  The blue plasma bolts struck the Harpy’s obsidian wings. The glass feathers shattered, absorbing the heat. The creature didn’t stop. It raked its talons across Virgil’s shoulder plating, sparking against the ceramic.

  “They’re armored!” Virgil yelled, scrambling back.

  “Rina!” Alec shouted.

  Rina was already moving. She didn’t crouch. She stood tall, balancing on the balls of her feet against the wind. She drew her bow.

  She didn’t aim at the wings. She aimed at the porcelain face.

  Thwip.

  The arrow shattered the white mask. The Harpy shrieked, convulsing in mid-air, and tumbled past them into the void below.

  “One down!” Rina called.

  Two more dove. One for Alec, one for Jace.

  Alec drew the Rusted Flanged Mace. It felt clumsy in his hand. The weight distribution was all wrong—top-heavy, sluggish. He tried to channel his Architect mana into it, to reinforce the strike with Matter Shaping, but the iron was dead. It didn’t conduct. It resisted him.

  The Harpy struck. Talons flashed.

  Alec swung.

  He aimed for the creature’s chest.

  CLANG.

  The mace hit the obsidian feathers. It didn’t crunch; it bounced. The rusted iron failed to penetrate the glass armor. The impact jarred Alec’s arm to the shoulder.

  “Dammit!” Alec swore.

  With his axe, that blow would have cleaved the bird in half. With this junk, he was just bruising it.

  The Harpy hissed and pecked. Its beak slammed into Alec’s helmet, cracking the visor.

  Alec stumbled back, dangerously close to the edge.

  “Get off!”

  He abandoned the weapon’s damage potential. He used it as a club. He punched the Harpy in the throat with the pommel, then kicked it away.

  It fluttered back, unhurt but annoyed.

  “Magic!” Alec yelled. “Melee isn’t working!”

  He raised his hand. [Essentia Bolt].

  The violet energy struck the Harpy, burning a hole in its wing. It spiraled away.

  But behind him, Jace was in trouble.

  A massive Harpy—an Alpha, maybe—had bypassed the others. It ignored Rina’s covering fire. It wanted the weak link.

  It slammed into Jace.

  Jace raised his shield, but he was slow. The exhaustion, the injury, the wind—it was too much.

  The Harpy grabbed the top of the tower shield with its talons and pulled.

  Jace was yanked forward. He lost his footing on the slick stone.

  “Jace!” Eleanor screamed.

  The Harpy didn’t just knock him down. It grabbed him. Its massive claws locked onto his pauldrons. Beating its wings furiously, it lifted him.

  His boots left the stone.

  “Let go!” Jace roared, bashing the creature’s legs with his mace. But he had no leverage.

  He was dangling over the void.

  And then, the horror happened.

  Eleanor, standing five feet away on the stairs, was suddenly jerked sideways.

  She screamed as an invisible force—the golden tether of the Life Link—yanked her off her feet. She slid across the stone toward the edge, dragged by the weight of Jace’s body suspended in the air.

  “The Link!” Virgil screamed. “It’s pulling her too!”

  “Cut it!” Jace yelled, thrashing in the Harpy’s grip. “Eleanor, drop the spell! Let me go!”

  “I can’t!” Eleanor cried, clawing at the smooth stone stairs. “It’s a bind! I can’t dismiss it in combat!”

  She slid over the edge.

  Now both of them were hanging—Jace held by the Harpy, Eleanor dangling from Jace’s metaphysical weight, suspended by nothing but magic and gravity.

  The Harpy shrieked triumphantly. It began to fly outward, dragging them both into the deep void.

  “NO!” Alec roared.

  He looked at his mana. 30%.

  He looked at the mace in his hand. Useless.

  He dropped it. It clattered on the stairs.

  He raised both hands toward the Harpy.

  “Gravity Well!”

  He didn’t cast it on the creature. He cast it on the air directly above the Harpy.

  He amplified the gravitational constant. Ten Gs. Twenty.

  The air warped. A sphere of distortion appeared above the bird.

  “DOWN!” Alec screamed, slamming his hands toward the stairs.

  The gravity hammer hit the Harpy.

  It squawked as its lift vanished. The invisible weight crushed it. Its wings snapped.

  It plummeted.

  It fell straight down, crashing onto the stairs ten feet below where Alec stood.

  Jace hit the stone hard.

  CRUNCH.

  Eleanor, tethered to him, slammed into the edge of the stairs above him.

  The Harpy, broken and stunned, tried to rise. Its porcelain mask was cracked.

  Alec didn’t wait for his weapon. He jumped.

  He landed on the Harpy’s back, boots driving into its spine. He grabbed its neck with his gauntleted hands.

  And he twisted.

  SNAP.

  The creature went limp.

  [TARGET ELIMINATED]

  Alec rolled off the carcass, gasping. The exertion of the spell had bottomed out his mana again. The sickness flared behind his eyes.

  “Jace!” Alec crawled to the edge.

  Jace was lying on the stairs below, tangled in the Harpy’s wings. He wasn’t moving.

  Above, Eleanor was curled in a ball, clutching her ribs.

  “Mom?” Alec asked, his voice cracking.

  “I felt it,” Eleanor wheezed. “I felt… the impact.”

  She rolled over. Her nose was bleeding. Her arm was bent at a wrong angle—broken.

  Jace groaned below. “Eleanor?”

  “I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m… okay.”

  Alec scrambled down to Jace. He helped the big man sit up. Jace looked up at Eleanor, saw her broken arm, and his face crumbled.

  “I did that,” Jace whispered. “I broke her arm.”

  “The Harpy did that,” Alec said firmly. “Get up. We aren’t safe yet.”

  Rina and Virgil were firing at the remaining Harpies. But seeing their leader crushed by gravity had broken the flock’s morale. The surviving three screeched and banked away, disappearing into the nebula.

  “They’re running,” Rina called out. She lowered her bow, her chest heaving. “We’re clear.”

  Alec retrieved his rusted mace. He looked at it with hatred.

  “I need a real weapon,” he muttered.

  They spent ten minutes stabilizing Eleanor. She used her own magic to set the bone—a process that made Jace vomit from the shared pain sensation—but she refused to break the Link.

  “If I drop it, his heart stops,” Eleanor said, wiping blood from her lip. “We keep moving.”

  They climbed.

  Floors 13 through 19 were a blur of wind, cold, and vertigo. They fought smaller skirmishes—Void-Bats, a solitary Gargoyle—but nothing as coordinated as the Harpy ambush.

  Drafting behind Vane worked, but the cost was high. They found more bodies. Mercenaries who had slipped. Or been pushed.

  Finally, the stairs widened.

  The spiral ended.

  They stepped onto a broad, circular platform of black iron.

  [FLOOR 20: THE GATEKEEPER’S THRESHOLD]

  Ahead of them stood a massive set of double doors, reinforced with bands of glowing red metal.

  It was the Boss Room.

  But the doors were already open.

  “Vane cleared it,” Virgil said, slumping against a railing. “The boss is dead. We can walk right through.”

  “Wait,” Alec said.

  He held up a hand.

  He activated [Mana Sight].

  The air around the open doors was shimmering. Distorted.

  “Heat,” Rina whispered. “Someone’s cloaked.”

  “Not monsters,” Alec said. “People.”

  He looked at the floor. There were no scorch marks here. No signs of the massive battle that would have killed a Floor 20 boss.

  “Vane didn’t kill the boss,” Alec realized. “Or if he did, he didn’t leave a mess.”

  A voice echoed from the open doorway.

  “You’re smarter than the average rat, West.”

  A figure stepped out of the shadows. The cloak shimmered and deactivated.

  He wore black Ascendant armor, sleek and polished. A blue sash—filthy and torn—was tied around his waist as a trophy.

  Captain Vance.

  He stood in the center of the doorway, smiling. He held a heavy repeater rifle in one hand and a jagged, serrated sword in the other.

  Behind him, five other figures decloaked.

  Ascendant Elites. Vane’s personal guard. Level 20+. Fully geared.

  “You,” Alec said. “I thought you’d be polishing Vane’s boots on Floor 50 by now.”

  “The Warlord has important work,” Vance said, stepping forward. “He can’t have insects crawling up his back. He left me to… fumigate.”

  Vance looked at the squad. At Jace, leaning on Virgil. At Eleanor, cradling her broken arm. At Alec, holding a rusted piece of junk.

  Vance laughed.

  “Look at you,” Vance sneered. “You look like garbage. Where’s your axe, Architect? Did you pawn it for a sandwich?”

  Alec tightened his grip on the mace.

  “I sold it to save a life,” Alec said. “Something you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Sentimental,” Vance spat. “That’s why you lose.”

  He raised his sword.

  “This is the end of the line, West. No more drafting. No more luck.”

  Vance pointed the sword at Alec’s chest.

  “Floor 20 is closed.”

  Alec looked at his squad. They were broken. They were exhausted.

  But Rina nocked an arrow. Jace raised his dented shield. Virgil charged his rifle. Eleanor’s hands glowed with defiant gold light.

  Alec stepped forward.

  “We aren’t turning back,” Alec said.

  “Good,” Vance grinned. “I need the XP to hit Level 22.”

  [QUEST ALERT: THE REAR GUARD]

  [OBJECTIVE: DEFEAT CAPTAIN VANCE]

  [DIFFICULTY: EXTREME]

  Alec raised the rusted mace.

  “Come and get it.”

  4

  CHAPTER 4: THE REAR GUARD

  The doorway to Floor 20 was a mouth of jagged iron, and standing in the throat was Captain Vance.

  He looked every inch the conqueror. His black Ascendant armor gleamed under the red emergency lights of the Boss Room, untarnished and humming with a personal energy shield. In his right hand, he held a serrated longsword that pulsed with a cruel, violet light—a weapon forged from the loot of the Tower itself.

  In his left hand, he held a heavy repeater rifle, leveled at Alec’s chest.

  “You look like a beggar, West,” Vance sneered, his voice echoing in the metallic cavern behind him. “A king in rags.”

  Alec tightened his grip on the Rusted Flanged Mace. The iron felt cold, dead, and heavy in his hand. It was a weapon for a trash mob, not an Architect.

  “I’m surprised Vane let you stay behind,” Alec said, stepping onto the threshold. He kept his voice even, buying time for Rina and Virgil to fan out. “I thought he kept his pets on a short leash.”

  “The Warlord rewards loyalty,” Vance said. “He promised me Bastion. When the world is reset, I will be the Governor of the new capital. And you? You’ll be a cautionary tale painted on the walls.”