Awakener's Guide to Climbing the Tower

Misha did not take her eyes from the bandage. The wrapping was clean enough, though too tight near the elbow. No dark veins showed above it and there was no visible swelling.

"I didn’t say she was bitten."

"You looked."

"I have eyes."

The boy’s grip tightened.

The woman at the door stepped between them, not fully blocking him but making it clear he should stop.

"I’m Lysa." She touched the bell at her wrist, perhaps out of habit. "Crematorium runner."

The title explained the coat, the ash, and perhaps the bandage on her neck.

Misha lowered her hands. "What does a crematorium runner do?"

"We collect the dead, confirm the cause, and carry district reports." She glanced toward the broken doors across the courtyard. "Used to."

Something struck metal far beneath them. The impact rolled through the ground and rose into the walls.

GONNNG.

The old man flinched and the boy turned toward the floor.

Lysa’s face tightened. "We can’t stay here."

"Where are you going?"

She reached for a canvas bag near the door.

Misha thought of the dead guard. "North gate?"

Every conscious person in the room looked at her. The old man’s hands shifted on the shovel, and the boy took half a step backward.

Lysa’s knife came up again. "Who told you that?"

"A dead guard in the chapel."

"That wasn’t a guard anymore."

"Yes." Misha’s tone stayed dry. "The lack of pulse gave it away."

Lysa did not appreciate the humor. "You don’t understand." She stepped closer, keeping the knife lowered but ready. "The Husks repeat whatever remained strongest when the host died, and sometimes, the last thing they heard. North gate."

"The evacuation route went north, right?"

"It was supposed to."

Misha watched her in confusion. "Supposed to?"

Lysa looked toward the iron gate overhead. "The north gate never opened."

The old man gave a short laugh without humor. "The Council sealed it. Said the Infected couldn’t be allowed through. We’re no Infected..."

Lysa’s jaw hardened. "There were still thousands in the lower wards."

The number settled heavily into the courtyard.

Genesis had fought outward. Rankers, guild members, academy students, and ordinary civilians had stood on the walls against an enemy everyone could see. They had argued, panicked, and died, but the city had still fought.

Exodus had turned inward and it had closed its own gates.

Misha looked at the unconscious woman again. "How many survivors are left?"

Lysa’s gaze dropped. "We don’t know... District communications failed after the third bell. The fourth bell never rang and the registry boards stopped updating before dawn."

"Then where are you planning to go?"

Lysa hesitated. Only briefly, but the boy noticed and answered for her. "The crematorium."

The woman shot him a sharp look making him lower his eyes, though his hands remained locked around the knife.

Misha looked between them. "What’s there?"

No one answered immediately.

The old man glanced toward Lysa and the silent exchange told Misha enough. They had not decided whether to trust her. It was reasonable. A masked woman appearing from a portal might be a rescuer, a spy, or another thing wearing a voice it did not own.

Misha kept her hands visible. "You said this place isn’t safe. If we’re moving, I need to know where."

Lysa studied the cat mask and was still rather hesitant but in the end, she gave in. "Our last way out."

Before Misha could ask what that meant, a System chime rang.

Ding!

「 〔SYSTEM NOTICE〕

Original Quest Floor: FAILED

Registered Population: 14,376

Evacuated Population: 6,903

—

Required Evacuation Threshold: Unmet

Unrescued residents have been removed from the Civilian Registry.

Surviving registered residents have been reclassified as Floor Entities.

Secondary Floor Quest is being generated... 」

Misha read the number twice. Less than half escaped, and the rest? They had not all survived. Most were probably dead, infected, missing, or no longer human enough for the Tower to count.

The next window appeared.

「 〔FLOOR QUEST〕

The Exodus Passage

Objective:

Escort one registered survivor to the Northern Passage

OR

Retrieve the Passage Seal from the Central Crematorium.

—

Reward: Access to Floor 12

Failure Condition: Death of all remaining registered Floor Entities.

—

Registered Floor Entities Remaining: 31 」

No one spoke. It was not thirty-one people left in the entire city, necessarily. It was thirty-one individuals the Tower still recognized as eligible survivors within the quest.

Lysa’s hand closed around the bell at her wrist. "This is what I meant..."

Another deep metallic impact rolled beneath the courtyard, closer this time.

Lysa looked toward the floor. "The Passage runs under it."

Misha rested one hand against Twinfang hilt. "And something else is already down there." She glanced toward the unconscious woman, then back to Lysa. "Are there other ways to reach it?"

"Yes." She walked away and began forcing supplies into it. Her hands moved quickly, though the tremor in her fingers had worsened. "The main road leads straight to the Central Crematorium, but no one uses it after the second bell. We can take the Undertaker’s Run. It’s a service route." She tightened the bag’s strap with her teeth. "The crematorium workers used it to collect bodies from the lower wards without dragging carts through the markets. It ends at the western ash house."

「 Registered Floor Entities Remaining: 30 」

Lysa stared at the number with an expression too empty to be shocked. Perhaps she had exhausted that emotion hours ago.

"You came here to climb, right?" She asked.

Misha faced her. "Yes."

She rose and slung the bag over one shoulder. "We go to the crematorium, take the Passage Seal and leave."

"What about the others?"

A brittle sound escaped Lysa. It might have been a laugh once but it broke apart before becoming one. "You think you can search this entire city for thirty people?"

"I think leaving them without trying is a convenient decision."

Lysa’s head snapped toward her. Anger brought color into her face. "You don’t know these streets. You don’t know which bells are real, which doors are traps, or what comes out after sunset." She jabbed one finger toward the System window. "That number doesn’t tell us where they are. It doesn’t tell us whether they can walk. Half of them could be sealed inside wards we can’t enter."

Misha glanced toward the old man, the boy, and the woman lying beneath the blankets.

Lysa dragged one hand over her cropped hair. "We spent the entire afternoon searching. We found two people alive. One died before we reached this courtyard." Her voice toughened on the final sentence. She looked away before the grief could settle into anything softer. "If we wander after dark, that number becomes 26."

Misha studied here. It was not cowardice. Triage. Ugly, desperate triage made by someone without enough hands, time, or strength. She had seen the same calculation in overcrowded emergency rooms. Three patients, one bed, and one doctor already bleeding through a sleeve.

People liked to call every life equally valuable until they had to choose which one received the last dose of medicine.

Another bell rang in the distance. Then another heavy note.

GONNNG.

The sound moved through Exodus like a pressure wave.

Then something answered beneath the streets. A scrape, then another sound. Hundreds of dragging movements layered together until the stone beneath their feet seemed to crawl.

Lysa seized Misha by the cloak. "Inside. Now!"

Misha allowed herself to be pulled through the door. The other woman slammed it shut and threw the first lock into place, then the second until the fifth.

The old man reached for the upper bolts. "Shh..."

Moving to the inspection panel before it closed, Misha saw figures beginning to appear at the far end of the alley.

「 〔WARNING〕

Multiple Elite-Class Monsters Detected.

Vestiges has entered the battlefield.

Threat Level Increased. 」

At first, they resembled people leaving their homes after curfew. They walked slowly beneath the falling ash, heads bowed, and shoulders slack. One wore a child’s coat several sizes too small for its swollen body. Another still carried the white apron of a butcher, the cloth dark with old stains. A third dragged half a door chained to one wrist.

The nearest figure raised its head. Black wire had been threaded through its lips, sewing the mouth shut. The skin around the punctures had split and dried. Even with its jaw bound, a faint clicking came from somewhere inside its throat.

More bodies followed. Ten, then fifteen, then twenty. They moved without stumbling. That was the first detail Misha disliked.

The second was the way their hands remained positioned around whatever they had carried in life.

The butcher held a cleaver low beside one thigh, blade turned inward to keep it from catching against the walls. A dead woman in a guard’s coat kept a short spear angled over one shoulder, balanced and ready. There was no random movement and more likely a motor memory.

Misha could only guess things. The parasite could have found the patterns already written into the host’s nervous system, motions repeated so often in life that the body remembered them after the person inside was gone.

She preferred ordinary zombies. Ordinary zombies were stupid.

The handbell at Lysa’s wrist began trembling, the clapper shook inside the iron shell, producing one thin, involuntary chime.

Lysa hurriedly claimed her palm around the bell.

It was too late. Twenty heads tilted toward the courtyard at the same angle. The clicking spread from throat to throat.

Ding!

「 〔BROADCAST NOTICE〕

A distinguished Observer has entered your Observation Channel.

Observation Priority has increased.

Your broadcast has been elevated within the Observation Network.

New Observers may arrive shortly. 」

Misha stared at the message. ’Huh?’

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