Awakener's Guide to Climbing the Tower

Caius stood in the drowned remains of the southern harbor while seawater moved through his legs without resistance.

At first, he mistook that for numbness. Then he looked down and saw the current passing through him, not around his boots. His coat no longer stirred with the water. The hem drifted because some part of him still expected fabric to behave like fabric, but nothing caught against the current.

The dead had very few dignities. Discovering that fact was one of them.

For several hours, Caius remained where the western district had once begun, staring at the flooded streets as though the city might correct itself if he waited long enough. It did not.

The harbor had swallowed whole avenues. Rooflines broke the water at odd angles, merchant banners had been torn from their poles and tangled around shattered masonry. A vessel lay on its side across what had once been a market square, its mast thrust through the upper floor of a counting house.

Bodies floated between beams and splintered furniture. He tried not to look at them at first, that lasted perhaps an hour. Then voiding them became worse. His father’s formal coat had been dark blue. His mother usually wore silver pins in her hair. So Caius began checking.

He drifted through collapsed streets and half-submerged courtyards, searching faces whenever the current turned them upward. He wasn’t expecting anyone to be alive. That possibility had died with the city. He simply needed to know. It was a ridiculous instinct despite knowing it would not restore anything. Still, he searched.

He found one of his father’s guards near a broken bridge, then he found an instructor from the western academy. They were not his father, not his mother, and not himself.

His own body should have been easier. Caius knew approximately where the southern Beacon had collapsed. Or thought he did. The destruction had rearranged the entire district so violently that familiar streets became meaningless. He spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to orient himself by buildings that no longer existed.

He told himself that searching for his body was practical. It might explain why he was still here when the other dead seemed to be disappearing. It might answer something. In truth, he suspected the reason was much simpler. He wanted to see himself. He wanted proof with a face. He wanted to stand over his own corpse and think, ’There. That is where Caius Solmere ended.’

Instead, there was no body. Just ruin.

The first day became several, then several became weeks. Time behaved strangely when sleep stopped being necessary. Caius discovered that quickly.

He saw other souls sometimes. Most did not remain long. A pale figure wandering through a drowned street would begin to fade, gradually losing shape until the Tower reclaimed whatever was left. Some vanished within hours, others lasted days. Caius did not.

Eventually, he learned why he had not been processed like the other souls. The answer was, in Caius’ opinion, insulting.

The southern Sea Ward had collapsed while his mana was directly connected to it. His soul had been caught in the remains of the ward’s authority.

There was something almost insulting about surviving death due to a technical failure. For those final minutes, he had not simply powered the Beacon, he had become a part of it. So when the Ward broke, its authority did not vanish cleanly. Fragments remained embedded through the district’s surviving mana infrastructure, clinging to conduits, broken relay pillars, drowned sigils, and apparently one exceptionally unfortunate soul.

Caius had been caught in the remains, not saved, not preserved by some benevolent force. It was a clerical error with metaphysical consequences.

There was something profoundly irritating about surviving death because the Tower had failed to clean up after itself. So he remained there, for years.

Virelia changed without him. That was the part he hated the most. It was not the destruction itself but the city refusing to stop.

Ships stayed embedded in rooftops until moss grew over their hulls. Canals widened where streets had collapsed. The southern harbor became an inland lake with half-submerged warehouses beneath it. Creatures nested in the old customs office. Corals began creeping over staircases where merchants had once lined up to argue about import declarations.

The Solmere estate survived better than most of the eastern district. The upper walls held, several terraces collapsed, and one wing had been gutted by seawater, but the main house still stood above the ruins.

Caius visited once. His bedroom was almost untouched. Then he never went back because there was a limit to how much self-pity a dead man should tolerate from himself.

By the time Misha arrived, Caius had been dead for three years. It was long enough that seasons had stopped meaning anything, and long enough that he knew which monsters emerged after sunset and which flooded alleys became impassable when the tide rose.

She entered through the broken eastern market.

Caius noticed the mask first, white and cat-shaped. It was plain enough to be more unsettling than decorative. Dark strands reached nearly to her waist and moved against her shoulders as she picked her way over broken stone. One hand resting near the dagger at her hip.

He watched from beneath the remnants of an awning. Another Raider, perhaps a strange one.

Then he noticed the doll sitting on her shoulder. He stared at it and stopped when the tiny thing turned its head not toward a monster but toward him.

For three years, living people had looked through him and yet, this doll looked directly at him.

Then the doll lifted one hand and the street exploded. Stone erupted from the pavement hard enough to launch a creature backward through the remains of a fruit stall.

The masked woman lunged immediately, her dagger went through the neck of another creature before it recovered from the shock.

"Left." The word came out flat.

A green-haired woman appeared beside her in a body made from layered mana.

’Temporary vessel,’ Caius realized. He had read about similar skills. Those skills were very rare. This one was sophisticated enough to look almost human until light passed faintly through the edges of her hair.

The green-haired woman stretched both arms overhead then grinned like someone had just offered her a festival game. "Can I go?"

The masked woman did not look at her. "You already plan on going."

"Of course!" Then she launched herself into the nearest enemy.

A second vessel formed. This one belonged to a dark-haired woman with a sweet expression that immediately made Caius distrust her. He could not have explained why. Perhaps it was the smile.

She looked toward an approaching group and tilted her head. "Master, may I?"

"Only the ones attacking us."

Her smile deepened. "How restrictive."

The next several minutes were the most interesting thing to happen in Virelia since its destruction.

He had watched Raider parties fight here before, Guild teams, Scavengers, and Rankers passing through. Most approached Floor 31 cautiously because the failed Settlement Reset had left certain regions unstable.

These three–well, four if the doll counted–did not fight carefully. They fought efficiently enough that their recklessness looked organized.

The green-haired woman treated combat like a personal solution to boredom. She crashed into enemies with enough enthusiasm to make self-preservation seem optional. Then she laughed when a third nearly caught her from behind.

"Nyxie."

"I saw it!"

The dark-haired woman was the opposite. She moved slowly, almost lazily, never wasting a step. An enemy lunged, she shifted half a pace and its claws missed her throat by inches. Then her blade entered beneath its ribs. Another came from the side, she pivoted as if accepting a partner in a dance, then steel crossed its neck.

Then she nudged the corpse with one foot. "Disappointing."

"Olivia." The masked woman parried a strike. "Stop admiring it."

He watched Misha more closely after that because she was the strangest part, not the temporary vessels. She coordinated all of them while handling her own opponents.

The group behaved like people who had fought together long enough to stop requiring explanation when given an order.

Then the market went quiet after they defeated the creatures around them.

A blue System window appeared in front of the masked woman. She read it, then her head turned directly toward Caius.

Every thought in his mind stopped as she kept looking. At first, he glanced behind himself and saw nothing. Then he turned back to her. "You can see me?"

She tilted her head slightly. "I can now."

That was not comforting, not remotely. She looked at the System again then toward him. "Offer it."

Caius frowned. "Offer what?"

「 〔SOUL CONTRACT〕」

A contract appeared in front of him. He read the first sections, then the next.

He looked up. "What happens if I refuse?"

The masked woman shrugged one shoulder. "Then you stay here."

"..." Caius stared at her. "Very persuasive."

"I wasn’t trying to persuade you."

That irritated him more than it should have.

The green-haired woman leaned toward the dark-haired one and whispered far too loudly, "I like him."

"You like everyone who looks annoyed."

"That’s not true."

Caius ignored both of them as he read the contract again. He was given an option to remain bound to a drowned city or leave. That should not have been difficult and yet, it still took him several minutes before he accepted.

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