Awakener's Guide to Climbing the Tower

Moments before the Primarch was defeated, Hiiro woke to the taste of iron, dust, and ash.

For several seconds, he lay flat on his stomach with chunks of debris pressing against his back. His whole body ached in the sort of united, democratic way that suggested every part of him had held a meeting and unanimously voted against movement.

His head was worse than all of it. Something had split skin near his temple again, and dried blood had pulled tight there, making the simple act of opening one eye feel more complicated than it should have been. It took him a few seconds to remember why he was on the ground at all.

Then he heard it, not the gong. That was the first wrong thing. The street felt too quiet without that horrible sound pressing through it, shaking bone and thought alike. After everything that had happened, the silence left behind by its absence seemed stranger than the noise had been.

Hiiro pushed himself up on one elbow, spat red into the dust, and squinted ahead. A black door stood in the middle of the street, not attached to any wall, not set inside any ruined frame. It was just there, planted upright among cracked paving stones and broken masonry as if someone had taken a door from a house, taught it arrogance, and told it to stand on its own.

It was tall, matte-black, and edged in faint golden lines that moved too subtly to be carvings and too steadily to be light. At intervals, symbols flickered across its surface and disappeared before he could follow them.

Around its base, several Vestiges clawed and hammered at it in mindless, frantic bursts. One threw itself bodily against the wood with enough force to break its own shoulder. Another scraped blackened nails down the center panel until sparks of gold flashed and sent it staggering backward with a dry hiss from its ruined mouth.

Hiiro stared at it for a second, then another.

"...Okay," he muttered hoarsely, dragging himself to a sitting position. "That definitely wasn’t here before."

His voice sounded rough even to him. He scrubbed one hand over his face and sucked in a breath when his bruised side protested. Pieces of memory came back in crooked flashes. The Primarch, Caius bleeding and somehow still standing, Misha shouting, and a door? No, there had not been a door then. There had been a silver chain, and that monster trying very hard to turn all of them into paste.

He got one foot under himself, rose halfway, and immediately had to brace a hand against a tilted cart. His legs shook once before remembering their job. He rolled one shoulder carefully, grimaced, then did the other.

"I’m still alive," he told himself, because saying it out loud made it more official. Then he looked again at the black door and the Vestiges battering themselves against it. They did not so much as glance his way.

That bothered him more than he wanted to admit. Vestiges noticed movement, living bodies, and noise. If they were ignoring an upright living person for a freestanding door, then there was a reason. Something about it drew them... or something behind it did.

His eyes narrowed, then gunfire cracked through the ruined avenue.

The nearest Vestige jerked sideways as the upper half of its skull burst apart and became ice.

Hiiro turned and saw Astrid standing farther down the street. Her sidearm remained extended in a steady two-handed grip. Another shot rang out, frost bloomed across the chest of the second Vestige.

Behind Astrid, stood Alaric. More accurately, Alaric stood several paces behind Astrid in a position that could technically be described as watching her back if one were being generous about the amount of ruined wall he had placed between himself and the nearest monster.

His eyes found Hiiro, something shifted in his expression, then he said something to Astrid. The girl glanced toward Hiiro, saw him standing, and gave one curt nod before firing again.

A moment later, both began making their way toward him.

Hiiro’s mouth pulled into a small grin. "You both came back."

Alaric’s face immediately twisted into offended disbelief. "Do not say that as if I wandered off to buy bread while you fought an abomination. I returned under protest, fear, and several excellent arguments against doing so."

THe boy’s grin widened. "You’re not so bad after all."

"I was never bad at all."

Astrid stopped several steps away and gave him a quick once-over. Her gaze lingered briefly on the blood near his temple. Then her eyes shifted past him. "Where are Caius and Misha?"

That sobered him. Hiiro glanced toward the strange black structure again. "I’m also trying to figure that out. They disappeared with the Primarch.

Her expression tightened. "Disappeared?"

Then a Vestige peeled away from the black surface and noticed them, then another, and three more. Apparently, the reunion had reached its natural limit.

"Talk later," Astrid said sharply.

The corpses came at them in a broken rush.

Hiiro’s grin returned despite the state of his body. He probably should not have felt excited. Unfortunately, his brain had always maintained a slightly unhealthy relationship with violence.

He brought his fists up. "Now it feels normal again."

"Your standard concerns me," Astrid replied, firing twice in quick succession. "And that should concern you too."

"It doesn’t."

"Of course, it doesn’t."

Alaric swept his hand across Duet, and bright strings burst into the air. The music came quick and sharp, less theatrical than before. There was still style in it–Alaric apparently considered that biologically necessary–but urgency sat underneath the melody now.. Support first, panic second, and probably panic throughout, if one asked him.

Then his voice followed a beat later. "♪ Try not to die, lovely heroes, because I remain deeply unsuited to posthumous guilt. ♪"

Warmth spread through Hiiro’s limbs almost instantly. It sank beneath the bruises in his shoulders and loosened the tightness around his ribs. His breathing became easier. The deep stabbing pain in his side faded into something manageable, and strength flowed back into the muscles that had already begun formal complaints against continued combat.

Hiiro blinked then looked toward Alaric. "Thanks sir!"

The next minute passed fast and ugly. Hiiro met a rushing corpse with a straight punch to the face, drove it backward into another, then twisted aside from a spear-thrust that came low for his stomach. Nearby, Astrid moved with economical precision, firing where it mattered. When one got too close, she switched cleanly–sidearm lowered, slim blade out, a single slash, then back again.

Alaric never allowed the music to die. Even when he was forced to duck behind a broken pillar and play from cover, he kept the rhythm going with all the dignity of a man hiding for his life while trying not to look like he was hiding for his life.

A Vestige came at him from the side and Hiiro saw it first. "Bard! Duck!"

"I am already ducking!" Alaric yelped, dropping lower anyway as Hiiro crossed the distance and drove a kick into the corpse’ chest.

The Vestige toppled back into the golden-lit radius around the black door. The moment it crossed too close, a line of light flared across the ground and threw it away as if the door itself had refused entry.

Hiiro blinked. "That is so cool!"

"That," Astrid said after shooting another corpse through the eye, "is not the part you should be focusing on."

"Agree to disagree."

"There is something wrong with you."

They killed the last few quickly after that. Most had wasted too much attention on the door that by the time they properly recognized the three Awakeners behind them, Astrid had already thinned their numbers, Hiiro had recovered enough to fight, and Alaric’s support had removed much of the exhaustion that should have slowed them down.

The last corpse staggered backward with frost spreading across half its chest. Then closing the distance, Hiiro punched it hard, its skull snapped sideways, and the body fell.

Silence settled over the ruined avenue.

Then a chime rang and all three paused.

Ding!

「 〔OBSERVER QUEST COMPLETE〕

Objective Fulfilled:

Primarch Vestige Eliminated.

—

Ranking:

1. Caius Solmere

2. Gravekeeper

3. Shimura Hiiro

—

Calculating Rewards... 」

Hiiro stared at the window, then at his ranking for a few seconds before he let out a low whistle.

"Third place." He put one hand on his hip and nodded gravely to no one. "Podium finish. I’ll take it."

Astrid did not react since her attention had gone somewhere else. "Misha..."

Hiiro looked toward her then followed her gaze. The black door was gone, although he did not see it disappear. Now Misha was kneeling where it had been, and Caius lay in her arms.

For several seconds, the scene did not make sense.

Then Hiiro saw the Primarch. The enormous corpse lay several meters behind them, sprawled across the shattered street with its six arms collapsed at wrong angles. The bronze gong fused into its chest had been destroyed so completely that only jagged fragments remained around the blackened cavity.

Dead... the creature was really dead.

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