Awakener's Guide to Climbing the Tower

Her fingers curled against her sleeves. "Based on what?"

"What else? Your class of course." The answer came too easily.

Misha’s expression went still. "What about it?"

Caius looked at her directly. "You possess contracted souls."

Something cold settled behind her.

He continued before she could interrupt. "If the Tower recognizes them as independent combat units, they may satisfy the minimum requirement."

Caius held her stare with the same quiet expression he always wore. It was not an empty face or blank like Gerbaut’s. He simply kept too much behind it.

An ordinary person might have guessed the requirement had changed, someone observant could perhaps connect it roughly but this?

Misha bit the inside of her lower lip. He had described exactly what happened.

King had already suspected that Caius possessed some way of seeing other people’s skills. Misha had not dismissed the idea. She simply had no proof, and accusing a member of House Solmere because she found him suspicious seemed like a good way to create problems she could not afford.

Now, though...

"You described exactly what happened." Misha lowered her arms, one hand drifting closer to one of her daggers without touching it.

Caius noticed the movement. His eyes followed downward, then returned to her face. "It was an educated guess."

"Based on a class you’ve supposedly never seen before? I also don’t remember telling it to you." She tilted her head, watching him closely.

His fingers shifted along the shaft of his weapon. It was just a small adjustment, nearly nothing, but she caught it.

In her twenty-six years of life, she had spent too much time around people who smiled while lying, apologized while planning to do the same thing again, and pretended not to care because caring would cost them something.

She had always known they existed. Her innocence had never meant she was clueless. She simply had Mateo standing between her and people like that for most of her life, shielding both her and Caleb from the uglier parts of the world whenever he could.

He had done it so quietly that she had not understood how much he was carrying until he was no longer there to carry it.

Whenever someone tried to take advantage of her, Mateo noticed first. When Caleb got into trouble, Mateo stepped between him and the consequences long enough to make sure their younger brother could still stand afterward. He handled the angry adults, the unpaid bills, the strangers who smiled too much, and all the small cruelties people called misunderstanding once they were caught.

Misha and Caleb had seen pieces of it. Mateo had seen the rest. He had protected them so well that, for a long time, she mistook being protected for being safe.

Then she entered the Tower alone. There had been no Mateo waiting ahead of her, no older brother quietly studying everyone who came too close. So she made her own choices.

She trusted too quickly. She wanted to believe people when they promised they would stay together, because what else were they supposed to do in a place like this? She was alone. Everyone needed someone.

That trust had helped cost her the lives of her friends. Still, those same choices had also allowed them to meet in the first place, people who had begun as complete strangers and somehow became important enough to leave wounds behind when they were gone.

So no, she was not imagining it.

That small shift of Caius’ fingers told her exactly what he was doing. He was choosing his next words carefully.

"You knew this would happen." Her voice came out lower than before.

She stepped closer, searching his face for the smallest crack until she could see the faint change in his breathing.

"You already knew about my skill," she continued as her hands tightened on her sides. "And before you use that fucking excuse about seeing my eyes glow during siege, don’t."

She had meant to keep her voice controlled. That lasted perhaps two seconds as the words came out faster now. "We were surrounded. People were dying and the rest of us were trying not to get torn apart. I highly doubt you had enough time to stand there studying my eyes and movements."

Caius’ expression remained still, though his fingers tightened around the weapon.

"So don’t give me that," she said sharply. "That bullshit won’t work on me."

For a moment, neither moved.

A faint line appeared between his brows, perhaps the first sign that the conversation had begun to wear on him. "I wasn’t aware I was being interrogated."

Misha gave a humorless laugh. It left her throat too sharply to sound amused. "You aren’t even pretending to be surprised."

"This is generally how I look."

"That’s bullshit!" A small breath escaped her nose. She could hear how angry she sounded and she did not care anymore. "You know what I mean."

"I do." His voice softened, though not enough to become gentle. He sounded patient as though she were the unreasonable one.

"Then answer me."

Caius lowered his gaze. For the first time since approaching, something in Caius’ expression shifted. The tension near his mouth eased, and his eyes lost some of their distance. He looked tired then, something that did not belong easily on someone his age.

"You already decided not to trust me..." His voice carried no accusation but that did not make the words hurt less.

Misha’s jaw tightened. People who lied well did not always ask others to ignore the evidence. The smart ones did something else. They gave explanations so clean that suspicion began to feel childish.

They turned questions back on the person asking them and they made distrust look like a personal failure. Some people built the neatest excuses around the ugliest lies.

Misha had seen it before. She would not let Caius do that to her.

"So what if I did?" Her chin lifted, though the anger in her voice had lost some of its edge.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

Then a small smile appeared on his lips. It was not mocking. She almost wished it had been since mockery would have given her something simple to hate.

This smile carried something else. Recognition, perhaps. Or resignation. Misha could not tell.

"Then don’t trust me." He finally met her gaze fully. "You don’t have to."

Misha’s fingers curled into her palms. That answer should have relieved her. He was not asking for faith, he was not demanding that she believe him or accusing her of being unfair. He had simply accepted the distance she placed between them.

For some reason, that made her chest tighten.

The feeling irritated her immediately. It was not guilt, she refused to call it guilt. Perhaps it was anger that he had stepped away from the argument so easily. She had expected him to defend himself harder, and his refusal left her with nowhere to put the accusations she had gathered.

Caius’ gaze dropped to her hands.

Misha realized her nails had pressed into her palms. She slowly loosened them, though the ache remained.

He turned partly toward where the house was located. The movement should have ended the conversation. It did not feel finished.

"I will always have your back," Caius said, his voice quiet as he looked toward the mist-covered road. "Even if you don’t trust me."

The words did not sound like a promise made in the moment. They sounded remembered, something he had already decided long before she asked.

Before she could question it, his lips moved again.

"Master."

The final word left him in a whisper, too soft for Misha to catch beneath the low hum of the portal.

King’s ears twitched. Both of them angled toward Caius at once.

Caius adjusted the staff-spear against his shoulder. When he spoke again, his voice had returned to normal. "We should leave after breakfast."

He did not wait for her answer. Misha watched him walk away.

Everything about him seemed arranged to give nothing away, yet there had been something in his last words, something she could not place.

I will always have your back. Not I’ll help you.

He had spoken as if her trust were irrelevant to whatever he intended to do. That should have felt threatening, a part of her thought it was.

Another part, one she did not want to examine too closely, had heard something almost familiar in his voice. It was the kind of certainty Mateo once carried when he told her to stay behind him.

She shut that thought down immediately. Caius was not Mateo. He was a Solmere.

Maybe Caius was right about one thing. She had already decided not to trust him. She did so the moment she learned his family name.

The village seemed quieter after he left.

King’s wings opened suddenly, making Misha turn to him.

He flapped once and rose from the ground, scattering a thin curl of mist beneath his paws. He hovered above her head, his tails moving behind him while his golden gaze remained fixed on the corner where Caius had disappeared.

[I will be leaving for a while nya. I need to confirm something with Master.]

"Huh? What do you mean?"

The unease in her chest sharpened. King rarely admitted uncertainty. Even when he knew nothing, he usually wrapped ignorance in enough arrogance that it sounded like everyone else’s failure.

For him to say he needed confirmation meant something had caught his attention, something very important.

"You can’t just say that and leave."

[I am King.] His voice entered her mind with familiar offense. [I may do as I please nya.]

Before she could argue, light gathered around his body and his silhouette blurred until he vanished.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!