Awakener's Guide to Climbing the Tower

Misha’s fingers tightened around the dagger.

For a few seconds, she just stood there staring at the door, half-irritated, and fully convinced that whoever had decided to ruin her sleep deserved at least a little fear before death.

Then she unlocked it and pulled the door open.

Elyes stood outside and he held a crumpled piece of paper in one hand, her note.

For a moment, Misha only blinked at him. She had not truly expected it to reach him, not this fast, and especially not at this hour. Still, the first thing she felt was relief.

He was alive. That mattered more than the rest.

She had left that note more for her own peace of mind than anything else. She never thought he would actually come knocking in the middle of the night because of it.

Though, between the note and the hour, the hour annoyed her more.

Of course he came now. Of all the times he could have shown up, he chose the dead middle of the night, when her body still ached and her brain had only started pretending to shut down.

The paper in his hand shook a little.

She remembered what she wrote on it.

’Nyxie and Gerbaut are alive.’

At first, Elyes looked stunned to see her. It was as if some part of him had prepared for the possibility that he would find a stranger instead. He stared at her face as if confirming it piece by piece, his lips parted slowly.

"What," he said, his voice rougher than usual, "is the meaning of this, Misha?"

Misha leaned one shoulder against the doorframe and squinted at him. "Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you."

Then she started to shut the door but Elyes caught it at once.

"Misha, please."

The word hit her strangely. Only then did she properly look at him, and it was only then did she notice his eyes. They were red and swollen too.

The skin around them looked tired, like he had rubbed at them too many times and slept none at all. His hair hung in messy strands across his face, and beneath the usual drained expression of his sat something rawer than exhaustion.

He had cried, or at least gotten close enough to it that denying it would have been insulting to both of them.

Misha’s grip on the dagger loosened. She sighed inwardly, long and tired. Then she stepped aside and opened the door wider.

Elyes entered without another word. Only after he crossed the threshold did she notice the rest of it.

He was limping. His staff took part of his weight every time he stepped. His face looked paler than usual, and the lines of strain around his mouth had sunk deeper too. He had cleaned himself up, yes, but there were still signs that he had returned from a battlefield, not a walk through Genesis. His left hand kept flexing as if the pain had settled there and refused to leave.

Misha closed the door quietly behind him. "How are your injuries?"

"I’ll live."

That sounded like a yes and a complaint at the same time.

"You should’ve sent someone," she said, lowering her gaze for a second. "I could have gone to you instead."

Elyes stopped near the small table, still clutching the crumpled note. "No."

That was all he could say. He moved farther into the room, slower now, and sat in the only chair it had. The motion looked careful. He lowered himself like his body did not trust sudden decisions anymore.

Then he looked up at her. "Tell me," he said, and for the first time since she met him, his voice sounded unsteady in a way that had nothing to do with sleepiness. "Is this true?"

The paper crackled softly in his hand.

Misha said nothing at first. She did not know where to begin or how much she should say.

"Nyxie..." He swallowed once, the name caught somewhere on the way out. "Nyxie, is she alive?"

That look on his face, Misha knew it. It was that awful hope. The kind that hurt worse than despair because it still dared to exist. It made the heart stand there shaking while the rest of you tried not to fall apart around it.

She knew it because she had lived on it for far too long. First with her parents, then with her brothers. The possibility that someone you loved still existed somewhere, held together with nothing but pain and stubbornness.

"Not exactly alive," she said quietly. "But... I think I have the ability to bring her back with Gerbaut..."

Elyes’ brows pulled together at once. "What do you mean?"

Misha let out a breath through her nose. "Before that... I need to tell you who I really am."

Elyes did not speak. He only watched with those red, tired eyes.

So Misha told him. She told him about the outside world, about how she was summoned to the Tower, and about how she entered it to find her brothers. She told lies about the Academy and the recommendation she needed, and how she used that story because she needed a reason people would accept her without asking the wrong questions too early.

The words came out more easily than she expected, perhaps because she had already shared them to Gerbaut, or perhaps because too many things had already shattered and Elyes had come here looking like grief had wrung him dry and she no longer had the strength for another careful mask.

When she finished, silence settled over the room.

"You...You deceived us?" He said at last. The words came quieter than she expected, it was not cold nor furious. It was only tired.

He gave a short, humorless laugh that did not belong to his face. "Seems like..." He paused and looked at the crumpled note instead of her. "Yara wasn’t the only one who deceived us."

Misha had expected that. No, honestly, she expected worse.

Gerbaut was the abnormal one who didn’t blame her for deceiving them. Instead, he listened, accepted it, and moved on.

"I lied," she said, her voice low. "Yes. But I never wanted to harm any of you. And... I really wanted to become part of Skyreach."