Awakener's Guide to Climbing the Tower

By the time Misha reached the great walls of Genesis, the battle had already changed shape. It was no longer the tense, organized noise of a city preparing for war. It had become messier than that. Orders collided with screams, boots pounded against stone in frantic waves, and steel rang somewhere ahead. Someone was crying, and someone else was shouting for more arrows. The air itself felt thinner, tighter, as if Genesis had started holding its breath.

Then she spotted someone familiar near the sealed gates.

"Grandpa Tobias?"

The old merchant stood with one hand on his cane and the other tucked behind his back. He was not wringing his hands. He stood there staring at the barrier with a hard look, as if he hated what he was seeing but refused to waste time on useless fear. Still, when he turned at her voice, she caught it in his eyes. Not terror but urgency.

"Grandpa Tobias!" Misha hurried toward him. "What are you doing here? You should be heading to the inner district!"

"My son is still outside that section," he said at once. He lifted his chin slightly toward the eastern stretch of the wall.

"You know where he is?"

"No," Tobias said, then frowned at the sealed gate. "But I know how he thinks when he’s cornered."

That was such a strangely calm answer that Misha almost missed how tight his grip had become around his cane. She grabbed his sleeve anyway. "I’ll look for him. You need to go."

Tobias’ gaze shifted to her face, sharp and appraising. Too sharp, perhaps, for an old merchant caught in the middle of the siege.

"You?" he asked. "You plan to go up there alone?"

Misha opened her mouth then closed it. She did not know why that question annoyed her.

"Yes," she said anyway. "I’m climbing the wall."

His eyes moved over her quickly and whatever he saw, he weighed it silently for a second before exhaling through his nose. "Then don’t waste time here."

That was not what she expected him to say.

Tobias’ jaw tightened. "His name is Kylo Stormcrow. If you see him, tell him I’ll break his legs myself if he dies before I do."

Misha stared, her eyes wide. "...What?"

That bastard was his grandson?

Of all the people in Genesis, of course it had to be him. Of course the old man she liked had to be related to the most irritating man she had ever met.

For one awful second, she wanted to ask if Tobias was absolutely sure. Maybe another Kylo, a Kylo who did not walk around like the world personally owed him applause.

This was not the time. She shoved the thought down.

"I... I know him," she said. "Unfortunately."

Something almost like amusement flickered in Tobias’ eyes and disappeared just as fast. "Then go."

She frowned. "You too!"

He did not argue immediately. He only looked once more toward the wall, toward the smoke climbing over the battlements, and toward the flashes of defensive spells going off in uneven bursts. Then he gave her a short nod. "I’ll fall back to the inner district."

"Promise?"

"Young lady," he said, slightly offended. "I am old, not foolish."

Then–

BOOM!

Another impact shook the stone under her boots.

Tobias looked toward the sound first then he stepped back from the gate. "The eastern wall won’t hold long."

Misha’s head snapped toward him. "How do you know that?"

"Genesis is my home, of course I know." He lifted his cane and gave her shoulder a light, impatient push. "Go. You’re going to look for my son, right?"

Misha pursed her lips, then gave one last nod and ran.

The stairs to the wall were already clogged with movement. Defenders pushed upward carrying quivers, javelins, spare shields, baskets of stones, and crates of hastily prepared potions. Others came down bloodied, limping, supported under the arms by comrades too exhausted to speak.

A soldier sat on one step staring blankly at the stump where his hand had been. No one had time to comfort him. Two others stepped around him and kept climbing.

「 Fear response suppressed. 」

「 Mental focus sharpened. 」

Misha grabbed a bow and quiver from a supply rack near the landing and kept going. The higher she climbed, the worse the battlefield looked.

The land outside Genesis had turned into a living stain. Hobgoblins moved in brutal lines, smashing ladders against walls while the goblins used the chance to climb.

The moment she reached the battlements, she drew.

「 Skill in Effect: Weapon Mastery」

The skill corrected her body at once. Her fingers settled properly around the string, her shoulders aligned. Her stance adjusted half a step wider. The bow stopped feeling like a borrowed object and started feeling like a tool her body almost remembered.

「 Hand stability increased. Tremors suppressed. 」

Her breathing steadied. Then she loosed her first arrow.

It dropped a goblin climbing over a pile of corpses near the base of the wall.

「 You have killed a Goblin!

EXP +3 」

Second shot.

A goblin scout with horn strapped to its chest jerked backward and vanished into the crush.

「 You have killed a Goblin!

EXP +3 」

Third shot.

Missed.

"Fuck," she swore under her breath, adjusted, and fired again.

「 You have killed a Goblin!

EXP +3 」

Around her, soldiers were dying in sharp, brutal flashes of violence.

One man took an axe to the side of the neck and went down so fast the defender beside him did not even realize he was alone until three goblins were already climbing over the body. A mage released a sheet of fire over a ladder and screamed a second later when an arrow punched into her eye. Another soldier tried to drag a wounded boy backward, only to have both of them hit by a rock hurled from below hard enough to turn bone into an afterthought.

No one had time to mourn. Death here had become a traffic problem.

Misha kept shooting as the wall shuddered beneath her feet.

「 Movement patterns detected. 」

「 Priority threats highlighted. 」

Her eyes sharpened. A ladder left of the breach where defenders were already thinning out, a goblin scout near the rear trying to raise another horn, and a hobgoblin below, not climbing, just waiting for the moment the line broke.

She shifted, fired twice, and brought down the horn-bearer before it could blow.

「 You have killed a Goblin!

EXP +3 」

Then the Goblin King moved.

The monster stooped, gripped something huge from the rubble behind it, and hurled it in a single brutal motion.

"MOVE!!!" Someone screamed.

Too late. The projectile slammed into the wall to Misha’s right with a thunderous crash.

Stone exploded inward. The section burst apart in a spray of shattered rock and dust. Defenders screamed as the impact threw them backward. Some vanished beneath the collapse entirely and another hit the stones near Misha hard enough that his face turned red and white in a way she did not want to understand.

For a moment, all she could hear was ringing.

Then the breach opened and the monsters saw it.

"Shit–"

The word barely left her before goblins surged toward the broken section.

Some defenders ran to reinforce it, others ran away from it.

The brave ones, or perhaps just the ones too stubborn or too slow to retreat, threw themselves into the gap and tried to hold it. A few managed to kill the first goblins climbing through, most got overwhelmed almost immediately.

Misha threw the bow aside and pulled her rapier free as she ran.

The breach was only a short distance away along the top of the wall, but it already felt too far. She jumped from broken stone to broken stone, boots slipping once on dust before she caught herself and pushed forward again.

「 Fear and panic suppressed. 」

The panic in her chest flattened just enough for her to move.

The first goblin she saw that met her gaze lunged at her. She stepped in and drove the blade into its throat.

「 You have killed a Goblin!

EXP +3 」

A second came right after it. She slashed across its face, ducked beneath a jagged spear, and thrust upward under its jaw.

「 You have killed a Goblin!

EXP +3 」

Her body moved fast now, far faster than it once had, but the breach gave her almost no room to use that speed properly. Bodies jammed together, defenders stumbled over rubble, and blood made the broken stone slick underfoot.

Someone screamed just behind her. She looked back for half a second and saw a goblin bite into a woman’s arm while another hacked at her side with a rusted knife. The woman dropped, and two more monsters poured over her before she even hit the ground fully.

Misha’s stomach twisted.

「 Shock reduced. 」

「 Motor control maintained. 」

A Hobgoblin came charging through the breach. Its boots crushed loose stone underfoot, its axe came up high enough to split Misha and the defender beside her in one swing. Then men around her faltered. One actually stepped backward and another raised his shield too late.

「 Trajectory predicted. Dodge window: 0.8 seconds. 」

Misha shifted her stance–

Swoosh!

An arrow flew in from somewhere above and buried itself deep in the Hobgoblin’s skull.

The monster staggered, took one more heavy step, then collapsed forward into the rubble.

Misha blinked and looked up.

On the roofline above, balanced in the middle of disaster like it was simply another place that had the misfortune of containing him, Kylo stood with his bow in hand.

He looked down at her and smirked. "Oops," he called lazily over the screams and steel. "Looks like I stole that one."