Awakener's Guide to Climbing the Tower

Kylo noticed the blood too and his face changed. "No."

Tobias ignored him. The earth golem’s arm swung once, a brutal backhand that smashed against the Goblin King hard enough to send it skidding through the wreckage of a burning house. Stone groaned, charred beams snapped, and the whole ruined frame collapsed around the beast in a burst of fire and dust.

Then Tobias clenched one hand and the ground answered.

Jagged walls of stone shot up around the Goblin King, cornering it in a rising prison of broken earth and shattered road. The creature roared and slammed both fists against the barricade at once, cracks racing through the rock like lightning through glass.

Only then did Tobias turn his head slightly, toward Kylo.

The arrogance was gone from Kylo’s face now. What was left looked younger than Misha had ever seen him, just like a frightened boy.

"I said that’s enough," Tobias repeated.

"I’m not leaving you here!" Kylo snapped. His voice broke halfway through and he seemed to hate that more than anything. "We can still hold them!"

"We can’t," Tobias said, knowing that he was at his limits.

Kylo gritted his teeth so hard the muscles in his face jumped. "I’m not leaving you!"

The Goblin King exploded out of the stone prison. Rock burst outward in a violent spray, one chunk flew past Kylo’s shoulder, another slammed into the ground hard enough to send dust up around their legs.

Tobias’ stone shell was breaking faster now. Blood kept slipping through the cracks in places where stone should have hidden it, thin at first, then more, tracing bright lines down the earth wrapped around his body.

He knew it.

If it was his prime, the battlefield would have looked different. A Goblin King would have been something he crushed, not something that dragged old wounds back to surface.

He had not retired because of age. He had retired because his body had already broken somewhere far earlier in his life, in battles old enough to have become legends in other people’s mouths and scars in his own bones. He was still powerful, still monstrous in a way ordinary people could barely understand. But the body carrying that power had limits now and it was reaching him.

Kylo took one furious step forward.

A hand made of earth erupted from the street and caught him around the waist.

His breath punched out of him. "What the– Let me go!"

"Father!" Kylo shouted.

The word tore out of him too late.

Everything went still for one ugly, aching beat. Even the screams seemed farther away for a second. The screams, the fire, the goblins, even the Goblin King battering against the reshaped street–

All of it dimmed beneath that one word.

Tobias’ mouth curved, small and tired.

"So you’re finally calling me that now, huh?"

Kylo looked like he had been struck harder by that than by the hand of earth gripping him.

"Don’t do this..." The fight in his voice cracked apart. "Please..."

It was the please that did it. Not the word father. That please.

It stripped the rest of him away. The usual pride and mockery. Underneath it all, there was only a son who had run out of ways to sound unaffected.

Tobias coughed. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth now, bright against his beard. His body was already worn, not just from this battle, not just from today, but from all the old ones he had survived long enough. This was a body that had already given the world more than it should have been asked for.

The Goblin King roared again.

Tobias’ smile faded. Then his eyes landed on the floating black cat first. "It’s been a while, King."

King went still in the air. Then, he bowed his head once. [It has, Mountain Walker nyauh.]

Both Misha and Gerbaut looked at him.

Mountain Walker?

The name hit like another blow.

The man who had helped shape Genesis itself. The name people said like a piece of old stone history, the one who had reached heights in the Tower few could even imagine.

Tobias looked back at Gerbaut who was stilll possessing Misha’s body. "This may be too much to ask, but... I’ll leave my boy to you."

Kylo made a strangled sound of disbelief. "Excuse me?!"

Tobias ignored him completely.

Misha could not answer, her throat had closed too tightly for words. Even if she wanted to say something, she was outside of her body.

He stepped closer. As he did, the earth golem around him began to shrink away in chunks, crumbling from his body in slabs and dust until he stood once more as only a man in old bloodied clothes with a cane in one hand and blood at his mouth. He looked frailer and somehow even more immovable.

He came close enough to reach Misha’s body. His rough hand came up and rested for a second on the top of her head, warm and heavy and terribly gentle for a battlefield.

Something flashed in his eyes then. Regret.

"I’m sorry..."

"H-huh?"

"Your brother... I–"

"GRAAAAH!!!"

The Goblin King bellowed, and the street shook hard enough to split the moment apart.

Tobias shut his eyes for the briefest second. When he opened them again, there was no time left in them for unfinished sentences.

He raised his cane and a massive wall of stone surged from the earth between the inner district and the ruined stretch of Genesis behind them. It was not a barricade but another wall, smooth in some places, jagged in others, thick enough that goblins caught too close were crushed inside it before they could even finish screaming.

It kept rising, higher and longer, sealing the breach district from the city proper, forcing the flood of monsters back toward the broken wall and the Goblin King still hammering against the earth Tobias bent to his will.

Dust rolled over them in a hot choking wave. When it cleared enough for Misha to see again, Tobias was already walking forward.

"Leave."

A small opening formed in the wall behind them, just enough for the remaining humans to run through to safety.

"I’m not leaving you here!" Kylo screamed, struggling violently against the hand of earth.

"Very well," Tobias said.

"Father!" This time the word came out ragged and desperate enough to tear.

Tobias did not turn around. He only said, "Take that voice with you. I’d rather hear it again another day."

Kylo froze at his words.

Misha saw it happen on his face. For one naked second, she saw a child’s helplessness in a grown body. A son hearing love in the shape of farewell and having no weapon against it.

His bow slipped from his fingers and hit the stone. He did not seem to notice it.

"Don’t..." he said, but the word barely existed. "Don’t make this the last thing."

The stone hand tightened and began moving toward the opening.

"FATHER!!"

Tobias kept walking.

The Goblin King charged through smoke and broken stone toward him like a moving collapse of flesh and rage.

The wind rose suddenly behind Misha’s body, a familiar rush.

Then a force wrapped around her from behind and yanked her backward across the broken street.

Gerbaut closed his eyes in understanding.

「 〔SYSTEM NOTICE〕

The Taurus Constellation Soul has chosen to relinquish control.

Ending Possession... 」

Misha slammed back into her body hard enough to stagger. She twisted enough to nearly lose footing and caught sight of Elyes beyond the opening, his staff outstretched, wind magic spiraling around him as he dragged her in.

"No! Wait!"

Kylo dug his heels into the broken street, trying to wrench free of both the stone grip and the pull of the collapsing situation around him. It did not matter. The earth kept moving him backward. The opening waited behind them like a wound in the wall.

"Let me go!" He snarled, and the sound came out half-feral. "Damn it! Let me go!"

He looked at Tobias again. And then, horribly, his face broke. Not with tears, not yet. With the effort of not having them. He looked stripped down the bones like a son being dragged away while his father chose a battlefield over another tomorrow.

Misha hated seeing it because there was nothing she could do. Tobias had already chosen. Some decisions happened so completely that the people left behind were allowed only to suffer them.

Tobias finally looked back once but to her instead of his son. "Misha," he said, his voice carried even over the battle. "Never trust anyone from the Four Families."

Then the wind tore her through the opening.

By then, most of the other survivors had already stumbled through.

Tobias raised his cane one final time.

The opening sealed. Stone closed over the last gap between them.

The final thing Misha saw before the wall became complete was Tobias’ back as he faced the monsters alone, earth gathering around him once more while the Goblin King charged through smoke and fire to meet him.

Then even that disappeared. Only the wall remained.

Kylo hit it a second later with both hands. The impact made dust jump from the stone.

"Open!"

He struck it again. Then again, like if he hit hard enough, the mountain might remember it had once been his father and choose to answer.

"Open it!" His voice shredded at the edges. "Do you hear me?! Open this!"

The wall did not move, it did not crack. It only stood there, immense and final and pitiless in the way all true walls were.

Kylo pressed his forehead against it at last, one hand splayed over the stone as if hoping he could feel something through it. His shoulders shook once. Only once. He made no sound for several seconds.

When he finally spoke, it was so low. "You said I could call you that later..."

Kylo’s fingers curled against the stone until his knuckles whitened.

"You old bastard," he whispered, and now his voice did shake. "Y... you don’t get to leave after making me say it..."

No answer came. Only the wall.

And on the wrong side of it, a father chose to stay where his son could not follow.