Awakener's Guide to Climbing the Tower

A sharpened shovel lay several feet from a doorway of the room, its wooden handle split near the grip and the metal blade bent almost completely half as if someone stepped on it with impossible weight.

Misha’s eyes caught on it first. Then the body beneath the broken floorboards.

Her breath stopped when she saw the old man lay where something had driven him into the floor with enough force to crack the boards beneath his back. One leg disappeared beneath fallen timber. His arm had twisted at an angle no living joint should hold, fingers still curled around empty air as though even after the shovel had been knocked from his grasp, his body had refused to accept that the fighting was over.

Her throat tightened and slowly, she forced her gaze away.

Lysa lay farther inside, one arm stretched toward the rear passage, palm down against the blood-blackened floor, her fingers extended as if she had been trying to reach something, or someone, when she died. Her dark coat had torn open along one side. The lower half of her body was gone beneath a section of collapsed stone and splintered furniture. Enough blood had dried beneath her to turn the cracks between the floorboards nearly black.

Misha’s stomach turned. Lysa had been facing the entrance. Whatever had come through that door, she had seen it coming and she had stood her ground. That realization hurt more than she expected.

Lysa had been exhausted when they met, frightened, and maybe even half-straved. She had looked like someone who had spent too many days surviving by refusing to stop moving.

Then her eyes drifted farther into the room. The makeshift door they had used to carry Carl’s mother had split down the middle. One half had been crushed beneath fallen debris while the other remained tilted against a broken support beam.

Carl’s mother was still strapped to it. The blanket Misha remembered had slipped halfway down her body and one hand hung limp over the broken edge of the wood. Her head had fallen to the side, black hair covering part of her face.

For several seconds, Misha did not move. The ruined Kiln House seemed to pull away from her.

The wind outside disappeared, even Alaric’s presence several steps behind her dissolved from awareness. Twinfang felt weightless in her hands.

Three bodies. Her gaze moved across the room again. The old man, Lysa, and Carl’s mother. Three. There was no small body, no boy with swollen eyes and a kitchen knife. Carl was nowhere to be seen. That should have been the first thing she focused on but it wasn’t.

Instead, one thought slipped quietly into her head. ’I sent them here.’

Misha’s fingers loosened around Twinfang as the thought came again, only louder. ’I sent them here.’

She had told them to run. She had told Lysa to mark the walls, to stay low, told Carl to watch his mother’s breathing and keep her steady until she came back.

His face returned with cruel clarity. Wet cheeks and a red nose rubbed raw. He had that ridiculous little kitchen knife hanging from his belt like carrying it somehow made his age old enough to protect his mother.

"Are you coming?"

"Yes."

"You promise?"

Misha had refused to promise because some part of her had known that promises did not control monsters and it did not guarantee survival. Promises did not change probabilities. And most of all, a promise was not an armor. But Carl... he had looked at her like the difference between ’yes’ and ’I promise’ mattered. As if a promise from an adult could still force the world to behave.

Misha swallowed, her throat hurt. "I..."

The word died as she took one step toward Lysa. The room tilted strangely around her. Misha tried to keep moving but she couldn’t bring herself to take another step. Something hollow opened beneath her chest and swallowed the air from her lungs.

’Again...’

Jules, Nyxie, Gerbaut, and Tobias. All of them were someone standing one second and gone the next. People she had watched fall because she had not been fast enough, strong enough, and clever enough. Every time she thought she finally understood how cruel this place could be, and every time she thought she had improved enough to stop making the same mistakes, the Tower found another way to correct her.

And then there were the three she still had no answers for. Astrid, Caius, and Hiiro.

Misha closed her eyes. She had told herself separating had been the sensible choice. Caius was careful enough to think before charging into danger, Astrid noticed things most people missed, and Hiiro... he was reckless, loud, ridiculous, and somehow far harder to kill than anyone with his personality had any right to be.

’They’ll be fine.’ That was what she had told herself. She had believed it because the alternative was unbearable.

Then yesterday, something locked inside one of the houses had called her name. A voice that should not have known it.

She had walked away because she knew that opening a marked door in a city full of corpses that could imitate people was stupid. She had made that logical decision.

Logic did not stop her stomach from turning now. ’What if it was one of them?’

Her breathing shortened at the thought of that. What if Hiiro had been trapped behind the door? What if Astrid had been calling for her? What if Caius had already died somewhere in Exodus and the thing behind the door had simply been replaying the last scraps of his voice?

Misha bent forward slightly. Her grip tightened around Twinfang until the handles pressed painfully into her palm.

She had sent them forward. She had assumed they would be fine because they were capable... As though capable people did not die. Capability was not immunity.

’I sent those kids here.’ Her breathing hitched.

And now... Lysa, the old man, and Carl’s mother. They were people who had trusted her because she had looked like she knew what she was doing.

Misha lowered her head. "I..." Her voice sounded wrong, smaller than it should have. "I-I should have gone with them."

Alaric stood several paces away and for once, he said nothing. He noticed the way her body trembled so he began walking toward her.

"I-I should’ve taken them myself..." The words came faster now, one following another before she could stop them. "I... I could have fought it..."

Her voice trembled. Misha hated that. She hated the weakness in it and hated the way her chest tightened harder every time she tried to force herself under control.

Her heart slammed against her chest, too fast and too hard. "I-I told them this place was safe..."

No, that was not exactly what happened. She had asked if it could be secured and Lysa said yes. That distinction did not matter to the part of Misha currently tearing itself apart.

Pressing her lips together, her eyes burned behind the mask.

’No. Not here.’ She shouldn’t cry in front of a stranger, in front of anyone else. She would not–

Her next breath failed halfway, then the next came too quickly. Her lungs started working against her. She barely noticed when Twinfang slipped from her fingers, the daggers clattering loudly against the floor.

Then Alaric reached her first, his hands closed around her upper arms.

She resisted instinctively. "Don’t–"

"Shana." He turned her toward him. "Look at me."

"L-let go–"

"Look at me." His hands moved before she could wrench herself free. His palms settled against either side of the white mask as he held her, forcing the white mask toward him without trying to remove it from her face. It was not hard, but just firmly enough that looking anywhere else would require choosing to fight him.

"Shana." His voice had changed completely. The theatrical warmth disappeared. "Look at me."

Misha tried but her vision kept slipping past him toward the bodies.

"Just me," Alaric said, his voice sharpened just enough to catch her. "Nothing else."

Her breathing came too quickly, each inhale shallower than the last. Air went in and somehow, none of it felt like enough. Her fingers had started tingling, then going numb.

"Look at me." Alaric lowered his head slightly until his eyes filled most of her vision. His voice stayed steady. "Just my eyes and my voice, sweetheart. Nothing behind me matters for the next ten seconds."

Her gaze jerked upward. Blue. His eyes were blue, like the deep water under daylight.

"Good." His thumbs remained still against the edge of the mask. "Stay here with me."

She dragged in another breath but it was too much, it caught halfway and broke into a tremor.

"Not so deep." He slightly shook his head once. "Don’t force it. Just follow mine."

Then he breathed in slowly himself, giving her something to follow. "In."

Misha tried to match him. The first attempt failed halfway.

"That’s fine," he said softly. There was no frustration or pity in his eyes, just instruction. "In."

She breathed.

"Hold it." His eyes never left hers. "Now out."

Misha exhaled shakily, her shoulders trembled.

"Good, good. Now again, in."

She followed. Her lungs still burned but this time the breath actually left instead of catching in her chest.

「 Fear and panic suppressed. 」

The effect came gradually, not magic wiping her emotions away. The body’s alarm being turned down from deafening to survivable. Her heartbeat remained fast, but it stopped accelerating. The numbness in her fingers receded and her vision steadied as the room around her stopped tilting.

Sounds returned one by one. Wood creaking overhead, Alaric’s breathing, and her own. The cold prickling beneath her skin faded.

Misha swallowed slowly.

"There, that’s better," he murmured. Only after her breathing settled did he move one hand away to adjust the edge of her hood where it had shifted. It was a strangely gentle gesture from a man who had nonstop annoyed her since last night.

"Now listen to me."

Her eyes remained fixed on him as she took in more slow breaths.

"What happened to them is not your fault. Those hinges were torn outward. Something came here after they arrived."

Misha knew that, she had seen it, her mind had seen that. Her guilt had simply refused to.

"There are three bodies. How many survivors are we supposed to meet?"

Her mind stalled, then her expression shifted. She spun around so quickly the cloak snapped behind her. "Carl?"

She crossed the ruined room. "CARL!"