Chapter 38: The Tower Beckons
There are buildings in this world that make you feel seen.
Not in the comforting, cozy, cup-of-tea kind of way. No. I mean the kind of "seen" that makes your skin itch. The kind that makes your ancestors shift in their graves and mutter, "Don’t go in there, darling, that place smells like regret."
The Tower of Sin was that kind of building.
It loomed at the end of the road like a broken god’s middle finger, round, jagged, and crumbling, yet somehow still standing through sheer malevolence and structural spite. Stone cracked like sunburnt skin. Windows wept black condensation. Vines choked the lower levels like the place had tried to strangle itself.
And yet, despite the rot, despite the air that felt like it was tasting you, there was an undeniable... pull.
"Looks like it could collapse any second," Miko said, adjusting his crimson shirt and flicking a stray bit of ash from his sleeve. "Charming. I love when architecture flirts with death."
"Looks like a haunted phallus," Willow said cheerfully.
Leo said nothing. His eyes were on the tower. Wide. Quiet. Alert. Like an animal approaching something very, very wrong.
As for me? I was busy feeling watched.
Dozens of eyes. Maybe more. Hidden in cracks, behind illusory walls, above in shattered spires. They pressed against my skin like cold fingertips, skimming under my collar and coiling around my spine.
"Mmm," I hummed, adjusting my gloves. "We’re being observed."