The corridor went on for what felt like hours.

Kael walked with one hand trailing along the wall — partly for balance, partly because the warmth of the living stone was the only comfort in this place. The blue light pulsed in slow waves, and if he timed his breathing to match, the panic stayed manageable.

He tried to organize what he knew. Not much.

He was inside something called the Tower — at least, that's what the whisper had implied. His village was gone. The ritual had failed. Everyone was dead, or worse. And somehow, he'd ended up here, on the first floor of a structure that seemed to be alive.

The Shard in his pocket hummed faintly. Maren's guilt, crystallized into a walnut-sized gem. When he touched it, he could feel the old man's emotions — not as memories exactly, but as physical sensations. A weight on the shoulders. A tightness in the throat. The specific ache of regret that comes from knowing you could have done differently.

Kael had spent three years as Maren's apprentice healer. He'd ground herbs, mixed poultices, stitched wounds by candlelight while the old man talked about the nature of pain. "Pain is information," Maren used to say. "Listen to it. Let it teach you."

The irony of holding Maren's pain in his pocket was not lost on him.

The corridor opened into a wider space — a landing of sorts, where the walls pulled back to form a small chamber. The ceiling here was higher, maybe twenty feet, and in the center of the floor was a carved symbol: a circle with a vertical line through it.

A resting point between floors.

Kael didn't know how he knew that. The knowledge simply *appeared*, like a word remembered in a dream. The Tower taught its climbers. Whether they wanted to learn or not.

He sat against the wall, pulling his knees to his chest. His feet were bloody — the stone floors were rough, and his bare soles had taken the punishment. He tore a strip from the bottom of his shirt and wrapped the worst of the cuts. Maren would have had a salve for this. Comfrey and beeswax, warmed between the palms.

Maren was dead.

Kael closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to his knees.

*Don't think about it. Not yet. Survive first. Grieve later.*

A sound broke the silence. Not the building's breathing — this was different. Footsteps. Fast, uneven, getting closer.

Kael was on his feet before he'd made a conscious decision. He pressed against the wall, eyes on the corridor entrance to his left. The footsteps grew louder, accompanied by heavy breathing and — was that cursing?

A figure burst into the chamber.

She was tall — nearly as tall as him — with dark hair shorn close to the skull on one side and hanging in matted tangles on the other. Her clothes were leather and canvas, patched in a dozen places, and she carried a short sword in her right hand. Her left arm hung at her side, soaked in blood from a gash that ran from shoulder to elbow.

She saw Kael and the sword came up.

"Don't move."

Her voice was hoarse, ragged. Her eyes — gray, sharp, furious — locked onto him with the intensity of someone who had been betrayed recently and often.

"I'm not—" Kael raised his hands. "I'm not a threat."

"Everyone in this cursed Tower is a threat." She took a step closer, sword steady despite the blood dripping from her arm. "Who are you? What floor are you on?"

"My name is Kael. I just — I woke up here. I think I'm on the first floor. Or between floors. I don't —" He stopped. She was wavering on her feet, the blood loss catching up with her. "You're wounded."

"Brilliant observation."

"I'm a healer. Or I was. Let me look at your arm."

She stared at him. The sword didn't lower.

"I was a healer," he said again, softer. "In my village. Before all this. I don't have my supplies, but I can at least stop the bleeding."

Something shifted in her eyes. Not trust — not yet — but a calculation. She was weighing the risk of letting a stranger close against the risk of bleeding out alone.

"Try anything," she said, "and I'll take your hand off."

"Understood."

---

Her name was Sera. She told him that much while he tore more strips from his shirt and bound her arm. The wound was deep — something with claws had caught her — but clean. No jagged edges, no signs of poison. He could work with that.

"How long have you been climbing?" he asked, tying the bandage tight. She hissed through her teeth but didn't flinch.

"Three years. On and off." She flexed her fingers experimentally. "I've been to Floor 15. Came back down. Going up again."

Kael's hands stilled. "You can go *back down*?"

"Sometimes. The Tower lets you leave between certain floors. There are rest stations — like this one, but bigger. Markets, even. Other climbers." She studied his face. "You really are new, aren't you."

"I don't even know how I got in."

"Nobody does. You're alive, and you're inside. That's all that matters. The Tower chose you." She sheathed her sword, wincing as the motion pulled at her bandaged arm. "Or you stumbled into it. Same result."

"There are others?"

"Hundreds. Maybe thousands — nobody knows the real number. Climbers, we call ourselves. Some go up. Some stay on the lower floors and build little camps. Some go mad." She looked at him with something close to pity. "Most go mad."

Kael thought of the whisper. The breathing walls. The village that wasn't.

"I can hear it," he said. "The Tower. It talks to me."

Sera went still.

"What did you say?"

"The Tower. It whispers. When I was on the first floor, it spoke to me directly. Called me by name. And when I picked up the Shard —" he pulled the crystal from his pocket. It glowed faintly in his palm. "I heard it again. It said 'welcome' and told me to climb."

Sera stared at the Shard, then at him. Her expression was unreadable, but her jaw had tightened.

"Most people can't hear it clearly until Floor 10," she said slowly. "Some never hear it at all. And you're hearing it on Floor 1."

"Is that bad?"

She didn't answer immediately. Instead, she stood, testing her balance. The color was returning to her face — good. The bleeding had stopped.

"It's unusual," she said finally. "And in this Tower, unusual gets you killed or noticed. Both are dangerous."

She crossed the chamber to the opposite corridor — the one leading upward, toward Floor 2. She paused at the entrance and looked back at him.

"You coming?"

Kael blinked. "What?"

"Floor 2 is a flooded cathedral. Something lives in the water. I've done it before, but not with one good arm." She raised her bandaged limb. "I need a partner. You need someone who knows what they're doing. It's practical."

"You just held a sword to my face."

"And you just bandaged my arm. We're even." The ghost of a smile crossed her lips — brief, gone before it settled. "Don't make me ask twice."

---

Kael followed her into the corridor. It sloped upward, the walls growing damper, the blue light taking on a greenish tinge. The smell of water — standing, ancient, deep — rose to meet them.

"Rules," Sera said without looking back. "First: don't touch the water unless I say so. Second: don't look at the reflections. Third: if something grabs you, cut it loose. Don't pull — that just gets you dragged under faster."

"I don't have a weapon."

She unsheathed a knife from her belt and tossed it to him, handle-first. He caught it awkwardly.

"You do now." She glanced at his bare feet. "When we get to a rest station, we'll find you boots. Climbing barefoot is suicide past Floor 5."

The corridor opened, and Kael's breath left him.

A cathedral. Massive — the ceiling lost in shadow hundreds of feet above, supported by columns of pale marble that rose from black water like the bones of a drowned giant. Stained glass windows lined the walls, but the images were *moving* — shadows that shifted and swam within the colored panes. And the water — dark, still, stretching from wall to wall — reflected everything with an impossible clarity.

Too much clarity. Kael could see himself in the surface, and his reflection smiled when he did not.

"Eyes forward," Sera said, stepping onto a narrow stone walkway that ran along the right wall, barely a foot above the water. "Follow the path. Don't stop."

Kael tore his gaze from the water and followed.

Every step echoed through the cathedral — a sound too large for the small noise of feet on stone. The columns loomed on either side like silent sentinels. Between them, in the water, something moved. Not ripples — the water was perfectly still. But beneath the surface, shapes glided with slow, deliberate purpose.

Long. Pale. Patient.

"Sera," Kael whispered. "What's in the water?"

"Drowners." Her voice was flat, controlled. "They're echoes. People who tried to cross by swimming. The Tower keeps them. Uses their shapes. Don't listen if they call your name."

As if summoned by her words, a voice drifted up from the dark water.

*"Kael."*

His mother's voice.

He stopped walking. His foot hung over the edge of the walkway, inches from the surface.

*"Kael, sweetheart. I'm down here. Come find me."*

His mother had died when he was seven. Fever. He barely remembered her face — just warmth, a song hummed in the dark, the smell of lavender.

"Don't." Sera's hand closed on his arm, iron-strong despite the wound. "It's not her. The Tower knows what you've lost. That's all it is — a lure."

Kael stared at the water. Just below the surface, a face looked up at him — gentle, smiling, arms reaching.

"I know," he said. His voice cracked. "I know it's not real."

But he stood there for another three heartbeats before he could make himself move.

Sera didn't mock him. She didn't say anything at all. She just held his arm until he was ready, and then they walked on together, through the cathedral of echoes, toward the second door.