Floor 17 was a sky made solid.

The plain was endless — or seemed so — but the stars above weren't decoration. They were alive. Each one a point of light that pulsed with Shard energy, suspended in the dark like lanterns hung from invisible threads. And as Kael walked, the stars moved with him. Tracking. Adjusting. As if recalibrating.

"They're not stars," Kael said. "They're Shards. Thousands of them."

"Shards in the sky?" Reed tilted his head back. "How do we reach them?"

"We don't." Kael focused his Ashsight upward. The star-Shards weren't scattered randomly — they formed patterns. Constellations. And within each constellation, one Shard burned brighter than the rest. "They're a map. Each constellation represents a floor — above us. The brightest Shard in each pattern marks something important."

"Important how?" Pike asked.

"I don't know yet. But —" He traced the patterns with his finger, connecting the dots. Seven constellations. Each with a centerpoint that burned not gold, not blue, but *white* — pure, neutral, the color of nothing and everything.

Seven white stars.

"Those are them," Kael breathed. "The seven mage Shards. My mother wrote about them — the seven mages who created the Tower during the Collapse. Their Shards are the key to the backdoor."

"Can you tell which floors they're on?" Sera stepped beside him, following his gaze.

"Some. The first white star corresponds to... Floor 19. The second is Floor 22. But the others —" He squinted. The constellations beyond the third grew dim, scrambled, as if the Tower were deliberately blurring them. "I can only see clearly up to Floor 25. Past that, the map distorts."

"The Tower is hiding them," Pike said.

"Not hiding. *Protecting*. It doesn't want the seven Shards collected," Kael said. "My mother figured that out. The Tower's biggest fear isn't climbers reaching the top — it's climbers finding the backdoor and locking the seal permanently. Because if the seal is locked —"

"— the Tower dies," Sera finished.

"Not dies. Goes dormant. Stops growing. Stops feeding on climbers. Stops needing a heart." Kael lowered his eyes from the star map. "The Tower is made of consumed lives. Thousands of them. If it goes dormant, those lives — those Shards — could potentially be released."

The implication hit the group like a wave.

"Torren," Sera whispered.

"And everyone else the Tower has taken," Mora added. "Every climber absorbed into the walls for the last century."

---

They camped beneath the star map. No fire — the star-Shards provided enough light, a cool blue-white glow that made everything look crystalline. Kael sat apart from the group, studying the patterns, committing them to memory.

*"The first mage Shard is on Floor 19,"* Ghost said. *"That's three floors up. The second pattern points to Floor 22. After that... I can feel distortion. The Tower is actively scrambling the information above Floor 25."*

"You can feel the distortion?"

*"I'm part of the walls, remember. When the Tower scrambles something, I feel it — like static in my bones. Or whatever passes for bones now."*

"Ghost — Torren." Kael hesitated. "Have you told Sera? That you're her brother?"

A long, heavy silence.

*"I don't know if I am her brother. I know I have fragments of him. Memories. Feelings. The pendant. The name. But — am I Torren Voss? Or am I a copy? A reconstruction the Tower made from what it consumed?"*

"Does it matter?"

*"It matters to Sera. If I tell her I'm Torren and I'm wrong — if I'm just an echo, a trick the Tower uses to keep her climbing — that would destroy her more than anything the Tower could do."*

"And if you don't tell her and she finds out later?"

*"Then it destroys her differently."*

Kael looked across the camp at Sera. She sat alone, sharpening her sword — the rhythmic scrape of stone on steel a familiar sound by now. Her pendant hung loose, catching starlight.

"She already suspects," Kael said. "After what you said in the library — the pendant, the name. She knows."

*"Suspecting and knowing are different things. Suspecting keeps you climbing. Knowing either breaks you or sets you free."*

"Then we let her decide when she's ready."

---

They reached the transition point on the second day. The plain ended at a wall — not a barrier, but a cliff face, smooth and dark, stretching up and out of sight. Carved into the rock: stairs. Spiraling upward, narrow, barely wide enough for one person.

"Floor 18," Pike announced, consulting the worn leather journal she'd carried since her first climb. "Three more to Floor 19. Where the first mage Shard should be."

"Should be," Reed echoed. "What if it's not?"

"Then we keep climbing and look on Floor 22." Pike shouldered her spear. "The Tower doesn't make things easy, but it does make things *findable*. That's its nature — it's a test, and tests have answers."

They climbed. Spiral stairs, steep and narrow. The star-Shard sky faded above them as the ceiling closed in. Floor 18 opened into a corridor — dark, warm, smelling of iron and old stone. Kael's Ashsight mapped it: a long passage, branching at regular intervals, like a nervous system.

"This floor is different," he said. "The branches — they each lead to a pocket. Like rooms. And in each room —"

He paused. Focused.

"Each room contains a construct. A personal construct — like Floor 10's identity tests. But these are more complex. Each construct is designed for a specific climber."

"Meaning each of us faces our own test," Sera said.

"Alone." Kael nodded. "The corridors branch but they don't reconnect until the exit. Once you enter a branch, you can't come back."

Pike looked at the group. Five branches. Five climbers.

"This is the Tower's way of breaking us apart," she said. "Separating the group. Making us face something alone."

"We've faced things alone before," Mora said quietly. "We'll face them again."

Pike looked at each of them — Reed with his crossbow, Mora with her quiet strength, Sera with her steel and grief, Kael with his Shards and his mother's voice. Her group. Not the ones she'd started with — those were gone, lost to the Tower — but hers nonetheless.

"One rule," Pike said. "Don't die. That's all. Face whatever the Tower shows you, survive it, and meet me at the exit." She paused. "And if you hear someone screaming — keep going. Because the Tower uses screams the way fishermen use bait."

No one spoke.

Then Reed — quiet, steady Reed — said: "See you on the other side."

One by one, they entered their branches. Mora first, disappearing into the left-most corridor without a backward glance. Reed second, nodding to Pike. Pike third, spear ready, jaw set.

Sera paused at her branch. Looked at Kael.

"If Ghost talks to you in there," she said, "tell him — tell him Sera says she knows. And it doesn't change anything."

Kael's throat tightened. "I will."

She vanished into the dark.

Kael stood alone at the last branch. The corridor yawned before him — darker than the others, deeper, the walls pulsing faintly with gold light. His mother's color.

*"Ready?"* Ghost asked.

"No."

*"Good. The Tower trusts readiness. It distrusts fear. You should do the opposite."*

Kael smiled — thin, crooked, the first real smile in days — and stepped into the dark.

The corridor swallowed him. And behind, the junction sealed shut, stone flowing like water, cutting off retreat.

Floor 18 had begun.

And somewhere above — on Floor 19, in a room that no climber had entered in twenty years — a Shard that was older than the Tower itself waited. Patient. Ancient. Carrying the memory of a mage who had given everything to build a seal against the dark.

It had been waiting for the right person.

It hoped this one was ready.