Floor 4 was a courtyard.

Not the twisted, corrupted spaces Kael had come to expect. This was... ordinary. Stone walls, a central fountain — dry — and a sky above that looked almost real. Almost blue. Almost normal.

"Don't trust it," Sera said, sword drawn, eyes scanning every shadow.

They stood at the entrance, the door behind them already sealed. The courtyard was maybe fifty yards across, ringed by a low wall. Beyond the wall — nothing. Not darkness, not light. Just an absence of anything, as if the world ended at the courtyard's edge.

In the center, by the fountain, a figure sat on a stone bench.

It looked human. Tall, thin, dressed in climbing gear not unlike Sera's — leather and canvas, patched and worn. Its head was bowed, hands folded in its lap. Perfectly still.

"That's it," Sera whispered. "The Warden."

Kael studied the figure. It didn't breathe. Didn't move. But he could *feel* it — a pressure in his skull, like someone pressing their thumb against the inside of his forehead. And beneath the pressure, the Whispers stirred.

*"He's been waiting for you."*

The figure raised its head.

---

It had no face.

Not blank — not smooth skin or a mask. Simply *no face*. Where features should have been, there was a shifting, liquid surface, like mercury trapped in the shape of a skull. And in that surface, reflections moved — faces cycling through one after another, each one lasting only a heartbeat.

An old woman. A child. A soldier with half his jaw missing. A girl with flowers in her hair.

And then — Elder Maren.

Kael's breath stopped.

Maren's face stared out from the Warden's head — tired, sad, familiar. The same face Kael had seen every day for three years. The same face that had led the ritual that killed everyone he loved.

"Sit," the Warden said. Its voice was Maren's too — deep, careful, measured. "We need to talk."

Sera's sword came up. "Don't listen to it—"

"Wait." Kael put his hand on her arm. He didn't know why, but something in the Warden's posture — the slope of its borrowed shoulders, the way Maren's hands had always folded just so — felt *wrong* in a way that was almost right. "Let me try."

Sera's jaw clenched, but she lowered the sword. "If it attacks, I'm cutting it in half."

Kael walked forward. Ten steps. Twenty. He stopped three paces from the bench and sat on the fountain's edge. The stone was cold — real cold, physical cold, not the psychic chill of the Tower's tricks.

The Warden watched him with Maren's eyes.

"You absorb Shards," it said. Not a question. "Three so far. You hear the Whispers. You survived the mirror forest without losing yourself." A pause. "These are not normal things."

"Nothing in this Tower is normal."

"True." The face shifted — Maren dissolved into a woman Kael didn't recognize, then into his own face, younger and softer. Then back to Maren. "I have a question for you, Kael Ashvane. Answer honestly, and you may proceed. Lie, and you start again."

"What's the question?"

The Warden leaned forward. Maren's eyes — but behind them, something vast and ancient looked out.

"Why are you climbing?"

---

Kael opened his mouth. Closed it.

Why *was* he climbing? He hadn't chosen to enter the Tower. He'd woken up here. He didn't have Sera's quest — no brother to find, no revenge to pursue. He was just... moving upward. Because there was nothing else to do. Because the Tower only goes one direction.

"I don't know," he said.

The Warden tilted its head. The face shifted again — his mother, briefly. Then Maren.

"That is the most common answer," it said. "And it is not enough."

"Then what answer do you want?"

"I want the truth. Not what you think I want to hear. Not what sounds brave or noble or pitiable." The Warden stood — taller than Maren had been, its body stretching, proportions shifting. "Every climber who reaches me says the same things. *I want power. I want revenge. I want to find someone. I want to escape.* These are reasons. But they are not *why*."

It circled him. Kael stayed still, tracking it by sound — the soft scuff of boots on stone, the whisper of fabric.

"Why do you climb, Kael?"

He closed his eyes. Thought about it. Really thought.

Not about Maren. Not about the ritual. Not about his mother or the Whispers or the Shards or Sera's brother. Stripped all of that away. What was left?

A boy who woke up in a room made of living stone, with nothing — no shoes, no tools, no purpose — and walked toward the only door he could find.

"Because the door was there," he said. "And I opened it."

Silence.

He opened his eyes. The Warden had stopped moving. Its face — all faces at once now, layered on top of each other like transparencies — regarded him.

"That," it said, quietly, "is the first honest answer I've heard in a very long time."

The courtyard changed. The walls retreated, the fountain filled with clear water, and a door appeared on the far side — iron-banded, serpent handle. The exit.

But between Kael and the door, the Warden stood. And now it turned to Sera.

---

Sera met the Warden's gaze with her sword raised and her teeth bared.

"My turn?"

The Warden's face shifted one final time. And the face it wore — Kael saw Sera flinch, a full-body reaction she couldn't control.

"Cade," she whispered.

The Warden looked at her with her brother's face — young, seventeen, hair dark and messy, eyes gray like hers. Smiling. The smile of someone who trusted the world completely.

"Why are you climbing, Sera Voss?"

"You know why." Her voice shook. "I'm finding my brother."

"Your brother is gone." Not cruel. Simply factual. "The boy you knew is no longer fully human. What remains of him exists in the Tower's walls — changed, merged, part of the structure itself. You know this."

"I don't accept that."

"Acceptance is not required for truth." The Warden stepped closer. Cade's face smiled — gently, sadly. "You are not climbing to find your brother. You are climbing because you cannot forgive yourself for not stopping him."

Sera's sword arm trembled. The blade wavered.

Kael watched, and said nothing.

"I should have locked the door," she said. Barely a whisper. "I should have gone with him that night. I should have—"

"You couldn't have stopped him. The Tower called him. It calls who it chooses." The Warden's voice softened — Cade's voice, young and kind. "You are climbing because of guilt. That is a reason. But is it *why*?"

Sera stared at the face of her brother. Tears tracked silently down her cheeks — the first tears Kael had seen from her.

"Because he's my brother," she said. "And I love him. And I will not leave him alone in the dark."

The Warden regarded her for a long, long moment. Then it stepped aside.

"Pass."

The door opened. Sunlight — or something that looked like sunlight — poured through.

Sera walked toward it, head high, tears drying on her face. She didn't look back at the Warden.

Kael followed.

As he passed the figure, the Warden spoke — Maren's voice, soft:

"She's going to need you, Ashborn. More than she knows."

Then the door closed behind them, and Floor 4 was done.