The silence doesn't end.
It waits.
Coiled beneath Rael's feet like smoke under glass… waiting to rise.
He grips the railing. Watches the floor Victor stood on collapse into ash.
No trace.No logs.Not even residual heat.
Only a hum.
Not mechanical. Not arcane.
Alive.
The tower is… dreaming.
Rael hears it now—beneath the structure, beyond the echoes.
A breath.A pulse.A murmur trying to speak in flame.
He descends.
No map. No guide. No system to warn him.
And yet… the deeper he goes, the more the architecture warps.
Metal turns to bone.
Glass becomes eyes.
Stairs… bleed.
And in the cracks of every wall—Names. Burned in like scars.
Aeron. Lira. Subject-09. Sera.
His fingers brush one.
It pulses warm.
She died in the loops.He remembers her scream.
So why is her name still warm?
Then he sees it.
Buried in the wall. Still breathing.
A child.
Eyes stitched shut. Mouth wired closed.
Hooked into a throne of thorns.
Feeding the tower… memories.
Rael's blood freezes.
He reaches out.
The second his hand touches her—
[ERROR: UNAUTHORIZED MEMORY ACCESS][WARNING: INCUBATION ZONE BREACHED][System Restoration Attempt Detected.]
The tower screams.
All of it.
Every wall. Every floor.
A raw, primal howl of a world in pain.
Then—
Chains burst from the ceiling.
Metal serpents. Crawling. Screeching. Alive.
Rael ducks—Spins—Draws shadows like blades—
But these things?
They drink darkness.
They tear through his power like paper and wrap around his limbs.
Pulling. Restraining.
And from the far end of the chamber—
A voice.
Not Victor. Not the tower.
Someone else.
Her.
"You shouldn't have come here, Rael."
The girl in the throne jerks.
Eyes open. No irises. Just fire.
She's speaking now—But the voice isn't hers.
It's hers.
The one Rael lost in the loops.
The one he couldn't save.
"I asked you not to build this world."
He gasps. "A… Are you—?"
"No," she says.
And then—
"Yes."
[NEW ENTITY IDENTIFIED: THE DREAMED WARDEN][ACCESS LEVEL: PRE-REBOOT PRIME][MISSION: RE-LOCK THE FIXED POINT]
Chains dig deeper.
The tower tightens.
Rael's body starts to fade—code unraveling at the edges.
He reaches for her. Not to fight.
To remember.
Her fingers twitch.
And the last words before everything turns to white:
"I died to escape the loop.Why did you bring it back?"
To be continued…