The stairwell spat Kairo into darkness.
This wasn't the silence of a quiet room.
It was the silence of a coffin, freshly sealed.
He staggered forward onto cobbled stone slick with black moss. A cold wind swept through the tower, carrying the scent of blood and rusted iron.
The cursed sigil on his palm didn't flare in warning.
It quivered.
Like a predator sensing something above its weight.
Kairo looked up.
Far, far above, a bell hung in shadow — suspended by roots and chains that pulsed with veins of gold. Every few moments, it shifted, a low metallic groan echoing through the walls like an ancient god turning in its sleep.
> Donnnnnng.
The sound struck not the air — but the soul.
Kairo dropped to a knee.
Time slowed.
His breath came like syrup. His vision blurred. Every heartbeat dragged like it was being pulled through molasses.
> The bell doesn't toll hours…
It tolls memory.
---
The floor above shifted. Something moved.
No footsteps.
No voice.
Just the sound of chains dragged across stone.
Kairo rose slowly. The cursed sigil burned again, as if waking from slumber.
"Someone's here," he muttered.
Not watching.
Not waiting.
But ringing.
---
He climbed the spiral staircase.
Each step was uneven, covered in worn scripture etched in forgotten tongues. The words bled as he passed, whispering phrases like "The Last Toll," "Feed the Hour," and "She Was Once a Ranker."
Torches burned with green fire, lighting a path that felt more like a sacrifice than a corridor.
At the next landing, he saw it:
A pile of sigils.
Dead Rankers' marks — cut from flesh and nailed to the wall in patterns.
Not trophies.
A menu.
---
Suddenly, a voice.
High. Hollow. Echoing across broken bells.
> "Another one?"
> "Already?"
He turned — blade drawn.
She emerged from the shadows, barefoot and bound by golden chains wrapped tightly around her wrists and throat.
She was beautiful — but not in any human way.
Her skin was pale, almost luminous. Her eyes were pitch black, dripping with ink. Her smile was too wide, and from her back sprouted skeletal remains of wings — half-plucked, rotting at the edges.
And her voice?
It didn't echo in the tower.
It echoed in him.
> "Don't worry," she said.
> "I only eat those who forget."
---
Kairo held his stance. "What are you?"
She tilted her head.
> "Once? A girl."
She plucked a bell from her hip — small, silver, cracked.
It jingled faintly.
> "Now? A Keeper."
> "I ring. They come. I feed."
She giggled. "And I remember."
Kairo narrowed his eyes. "Remember what?"
She floated closer — the chains on her arms dragging behind, still glowing faintly.
> "All of them. Every Ranker who stepped into this tower and forgot why they climbed."
> "Every hero who thought the bell would mark their rise."
> "It never does."
---
She raised a hand — and time stuttered.
The cursed sigil flared again, resisting her grip on the moment.
But the air thickened. The stairwell folded. Kairo was suddenly standing in five places at once — in his childhood bed, in a battlefield, in a prison cell, in the Trial of Ashveil, and right here… with her.
She walked through all five versions of him, whispering in each ear:
> "You didn't save them."
> "You hesitated."
> "You ran."
> "You lied."
> "You wanted to stay."
Kairo roared, slamming the cursed blade into the floor.
The memories snapped.
She blinked, amused.
> "You still remember?"
> "Good…"
She lifted her hands.
Chains slithered from her wrists like tentacles of gold, forming a spiral cage of sound and hunger.
> "Then make me forget you."
She moved like hunger.
The moment her chains lashed outward, the tower screamed.
Every brick vibrated, echoing memories not Kairo's own — but devoured ones. Echoes of forgotten Rankers who'd stood where he stood now.
The chains weren't weapons.
They were reminders.
The Keeper wasn't trying to kill him.
She was trying to make him forget.
---
Kairo sidestepped the first arc of gold — fast, but measured. He swung the cursed blade upward, deflecting the second strike, which uncoiled in midair like a serpent of memory.
But when it struck the wall —
A section of the tower melted into dream.
He looked over and saw himself…
…a younger Kairo, crying on his knees beside a corpse.
Someone with white hair. A necklace in her hand. A promise shattered.
He blinked — the memory vanished.
Not a hallucination.
A weapon.
---
> "Every toll I ring pulls out a moment," the Keeper cooed.
She walked forward, slow and sensual, dragging her fingers along the wall, which wept with time instead of blood.
> "I don't fight with blades. I fight with guilt."
She snapped her fingers.
The bell above shuddered.
> Donnnnnng.
---
Kairo fell forward.
The cursed sigil on his palm flared in agony.
Not pain.
Disorientation.
In a heartbeat, he was no longer in the tower.
---
He stood in a hallway — lit with sterile white light.
The world was wrong. Too clean. Too quiet.
He wore no armor. No blade. No sigil.
Only a student's uniform.
He remembered this place.
Earth.
The old world.
> "No…"
---
The bell rang again.
> Donnnnng.
A teacher opened the door.
> "Mahir Faisal," the voice said.
"Come. We're waiting."
And he remembered.
This wasn't the past.
It was the moment before death.
He stepped back. "This isn't real."
The hallway cracked.
The walls fell away.
---
Kairo exploded back into the tower, gasping for breath.
The Keeper stood above him, one hand raised, chains spiraling like clockwork serpents.
> "You were so sweet before," she whispered.
"So full of ideas. So righteous."
> "But the curse wants what you hide."
---
She lunged.
The chains struck again — Kairo leapt back, drawing an arc of shadow as the cursed blade finally responded. A wave of violet-black light countered the memory tendrils, slashing apart illusions midair.
They clashed.
Sound warped.
Each time Kairo struck her, her form shimmered — momentarily human. A girl in blood-stained robes, eyes full of regret.
He paused — too long.
She smiled.
> "That hesitation?"
She flicked a bell.
> "That's your weakness."
---
Suddenly — the tower twisted.
And now she stood where he had once stood.
Chained. Bloody. Alone.
Kairo hovered above, massive and merciless.
His cursed blade drawn.
His eyes hollow.
> "Kill her," the vision-Kairo said.
> "She'll become worse than the curse."
Real Kairo dropped the blade in the illusion.
> "No."
> "I'm not that man."
The vision shattered.
---
The curse evolved.
The sigil on his palm grew a second ring — a glowing halo of runes in motion.
The Keeper gasped — stumbled back for the first time.
> "You're still yourself?"
> "After all that?"
She staggered.
The chains unraveled.
She looked up at him not as predator.
But as peer.
> "Do you remember me?"
---
Kairo blinked.
And saw it.
The girl in white.
From the memory-bracer.
From before the curse.
> "You…"
The Keeper laughed — softly, bitterly.
> "The Maw doesn't erase people."
> "It just rewrites them until they forget what they were."
> "I was your friend, once."
She held up the small bell again.
> "Now I ring… because I can't stop."
---
The bell began to toll — uncontrollably.
It struck faster, more violently.
> DONG.
DONG.
DONG.
The entire tower trembled.
Time fragmented.
Kairo fought his way to her — every step through different realities. One where he died. One where he gave in. One where she never fell.
He reached her.
Grabbed her wrist.
And whispered:
> "Then let me ring it once… for you."
---
He pulled the bell from her.
The chains snapped.
She fell forward — into his arms.
And the tower…
stopped.
The bell no longer rang.
It hung silently above, swaying gently from an invisible wind, its weight finally still. The chains were shattered. The air inside the tower was hollow, like a monster that had finished screaming.
Kairo knelt at the center, the girl in his arms.
She was smaller now.
No wings.
No chains.
No power.
Just a girl. Pale, trembling, eyes glassy with tears she hadn't let herself feel in years.
> "What's your name?" he asked softly.
Her lips trembled.
> "You don't remember it either, do you?" she whispered.
He hesitated.
A chill ran through his bones.
She was right.
He knew her.
Her voice.
Her silhouette from the crown's memory.
But the name?
Gone.
---
> "The bell takes names first," she said. "So we can't scream for help."
> "It took mine the day I rang it."
Kairo looked up at the bell. The ancient sigils carved around its rim shifted slightly in his gaze.
One line stood out.
> "Power is light that remembers no shadow."
He stared harder.
And then—
> "You will forget what makes you worthy."
He exhaled slowly.
The bell didn't kill its victims.
It made them unknown.
---
The girl — no longer monstrous — reached up and touched the cursed bracer around his wrist.
> "You didn't forget," she whispered.
"That makes you dangerous to the Maw."
> "It can't control what it can't rewrite."
Her hand trembled.
> "So it will offer you something next."
---
And it did.
The tower darkened.
From the shadow of the bell came a ripple in space — a thin, oily thread of reality peeling.
A being stepped through.
Not a god. Not a demon.
But a scribe.
Clad in ink-black robes. No face. Fingers like quills. A book floating at its side, pages fluttering with names, dates, and memories.
It spoke in whispers layered through the bones:
> "Kairo."
> "You have survived the Trial of the Bell."
> "You may claim power… in exchange for forgetting."
---
Kairo stood slowly, placing the girl down.
> "What do you want me to forget?"
The scribe floated forward. One long quill-hand pointed at the air.
It wrote the word: Ashveil.
Kairo's breath hitched.
His first true enemy.
The one who knelt.
> "She remembers your mercy."
> "That makes her dangerous."
> "Forget her. And gain strength."
---
The cursed blade at Kairo's side rattled.
Not in rage.
In warning.
He clenched his jaw.
Behind him, the bell shimmered again — golden threads dancing from it like living script.
It wanted him to forget.
The girl looked up from where she sat, hugging her knees.
> "Don't let them make you like me."
> "I made the deal."
> "That's why I couldn't stop ringing it."
---
Kairo turned back to the scribe.
> "I've killed monsters, gods, and pieces of myself."
> "But I won't kill memory."
He stepped forward.
The cursed sigil flared.
The crown-bracer pulsed.
> "I earn my power."
He raised the cursed blade.
> "So take your offer—"
> "And feed it to the bell."
---
The scribe paused.
Then nodded — slowly.
It closed the book.
> "The Maw watches."
> "It remembers."
It dissolved into ink.
And in its place…
A new rune burned onto Kairo's sigil.
This one… gold.
Not cursed.
Witnessed.
---
The bell above tolled once more.
But this time…
Not in hunger.
Not in despair.
> Donnnnnnng…
It rang in acknowledgement.
---
The girl stirred.
She looked up at Kairo — truly seeing him now.
> "I remember my name," she said suddenly.
"Because you didn't take it."
She stood, shakily.
> "My name is Elira."
Kairo nodded.
> "Then Elira… come with me."
---
The final gate opened in the tower wall.
No fanfare.
Just a cold wind and a path that vanished into clouds and thorns.
Kairo stepped forward.
The bell no longer screamed behind him.
But as he passed the threshold, he heard Elira whisper:
> "They'll offer you everything, Kairo."
> "Just so you forget who you are."
He looked over his shoulder.
Smiled faintly.
> "Then I'll carve it in blood and stone."
> "So I never can."