Chapter 17: The Tower That Waits
The Tower was visible long before Kaelen reached it.
At first, it looked like a jagged needle piercing the sky. But as he drew closer, the scale warped. The Tower didn't just reach into the heavens—it fractured them. Clouds circled it but never touched. Lightning cracked without thunder, trapped in frozen arcs around its peak. Space itself bent near its foundation, distorting light and time like ripples on molten glass.
Kaelen stood at the edge of a scorched field. Ash blew in circles, never settling. The obsidian ground beneath his feet reflected not his face, but images—fragments of moments that hadn't happened yet.
In one, he saw himself kneeling before the Tower, arms bound.
In another, he was laughing from atop it, crowned in fire.
He ignored both.
Dreams, lies, or possibilities—it didn't matter.
Only one version of him would remain in the end.
And he would decide which.
As Kaelen approached the Tower's base, the air thickened.
It wasn't heat. Nor pressure. But presence—a lingering awareness, ancient and unblinking. The same feeling he'd sensed in the ruin beneath the Rift, and again in the Hollow. But here, it was stronger. Not watching him.
Waiting.
He stepped onto the first stair.
Nothing happened.
No guardians. No riddles. No voices.
Just a path upward, spiraling toward the sky.
And so, he climbed.
The Tower's interior was impossible.
Each level was a world.
The first was a garden—a lush, blooming expanse of colors he had no names for. Flowers grew in reverse, roots reaching into the sky, petals curling into laughter. Trees whispered his name with voices from his past.
He didn't stop.
He walked through beauty like it was mist, unaffected.
At the garden's end, a door of glass awaited him.
It shattered as he touched it.
The next level was a library.
Infinite.
Shelves rose into darkness, filled with books that pulsed like heartbeats. Scrolls unrolled themselves. Letters moved across pages, rearranging endlessly.
A woman sat behind a desk made of bone and ink.
Her face was hidden behind a veil of parchment.
"Name?" she asked, her voice echoing with a hundred tones.
"Kaelen."
"Not the first to claim it."
"Won't be the last either."
She nodded, scribbled something on a living scroll, then pointed toward a corridor made of floating pages.
"Truth is stored. Borrow wisely. Return what you take, or be taken in return."
Kaelen didn't hesitate.
He walked into the corridor.
Time broke inside.
He wandered for hours—or years. He read nothing, yet knew everything.
The names of fallen gods.
The structure of the Threads that bind space, matter, and thought.
The origin of the Rift—not as a place, but a decision.
The truth behind the veil: that this world had ended once already. And had not yet finished ending.
He emerged from the corridor with no book in hand, but knowledge burned into his blood.
The librarian was gone.
So was the desk.
Only another stair remained.
He climbed.
The third level was the Mirror Hall.
A thousand Kaelens walked beside him, reflected across endless panes of obsidian and silver. Each moved differently.
One wept as he walked.
One held a child's corpse.
One had no eyes, only golden fire.
And one—just one—walked exactly like him.
When Kaelen reached the center, that one stepped out of the mirror.
They fought.
No magic. No tricks.
Just fists. Blades. Grit.
Kaelen won.
Barely.
He left the mirror bleeding, ribs bruised, and clothes torn.
But he had proven something.
To the Tower.
And to himself.
The fourth level was empty.
Just a chair.
And a question.
Written in fire across the air:
"What do you want?"
Kaelen sat.
He didn't answer immediately.
He thought about it—truly thought.
Not vengeance.
Not survival.
Not even power.
What he wanted was…
To never be beneath anyone's foot again.
To be the one pulling the strings. Opening doors. Deciding fates—not being a pawn of someone else's plan.
He said nothing.
The fire read him anyway.
And the stair opened again.
At the fifth level, the Tower spoke.
Not with words.
But with presence.
It seeped into his mind. Filled his lungs. Pulled at his memories.
He felt it testing him. Probing for weakness.
It found one.
And manifested it.
Kaelen staggered as the air around him coalesced into her.
Long white hair. Pale skin like winter moonlight. Eyes like frost-covered glass.
His mother.
Not her real face—but the one from his buried memories. Before the screaming. Before the betrayal. Before the fire.
She smiled.
"You were never meant for this path, Kaelen."
He didn't speak.
She stepped closer.
"You could've been so much more. So much less lonely."
He closed his eyes.
Then opened them.
And stepped through her.
She dissolved like mist.
Behind her, the final stair appeared—wider. Older. Covered in runes that pulsed with the same rhythm as the black thread around his wrist.
He climbed.
The peak of the Tower was not a room.
It was a platform, suspended in nothing.
The sky above was cracked. The stars moved like ants across a dying god's skin.
In the center of the platform stood a single object.
A loom.
Massive. Woven from bone, shadow, and memory.
Threaded through it were strands of every color Kaelen had ever seen—and some he hadn't.
He stepped closer.
And then it spoke.
Not in sound.
But in threads.
Each string he touched told a story. A possibility. A fate.
He saw a future where he led an empire of shadows.
Another where he was hunted endlessly by a woman in silver chains.
One where he was broken. Shattered.
And one where he stood alone atop a black throne, whispering to something beneath the world.
Each thread tugged at him.
Each one asked: Choose.
He reached out.
Paused.
And smiled.
"No."
He didn't choose a thread.
He wove a new one.
The loom screamed.
The Tower shook.
The stars cracked further.
Kaelen didn't flinch.
He wove from memory. From rage. From clarity.
From freedom.
The threads bent to his will—not obeying, but reshaping themselves. Reacting like rivers to gravity.
When he was done, the loom pulsed once.
Then stilled.
He turned his back to it.
And descended the Tower.
The world outside was different.
The sky was darker.
The land quieter.
As if the Tower had whispered into the bones of the realm that something had changed.
That someone had declared war on fate itself.
Kaelen walked into the shifting winds, the black thread around his wrist now humming.
The path ahead would not be easy.
He would face monsters not born of flesh. People not born of kindness. Powers that did not believe he should exist.
But none of that mattered.
He had seen the threads.
And now…
He would become the one who wove them