The passage Veyne slipped into pulsed faintly, like the throat of something enormous. The walls flexed with each breath of the Tower, not air but pressure, as if the structure itself were inhaling thought, exhaling consequence.
He walked without haste, fingers tracing the seams between the stones. Each seam whispered. Not words, not exactly. Options. Warnings. Lies disguised as choices. His Revelation Instinct itched behind his eyes, not fully flaring, but twitching like a predator that smells prey it cannot yet see.
Behind him, the banquet hall roared with collapse. Something in that room had fed. Something had grown stronger.
He didn't look back.
The corridor twisted, narrowed, then dropped into a spiral staircase with no visible end. Each step was made of a different material—bone, glass, obsidian, paper. Veyne noted the pattern without effort. The Tower didn't build itself randomly. It tested perception, laced meaning through nonsense.
Halfway down, a memory rose. Not his.
He stumbled as a vision struck: a girl with silver hair climbing this very staircase in reverse, eyes hollow, hands bleeding. She carried a book with no title and screamed words with no sound.
Then it was gone.
Revelation Instinct [Residual Trace: Seamwalker].
The words burned themselves into the air before his eyes.
"So that's your name," he murmured. "Seamwalker."
His fingers pulsed. A trace lingered in the stone.
He knelt, pressed his palm to the surface.
Choice Available: Devour Trace / Archive Trace / Bury Trace.
He chose the second.
Trace Archived: Seamwalker (Tier: Unknown)
A flood of fragmented sensation rushed into him—a path unfolding and folding at once, a mind that had seen too much, a warning screamed between realities: Do not trust the Mirrors.
Noted.
He descended further. The staircase ended in a chamber that looked like a church but smelled like rust and regret. Pew-like benches lined the walls, and at the altar stood a mirror.
Not just glass.
A Seam.
His Instinct howled.
This was no ordinary room. It was a Crossroad.
Written above the mirror in shifting ink: One step forward. One step back. One step into the track.
"Cryptic bastards," Veyne muttered.
The mirror shimmered. A figure formed. His own face, but older. Scarred. Eyes alight with madness and clarity in equal measure.
Future? Lie? Echo?
"Well?" his reflection asked. "You running, or hunting?"
Veyne smiled.
"Both."
He stepped toward the mirror.
The moment his boot crossed the line of shadow beneath it, the world flipped.
He stood on the ceiling.
Gravity hadn't shifted—he had. The Tower's laws rearranged themselves to suit the trial. All around him, copies of himself walked other paths. Some screamed. One wept. One disintegrated, skin unraveling into black moths.
The mirror multiplied, a ring of reflections all around him. Each showed a different outcome. Some Veynes ruled. Some died. Some became the Tower.
The challenge was clear:
Choose. But not blindly.
His Instinct surged.
One mirror pulsed faintly. Behind the reflection stood someone else: the Seamwalker, back turned, bleeding through the seams of space.
Follow the walker. Reject the king. Fear the savior.
Cryptic, but Veyne understood just enough.
He stepped into the third mirror from the left, not waiting to see what would happen.
This time, the world snapped. Not twisted, not bent. Just broke.
He landed in a corridor made entirely of doors.
Every surface was a doorway. Floor. Walls. Ceiling. Each door bore a sigil. Some bled. Some whispered. One sobbed.
A figure stood ahead.
Ragged robes. Silver hair. A book chained to one hand.
The Seamwalker.
She turned.
Eyes like mirrors. Voice like unraveling cloth.
"You followed the wrong seam."
Veyne grinned. "Or the right one too early."
She tilted her head.
"You'll bleed for it."
"I always do."
She raised a hand. The Tower responded.
The doors screamed open. Possibilities erupted.
One showed his mother's corpse, resurrected and wrong.
Another showed him crucified on a throne of eyes.
A third showed him alone. Happy.
He walked through none of them.
He walked beside them.
The Seamwalker hesitated.
"You shouldn't be able to do that."
Revelation Instinct: Threadwalking unlocked.
Veyne's smile sharpened.
"Neither should you."
He reached her in three steps.
She didn't flee. She folded.
A seam opened between them—not physical, not psychic. A shared possibility.
She whispered: "I left something behind. For someone who could see."
A key formed in her palm. Bone and ink.
She pressed it to his chest.
"Door Thirty-Three. Don't trust the guide. Trust the hunger."
Then she vanished. Not teleported. Ceased.
The corridor crumbled.
Veyne stood alone, key in hand.
The Tower rumbled, amused.
You should not be. Yet you are.
He chuckled, pocketed the key, and picked a direction.
One step.
Another.
A door appeared—branded with the number 33.
He didn't knock.
He devoured the threshold.
And the Tower opened again, deeper.
Always deeper.