The chains burned.
They weren't steel. They weren't even divine. They were something older—written in letters of law that pulsed against my skin. Every link bit into me, and when I tried to move, the Tower whispered in my ear:
[You are Bound.]
I tugged harder. My arm twisted. My wrist snapped.
[Correction.]
The bone knitted itself, only to snap again as the chain held it in place.
"Fascinating," I muttered, head tilting. "The bindings don't just restrain—they rewrite. I am not shackled by chains. I am shackled by narrative."
Across from me, the Saint of Salvation dangled in silence. His face was pale, lips cracked, aura diminished to a flickering candle.
He no longer looked divine.
He looked… human.
"...Stop." His voice rasped, nothing like the commanding sermons I'd heard before. "Stop testing it. You'll only… make it worse."
I grinned through the pain. "Worse for whom?"
The world around us was dead ash. A horizon that stretched into infinity, red sky bleeding into black, no floor but jagged obsidian spires jutting up like teeth.
We were nailed to two of those spires, chains wrapping us head to toe, burning our flesh in rhythmic pulses.
This was no floor. No trial. No quest.
This was a holding cell.
A place outside the Tower's layers, hidden from hunters.
And for the first time since awakening as a Calamity, I realized something.
The Tower didn't know what to do with us.
The air trembled.
A shape coalesced in the void between us.
It was not man. Not beast. Not god.
It was a sculpture of the Tower itself: stone and script, gears and clockwork, eyes of glowing text that shifted lines too fast to read.
The Enforcer Entity.
[Designation: Overseer Fragment.]
[Purpose: Containment. Interrogation.]
[Subjects: Calamity of Regression. Calamity of Erasure.]
Its voice was not sound. It was a vibration that forced itself into the marrow.
The Saint flinched. Even now, chained and weakened, he bowed his head as if praying.
I? I laughed.
"Ah. So the landlord finally shows up."
The Enforcer's eyes flickered.
[Query: State Intent of Clash.]
The Saint rasped first. "He attacked. He corrupts. He undermines the sacred order of salvation. I sought to contain him."
"Contain?" I chuckled. "You mean erase. Wipe clean. Pretend all the deaths never happened."
The Saint's eyes burned. "Because death should be merciful! Not weaponized—"
"Oh, hush," I cut him off. "You erase, I persist. We're mirrors, brother. The Tower birthed us both for the same reason. Don't play holy when your hands are drenched in just as much blood."
The Enforcer shifted, gears grinding.
[Correction: Calamities are not "birthed." Calamities are anomalies. Errors to be corrected.]
I tilted my head. "Funny. If we're errors, why keep us chained instead of deleting us?"
Silence.
The gears whirred. The eyes flickered.
And for a heartbeat—I swore it hesitated.
The Saint strained against his bindings, voice breaking. "Do not—do not speak like that! The Tower is order! It is salvation itself! Without it, everything is chaos!"
His voice echoed in the ash void, thin, desperate.
And I realized.
He wasn't speaking to me.
He was speaking to himself.
I leaned forward, as far as the chains allowed, grinning. "You're afraid. Not of me. Not even of the Tower. You're afraid of what happens if all those people you erased start clawing back into existence. If the mirror cracks and you have to see what you've done."
"Shut up!" His scream broke into sobs. His perfect face twisted, cracking open. For the first time, the Saint of Salvation looked like a sinner.
Delicious.
Floor 15.
Hunters gathered in a guildhall, staring at glitching system windows.
[Warning: Dimensional Instability.][Correction in Progress.]
"What correction?" one guildmaster muttered. "What's happening above?"
No one answered. But they all remembered that brief vision—the void, the clash, the chains descending.
And they all whispered the same word now, like a curse.
"Calamities…"
Floor 50.
The guild leaders of the highest hunters convened.
"The Tower itself is binding them," one said. "It means they cannot be killed. Not by us."
"Then what are we supposed to do?"
"Pray."
But no one believed in prayer anymore.
The Enforcer's gears slowed.
[Query: Calamity of Regression. Why persist?]
I laughed, soft and sharp.
"Why persist? Because persistence is corruption. You can erase me a thousand times, and I'll claw my way back. You can chain me here, and I'll smile while you do it. You ask why?"
I bared my teeth.
"Because I like watching the Tower afraid."
The Saint's head snapped up. "Blasphemy!"
But he was trembling.
Because the Enforcer…Did not deny it.
Somewhere far above, beyond even this prison, voices stirred again.
<< The Regression one laughs. >><< He sees too much. >><< Correction may fail. >>
A silence. Then:
<< Then what? >><< Then we seal him deeper. >>
And I felt it. A weight pressing closer.
They wanted me buried.
They feared me.
The thought was sweeter than wine.
The chains pulsed. Harder this time. So hard my bones rattled and blood streamed from every pore.
The Saint screamed as his bindings glowed white-hot, smoke curling from his skin.
The Enforcer raised a hand.
[Correction Protocol: Intensify.]
But then—
Something flickered.
A fracture.
Just for a second, one link around my ankle cracked. Not much. Barely a scratch. But enough.
Enough to make me grin wide, through blood and pain.
"You can bind me," I whispered, low and gleeful. "But you can't keep me forever."
The Saint looked up, eyes wide with horror. "No… no, you can't—"
The Enforcer turned. For the first time, its endless gears stuttered.
And in the silence, I laughed.
Every hunter on every floor felt it.
A sound that wasn't a sound. A laugh that wasn't a laugh.
They looked up at the Tower ceilings.
And they shivered.
Because they all knew it wasn't over.