Kaelen led the charge, his boots hammering the shifting tiles as they surged toward the white tower. It pulsed again, and the air shattered into a brilliance so sharp it seemed to slice reality apart.
For an instant, Kaelen forgot why he was running. He forgot who he was running with. The battlefield dissolved into pure white emptiness, and his own name slipped from him like smoke.
Lyra's hand caught his wrist, grounding him. Her voice cut through the blindness—ragged, furious. "Don't you dare let go!"
The flame's glow pierced the void, faint but stubborn. The candle-bearer's face was pale, trembling, but they forced the fire higher. The brilliance cracked just enough for Kaelen to see the tower again, its surface a blinding lattice of woven light.
The eye's voice trembled with satisfaction.
"Memory is weight. Thought is burden. Shed them, and you will be free."
Kaelen snarled. "Freedom without memory isn't living—it's death with prettier walls."
The relic pulsed in his hand. He raised it, channeling the flame into a beam that carved a path through the blindness. Lyra darted forward, blade flashing, her movements precise even as the erasure licked at her edges, trying to strip her of herself.
Every step toward the tower was war. Kaelen staggered as memories peeled away from him—his home, his first laughter, the sound of his mother's voice. Each one vanished, replaced by white. He gritted his teeth, clinging to the rhythm of Lyra's footsteps beside him, the weight of the relic in his palm, the flicker of the flame ahead.
They reached the base of the tower. Up close, it was unbearable, its surface radiating annihilation so bright it felt like touching infinity.
The candle-bearer screamed, thrusting the flame forward. The relic resonated, and Lyra's blade carved deep. Together, they pierced the tower's heart.
For a moment, there was no sound, no light, no self. Just emptiness.
Then the tower fractured.
The brilliance shattered like glass, spraying shards of memory across the tiles. Kaelen fell to his knees, gasping. Faces and voices rushed back into him in a flood—his own, Lyra's, even faint echoes of the candle-bearer's past. He clutched them tight, desperate, unwilling to let a single one slip again.
The tower collapsed in a blaze of broken light, scattering into the void.
Kaelen staggered to his feet. Lyra's grin was bloodied but fierce. The candle-bearer trembled, holding the flame steady despite their exhaustion.
Two towers down.
But the black and crimson towers pulsed in unison now, their resonance deeper, heavier. The tiles beneath their feet cracked, and the sky above the board split with veins of darkness and fire.
The eye whispered, no longer amused but coldly intent.
"The game approaches its true form."