Shin stepped through the archway, and the room shifted—not only in shape, but in tone. This wasn't a trial chamber anymore. It felt more like an abandoned lab.
The floor flattened into wide octagonal panels, each dimly glowing beneath his steps. The ceiling was higher here, and faint arcs of lightning curled lazily through the air as if a forgotten dream that refuses to disappear.
Shattered consoles lined the room's edges, their cracked panels still bleeding faint light. Broken containment tubes jutted from the walls, each filled with nothing but dust and a faint static hum. Instruments etched on the wall and ceiling twitched slowly as if still obeying protocols no one had given in centuries.
Shin moved with care. The silence was heavier than before. Not threatening,
watching.
On one table, a metallic rod sat splintered down the middle, its exposed interior lined with mesh that hummed like a distant heart monitor. Nearby, a sphere of translucent material hovered in a field of static, twitching erratically as if unsure whether to collapse or detonate.
Half-formed weapons, abandoned devices, storage cores, fragments of tools with no obvious function—scattered everywhere like prototypes forgotten in a god's attic.
Shin crouched near one—a hilt without a blade, fused to the remnants of what looked like a sensor module. It sparked once under his touch, then died again.
He narrowed his eyes.
"So many weird things, but none seem to work," he murmured. "Did Lightning build these?"
No. That didn't feel right. It felt distinctly different from how his own artifacts looked. Those tools looked like they were made by humans.
He stood and let his gaze wander. His fingers skimmed a bent fragment of silvery plating—etched with a language he couldn't read. He paused.
Something nearby pulsed faintly.
Not lightning. Not defense.
Just… a presence.
He turned and saw it.
At the center of a cracked stabilizer field, a silver-blue ring hovered inside a dying suspension field. The containment glass was gone, shattered long ago, leaving the artifact to drift weightless like a bubble that refused to burst. Shin stepped closer and touched it lightly.
For a moment, nothing happened. But then the ring dropped into his palm—soft and cool, with the weight of something more than metal.
There was no engraving he could find on it. Nor was there any energy signature.
But something about it felt different. It didn't react to him the way his sword had. It didn't recognize him—and yet it accepted him.
He placed it on his finger and felt— room.
Not weight. Not heat. Just the sensation of open space. As if, somewhere just beneath the surface, a door had opened.
He filed the thought away. He didn't know what it did yet. But he would investigate it later.
He turned again. Passed fractured shields, rusted modules, a stack of crystalline rods that fizzled at the edges. There was no order here—just chaos hidden beneath light.
And at the far end of the room—finally—a pedestal. It was simple and resembled the one in the Wind Tower. Dimmed glimmer reflected from the pedestal as if it were made of gold, but its surface was a dark, matte alloy shaped like a split spike. Hovering just above was the vessel. Silent and dormant. At first glance, it looked like nothing more than a shard of twisted metal—black-silver and jagged, like a broken talon.
But as Shin stepped closer, it pulsed once—like a single heartbeat. He smiled once, and without hesitation, he reached out.
The instant his fingers brushed the surface, the shard flared and electricity danced across his palm. In the blink of an eye, the shard unfolded like an automated assembly sequence, plates sliding into place with surgical precision. They locked around his arm one after another, weaving into a seamless gauntlet as if following a forgotten blueprint.
It felt alive.
Metal layered over skin. It was impossibly light and flexible. Hidden plates settled with precision from wrist to elbow, weaving like silk strands until a second skin had formed—matte black with subtle ridges like coiled muscle. Only his fingertips were left bare, exposed at the ends.
And then: claws.
Slender blades extended—short, needle-sharp, humming with compressed current. The current did not feel wild or flaring. On the contrary, Shin could feel it was controlled, ready to accept his will.
He flexed his muscles, and the claws retracted instantly.
Behind him, the silver-blue ring on his finger glowed faintly—and something shifted in the gauntlet's structure. A channel opened in the metal, aligning around the ring's band like it had always been part of the gauntlet.
The two artifacts didn't just sync—they fused, as if they had been waiting centuries for this reunion.
Shin held his breath. A recognition that was different from just awe.
These two were made to work together, he realized.
He turned his wrist slowly. The claw responded without hesitation. No latency. No resistance.
This wasn't like Wind's sword, forged from clarity and grace.
This was something wilder. Less certain.
The vessel responded not to calm, but to potential.
And then the chamber changed—not in light, but in weight. A voice pressed through the current:
"You are not welcome here."
Rather than sound, it felt more like a pressure traveling through the air.
Shin's eyes narrowed.
The air around him shifted—just enough to sense it. The arcs in the ceiling were no longer random. They curved gently toward him.
"I never wanted to be disturbed."
"Yet you came anyway."
There was nobody else in the room. Rather than talking with a figure, it was just presence—watching. Shin couldn't ascertain the location of his voice. Perhaps it was just everywhere.
"So? Were you just going to sit here forever?" he asked calmly. He was not going to let the surprise ruin his plans.
A low hum, almost like a sigh, passed through the chamber.
"I came to this world… because Wind conveyed me here."
"But I have no interest in shaping it. Or being shaped by it."
"I know what you came here for, butreturn to where you came from. You were never meant to bear my powers."
Shin exhaled slowly. "As expected, neither you nor Wind are from this world."
"None of the elementals are."
"Elementals?"
A long pause stretched between them. Shin flexed the gauntlet again—its surface gleamed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
"Then why stay sealed?" Shin asked. "Since you are the same kind as Wind, you must be extremely powerful."
No reply.
"I don't know your 'Elemental' purpose of coming into the world, but I'm sure it is not just to stay here isolated."
The air hissed.
"Purpose was assigned to me once. Then rescinded. Stillness was preferable to misuse."
"The world is doomed to fall into chaos."
"It is better to remain where there is peace."
"Peace, you say." Shin tilted his head slightly. "Are you not confusing peace with boredom?"
Lightning didn't answer. Not immediately.
Shin kept going.
"Chaos isn't that bad. Order has its advantages. But where there's chaos…"
He raised his hand.
"…there's opportunity."
"…You speak lightly."
"No. I speak honestly," Shin said steadily. "Someone like you should already know that. Just like Wind did."
He raised his hand, letting a spark slide across his fingertips.
"Ever since Wind gave me power, I have been wondering. Why did he have to find a successor, a vessel like me? That must mean, for whatever reason, ever since you reached this world, you can no longer use your powers outside the towers. "
"Maybe you can't leave the tower yourself and thus need someone outside—a vessel—to carry your will."
"What are you implying, human?"
"Don't get me wrong. Wind was very secretive, but he didn't seem like someone who would give power for no reason. However, he didn't command me anything and just disappeared," he said, letting the words hang in the air for a short pause before continuing.
"So let me be bold and take a guess."
He held his sword in his hands, his fingers holding firmly in the cold metal.
"I originally thought that I'm either too weak for him to use for now, or that he needs my body and thus plans to possess my body eventually."
"Wind would never stoop to possess a mere human—even after we lost our physical forms."
Shin quickly noted the new information in his head. No physical form, huh? Good to know.
In that case:
"Yes, yes, of course. Then that leaves only one possibility," Shin concluded.
"If you don't want to bond, you clearly don't need a vessel to survive. Maybe the towers are what keep you here—even without a physical form."
He looked straight at Lightning, or at least where he believed his voice was coming from.
"So, while you may not need a vessel to survive, the vessel allows you to grow, reform, or at least rebuild your past powers."
"Perceptive, human. Wind would not tell you that."
He didn't need to. You just did.
"And since you're uninterested in rebuilding your strength… maybe it's because you've never understood it to begin with," Shin continued
"Maybe, even before you lost your form… You never actually tried to see how far you could go."
The silence turned heavier.
It was a gamble. For all Shin knew, Lightning's apathy could come from a different reason. But Shin didn't take the words back.
He took a step forward. Not aggressive—but absolute.
"I don't care if you wanted to sleep. I'm not here to wake you up."
"But from the moment I entered this tower, the wheel of fate has already turned."
"Your powers—even if you won't use them…"
His voice was determined.
"…I will."
He raised the gauntlet again. "And I'd rather drag a god behind me… than leave him rusting in his own fear."
A flicker of something surged through the walls. Not really rage. Nor rejection.
Curiosity.
"You are very arrogant, human."
"Just a tiny bit," Shin said, flatly.
"But I have the qualification to be so."
A soft current of laughter shimmered through the floor—quiet, electric, thoughtful.
Lightning paused. Not out of doubt—but memory. The ambition in this boy's voice stirred something he hadn't felt in eons. A hunger not for chaos… but for meaning.
"…Then show me.
Let's see what becomes of us."
The gauntlet pulsed once more, and this time the current felt different.
It wasn't just alive.
It was listening.
Deep within the tower, long-dead circuits hummed, and lights flickered in the forgotten halls. Something vast and ancient stirred—not fully awake but no longer asleep.