Ethan came awake under an unfamiliar sky.
Where the Tower's storms had once howled, the air here was brittle and still, larger, like an atrium in a broken cathedral. He pushed himself up from the cold ground. His hands smelled faintly of dust and something metallic. He could still feel the echo of the RealmLink at his temple, the phantom weight of it pressing against his skull. For a long second he simply sat and let the quiet spin him.
A laugh cut through the hush, bright and sharp as a bell. A woman's silhouette stepped out from behind a shard of shattered stone, hands in her pockets as if she'd been waiting for a bus. She moved with a careless confidence that grated against him, and yet the sight of her made his chest clench in a way nothing else had since the Tower stole him.
"You look like you just fell out of a war," she said. "Are you lost, or theatrically exhausted?"
Ethan blinked at her. For a second the world narrowed to the sound of her voice, steady and unbothered. He wanted to answer, to say her name, Elara, but the word caught in his throat.
"My name's Jazz Mae," she said, holding out a hand. "But call me Mae. You're new, aren't you?" She said it like an accusation and an invitation at once.
He took her hand because the motion felt like an admission. "Ethan," he said. "I… yes."
Mae studied him for a heartbeat, then laughed again, this time softer. "Alright, Ethan. Let's find whatever here calls you." She sat on a low slab of stone as if they'd agreed, naturally, to be companions for a while. "Names are easy. Stays are harder."
She didn't unload her backstory all at once, just tiny shards of it that fit in pockets of silence. She'd opened the package because it had looked like a game. She'd put it on because curiosity was cheaper than courage. Back home there was a man she used to love, someone she might have stayed with out of inertia, but the truth had frayed long before the RealmLink arrived. She spoke around it with jokes and flippant observations; the sorrow sat below her words like coals under ash.
Ethan walked. They moved through a landscape stitched from the Tower's imagination: late-afternoon light poured through impossible arches; crystalline trees shook rain of glitter across their path; bridges hung in the air like faint stitches. The world rearranged itself as they passed, the Tower's will in quiet work, sometimes opening new ways, sometimes snapping the old ones shut to watch who panicked.
Mae talked. She talked like someone arc-lighting the dark: stories that filled corners and chased small, bright things into being, memories, silly confessions, the way she'd once pretended to be an astronaut as a child. Ethan listened more than he spoke. He answered in short strands, pulled taut with the ache he carried. When he did laugh it sounded rusty, an old lock easing a little.
Days, or hours that felt like days, passed that way. They ate from the same dwindling rations Mae pulled from her pack. They slept under a leaning column that the Tower had thrown up like a theater backdrop. The world kept testing them with subtle cruelty, bridges that promised safe passage then dissolved, dreams that bled into waking hours, but together they survived. Mae's bright chatter smoothed the edges of his panic; her laugh made the silence less menacing.
And beneath Mae's jokes, a small thing started to grow: an ache when Ethan stared past the next ridge, when his gaze followed a memory no one else could see. She'd joke and then fall still, watching him as if trying to memorize the angles of him for when she couldn't keep following. She noticed how his jaw tightened when he thought Elara was in danger. She noticed the way he moved as if he belonged to two places at once. The feeling that settled in Mae's chest was quiet and panicked and soft, an affection that was as much gratitude for his steadiness as it was something more dangerous to admit.
She stole glances and catalogued them: the soft exhale when he let down his guard, the little tremor at the base of his throat when he thought of Elara, the way his fingers curled round his mark like a small, private anchor. Mae told herself there wasn't room for anything else, that he had a heart claimed already, but the truth stubbornly lived in those stolen looks. She kept her feelings to herself, folding them into jokes until the last of her defenses couldn't hold.
On the third night, while the world around them arranged itself into a sky of dull, ribboned stars, Ethan woke to the sound of her voice low and awake beside him.
"You think he'll be," she began, then caught herself. She didn't say the name but the hanging unsaid filled the air: Elara.
"He has to be," Ethan replied, voice small and fierce. "I will find her." There was no swagger in it: only a soft certainty, a promise he had made to himself and could not break.
Mae watched him for a long time, then nudged him playfully. "Promise you'll leave me the dramatic rescue scene? I want the heroic entrance, Ethan. Or at least a good slow-mo run."
His smile was brief; it warmed the dark. "You'll get the slow-mo."
She laughed, but she started sleeping with one hand half out, as if to reach for him in the night.
Across the Tower, Elara steadied herself the way people do before they jump into cold water. She had crossed a dozen false walls, walked through mazes that promised rest and bred despair, and the only thing that kept her moving was a raw thread of hope, Ethan's name that she had screamed until her throat bled. The Tower had taken him from her once. She would not be surprised if it took him again. That thought had sharpened her.
Kenneth stayed close at her shoulder as they crossed the Mirror Gardens, a place where light doubled you and reflections showed what might be. Each pool was a curved plate of water-silver that mimicked the sky and folded what-if's into fractured images. Here the Tower liked to plant doubt underneath even the most blatant of truths.
Kenneth did not talk about the place he'd come from. He only matched her step, offered a hand at the right moment, laughed when she cracked a brittle joke to keep the shadows from sinking in. He was younger than Ethan, with a raw, earnest kind of courage, more reflex than calculation. He saved her more than once in ways that had nothing to do with skill: grabbing her when she slid, offering his shoulder when the floor tilted, shouting when an illusion crept from the glass to grab at her ankles.
In the quiet moments between the trials, those thin breathing-spaces the Tower sometimes allowed, Kenneth's looks changed. Where before his eyes had been all adrenaline and survival, they began to soften when he saw her. He admired the lines around her mouth that tightened when she fought; he watched the way her hands trembled when she thought no one watched. He did not confess. He swallowed his words and folded them into small acts: handing her cloths without being asked, choosing a path that kept the light on her face, resting at the perimeter of her focus so that she would not be alone even when she pulled her thoughts inward.
Elara noticed these gestures the way a creature notices a shift in the wind. They were kind. They were human. They made the ache crawl near to an ache that was almost forgiveness. They also reminded her of what she had lost.
"Why are you here?" she asked Kenneth one dusk, when a storm of violet glass filtered the sky, and the mirrors threw up a dozen Elara's walking a dozen different routes.
He paused, choosing words like a man choosing stones for a path. "Could ask you the same," he said finally. His voice was steady. "But I know why I'm here, in the barest sense, because I took the thing that came in the mail. I thought it was a new headset. Curiosity. And then," He shrugged, the motion revealing how small a thing survival made of simple things like courage. "Then I found someone to fight beside. That's… that's reason enough. If that sounds dumb."
"It doesn't," Elara said. She'd meant to be harsher. She couldn't. She'd been hard for years, and Kenneth's sincerity pulled at a place she'd kept bandaged.
They continued in silence, a companionable one. The mirrors kept showing possibilities, Elara older, Elara with children, Elara alone at the end of the world, but she blew them away like motes. None of it was real.
At the heart of the garden was a pool that refused to show you who you were and instead reflected what you might lose. The Tower liked to stand people there and measure how they flinched.
Kenneth stood beside Elara, sun-bleached and wind-whipped. He cleared his throat. "I,." He started, stopped. He swallowed. He tried again with a crooked smile that didn't reach his eyes. "There's a thing I need to say. And if it's foolish, forgive me."
Elara turned. A hand tightened around the hilt of her sword, not in anger, but because she had learned to brace herself against things better left unspoken.
Kenneth knelt.
It wasn't a dramatic fall; the Tower's floor was uneven and the motion came out clumsy. Yet his knee hit the stone as if he had meant it. He looked up at her then in a way that broke the ordinary into light shards.
"Elara," he said, voice raw with something he couldn't entirely control, "I don't know what we'll find out there. I don't know if this place will let us back. I thought once I came here it would all be simple, fight, survive, go home. But it's not simple. I don't know how else to say it without sounding like a fool, so… I'll say it. I care about you. I want to, if you'll let me, court you. To try, properly, in a world that doesn't tear out hearts and hurl them in the air. I don't expect an answer now. I don't expect the Tower to like it. But I had to tell you."
Elara's breath snagged. The admission sat between them like a small, bright thing. She had not expected it, not here, not now, when the air tasted of salt and fear. Her first response was the reflex honed by betrayals and the Tower's cruelty: protect the heart you'd not give away.
"You're… brave," she said finally, because she didn't want to hurt him with a cruelty that would echo in the gardens for longer than either deserved. "And you're kind. But I can't. I,." She swallowed, pain folding the syllables. "My heart is… not fully mine to hand. Not yet."
Kenneth's face crumpled, but only a little. He had expected resistance; he had hoped for some small window of reciprocation. He stood anyway, dignity tucked into his shoulders like a cloak.
"I understand," he said, voice thin. "I'd rather know than never have tried." He forced a smile, one that looked like both courage and grief. "I'll keep walking with you, if you'll let me. I,." He stopped, breath shaky. "I'll be where I'm needed."
Elara watched him, knowing this would be a fork that changed trajectories. She laid a hand over his briefly, warm, brief, not binding. "Thank you," she said. "And, be careful of your own heart. It's valuable." A bitter joke with a soft edge.
Kenneth nodded and fell into step beside her, shoulders squared against the next test. He did not demand her, did not plead. He merely, quietly, became the kind of ally people fought and died with. Inside him, a tenderness would keep growing whether she accepted it or not.
Ethan and Mae traveled toward the gardens guided by the shimmer in his wrist, an instinct more than a map. He had followed this pulse across islands and corridors, through rooms where the air smelled faintly of old books. Every time he thought he'd got a bearing, the Tower rearranged itself. It was exhausting. It was relentless.
Mae clung to his side, quick to point out curiosities or crack a joke about the Tower's "unique" interior decorating. Where the Tower had weight and menace, Mae brought a foolish lightness that looked like defiance. Even when their path collapsed beneath them, she'd take a breath and grin, saying something ridiculous to get both of them to laugh.
They entered the Mirror Gardens on a slant of light as the world shifted. A dozen reflections looked back, but none of them showed Ethan how to say the words that had caught in his throat months, no, years ago. Mae's hand brushed his when she reached to steady herself and the charge that passed between them did not go where she wanted. It thudded the way grief thuds: an unwelcome intruder.
Then, across the glade, something small and impossible happened. Kenneth knelt. Ethan didn't understand at first, he couldn't hear the words, but the motion was universal and ancient; the body language of love speaking before lips could. Something cold and hot at once poured through his chest.
He could not move.
Mae's gaze followed his and the world shifted for her too. She understood before Ethan could form the thought understood the shape of what he'd seen: a man on one knee, the object of that devotion staring at him as if the world were narrowing to the two of them.
"Ethan," she breathed. Her voice had lost its lightness. "He,." she began, but the word betrayed everything.
Ethan's legs felt like lead. For an instant there was room to think: maybe these were friends, maybe this was some Tower rite, maybe the kneeling meant something else. He'd trained himself not to leap to conclusions. He'd made the opposite of a leap last time and lost more than he could measure.
The man Kenneth, rose and turned away. The motion was ordinary, but its simplicity cracked something in Ethan. A slow, stunned refrain: what if she's moved on? What if she had found a hand to hold in the absence that had been his?
He moved without meaning to. One foot, then the next, a reed snapping to a wind. Mae grabbed his arm, but did not stop him. Her expression was quiet and strange, something between curiosity and a new, terrible tenderness.
Elara did not look to the trees. She did not look to the place Ethan would appear from. She only watched Kenneth go and then stood with the weight of things unsaid around her. Ethan came into the clearing in a staggered, breathless sprint, as if the air had been stolen from him and then let go.
For a heartbeat, none of them spoke. The Tower listened, as it always did.
Ethan's voice was raw. "Elara."
She turned. The look that met him was a thing he had been living inside since the first time the Tower made them meet something like recognition, relief, and then an ocean of complicated hurt.
He advanced, but something had settled into Elara's face that he hadn't seen before: the faint patient fatigue of someone who'd learned to brace for disappointment.
"What did I miss?" Ethan asked, as if the air could be stitched over with a question. As if time could be rolled back.
Elara looked at him and for a half-breath the Tower stilled. Then she said, quietly, "Kenneth asked me to court him."
The words were simple and dropped like stones into a quiet pool. Ethan's knees felt disconnected from him. The room's light shivered. Then he understood: kneeling, asking, the thing he'd only dreamed of had happened in his absence.
He had not heard Kenneth speak, had not seen the kneeling until he was too late. The possibility that she might have answered if only with a kind "no" gnawed at him.
"No," he said before he'd owned the sound. It came out short, not an answer but the start of one. The sound of it scared him because it tasted like accusation.
Elara's face was patient. "He asked gently and I said, no." She said it not to justify, but because she owed him the truth. "He deserved the chance to try. I didn't want to be cruel."
Kenneth stood a few paces off, his jaw tight. He said nothing. His silence had an iron quality to it, something like hurt dressed in dignity.
Mae watched Ethan as if mapping him anew. The look she gave him was small and private compassion threaded with something like longing. For a moment, she looked at Kenneth and then back to Elara, acutely aware of how quickly hearts could be rearranged by one missing person.
Ethan's throat worked. All the bravest things he had meant to say crowded in: the confessions he'd rehearsed in the night, the apologies, the promise that had once been a shape of iron. But the Tower didn't want apologies it wanted confession and decision.
"You didn't tell me," he said finally, not angry but raw. "You should have,." He broke off. The words would not do what his heart wished them to. He had no right to demand that she had waited.
Elara's eyelids fluttered. "You vanished," she said, as if that explained everything and nothing all at once. "You were taken. What would you have me do? Sit by a tree and wait until the Tower felt generous?"
Ethan's hands balled. For a second he imagined pulling her into his arms and never letting go. Instead, Mae stepped forward and laid a hand light and sure on his forearm.
"You can't take it all back," she said gently, and the truth of that stung. "But you can be here now."
Kenneth's jaw loosened. His voice was a hush. "If you need me to step back."
"No." Elara's voice cut, steady. "Don't make yourself smaller for the comfort of someone who disappeared."
That was not the answer Ethan had wanted to hear.
The Tower, merciless as ever, exhaled. The world tilted, a low moan threading through the sky. Somewhere, far and near, the shards chimed as if marking a tocsin.
Ethan's hand went to the mark on his wrist, the place that still warmed with Elara's memory. He understood then, in a way that forced the muscles in his face to betray him, that the Tower had not only scattered them physically. It had also scattered time, chances, the simple mercy of being present in private moments.
Mae stepped close, not to take his place but to hold a small space. Her presence was steady and warm. She had started the journey as a comic relief a light in a world of horror but she had become something Rachel, or Sofia might not be able to be right now: a witness. She saw the boy who'd been ripped, the man left trying to gather himself.
Ethan exhaled, something like a broken laugh. "I came back," he said, tone brittle. "I came back for you."
Elara's eyes were wet but not pleading. "You came back." It was both relief and accusation that spoke. "And yet," She glanced at Kenneth with no anger, just a measuring of fact. "You came back after he knelt down. That matters."
It mattered to him too, in a way he hadn't expected. The vast fragile geometry of their lives had been disrupted; the small acts that stitched people together had gone on without him.
For a breath, the four of them stood, Mae, Kenneth, Elara, Ethan like the four points of a compass misaligned. The Tower hummed around them, patient and savage.
Then the floor clenched. A low roll of sound, like distant thunder under a city. The Tower was not done. Nothing here ever was. Shadows gathered at the edges of the garden, crenellations of black light forming into something like intent.
"Move!" Elara barked, taking the lead. The moment demanded motion, not conversation.
They moved as one then fighting, ducking, throwing weight. The encounter was sharp and ugly and quick. The Tower sent a small army of glass-shards that sang when they flew. Mae proved braver than the jokes suggested; Kenneth fought with the same wilding tenacity he'd had since the start; Elara's blade moved with a kind of brutal, beautiful precision. Ethan found rhythm beside them, his strikes carrying the hard-earned weight of a man who would not let another thing be taken.
When the last shard dissolved into light, silence fell like a closing lid.
Ethan's breath came heavy. He looked to Elara and saw a woman who had endured more than he had thought possible. He looked to Kenneth and saw a brave heart who had risked and lost and still stood tall. He looked to Mae and in her face a soft, simple sorrow: the realization that she'd cared for him more quickly than she ought to have.
There were no neat endings here. There were only choices left to make.
Ethan wanted to explain everything in one sentence: the confessions he had rehearsed, the apologies, the promises. He reached for words and found only silence, the kind that presses like a hand over the mouth.
Elara's voice was low when she finally spoke, a thing that trembled with raw truth rather than plea: "We go together, for a while. The Tower will take its toll, and none of us will be unmarked by what comes next. If you came back for me, you have to be here now fully. No more disappearing."
Ethan swallowed. His throat felt thick. He wanted to promise and also wanted to plead for a second chance that time had stolen. He saw the hopeful shadow in Kenneth's eyes and the small, soft pain in Mae's expression. He thought of Sofia, waiting in the real world hurt, baffled, maybe unforgiving.
He thought of Elara's name on his tongue like a prayer.
"I'm here," he said finally, because for the first time since the Tower had yanked him away, the words felt like more than an echo. They felt like an oath.
It was not the end. It was not the beginning. It was something between which is what the Tower always measured: the space between heartbeats where choice lived and decisions were made.
They started walking again each of them a little different than before, all of them carrying more than they had the last time they took a step.