[The Symphony of the Sinking Tower]
[System Alert: Entering Tier 4 Mirror Dimension]
[Scenario: The Symphony of the Sinking Tower]
Wait... what does that even mean? I cursed out, glaring at the translucent blue System message floating in the dark.
"Ahhh... my fucking head hurts so much," I groaned, pressing both hands against my temples. The pain was blinding, a sharp, drilling ache right behind my eyes.
I am Lucian. Why did Raphael tell me to 'remember who I am' right before we got sucked in? Was he joking? That fucker.
As I slowly forced my eyes open, the system window faded, and I realized I was in a completely different surrounding than the foggy coastline of Bransy Town.
The walls around me were lined with rotting red velvet wallpaper and tarnished gold trim, but massive, rusted iron gears regularly pierced through the plaster like exposed, mechanical bones.
I lowered my hands, my boots splashing slightly. I looked down.
Freezing, pitch-black seawater was already pooling around my ankles.
I was standing inside what looked like a lavish, enclosed VIP opera box. The only light came from a sickly-green gas lamp flickering weakly on the wall. I checked my hands. My silver cane was gone.
"Raphael?" I called out. My voice sounded flat, swallowed by the damp, oppressive air.
No answer. I was completely alone. No Raphael, no King Charles, and no Royal Guards.
The air in the small room smelled horrific—a mixture of freezing sea salt, wet, rotting wood, and the sharp metallic tang of ozone. I waded through the ankle-deep water toward the heavy oak door leading out to the main hallway. It had a massive, complex iron gear-lock mechanism bolted to the center of it.
I grabbed the handle and pulled. Locked.
"Great. A cage," I muttered, royal blue Ether sparking faintly at my fingertips. I prepared to use Event Horizon to shatter the lock, but before I could, a sound made me freeze.
TICK.
...
TOCK.
It wasn't a normal clock. It was a massive, heavy metronome echoing through the very foundation of the building. The sound was so deep it vibrated in my teeth. Accompanying the ticking was a faint, haunting melody—a distorted, out-of-tune opera waltz drifting through the walls from some unseen phonograph.
I walked over to the only other feature in the room: a massive stained-glass window.
I wiped the condensation off the glass and looked outside, expecting to see a sky or a city. Instead, I saw nothing but churning, pitch-black water. Bubbles rushed upward past the glass. The heavy, terrifying groan of metal buckling under extreme pressure echoed all around me.
We are underwater, I realized, my heart skipping a beat. The building is sinking.
I spun around, looking for a way out. Next to the locked door, I noticed something I had missed in the dim green light.
A heavy iron lever was mounted to the wall. Carved deeply into the metal above it was a single Roman numeral: I.
One? Are there others? I reached my hand out to grasp the cold iron lever.
But before my fingers could even touch the metal, a deafening explosion rocked the entire tower.
BOOM.
The shockwave knocked me off my feet, sending me splashing into the freezing black water. Somewhere far above me, a man screamed in absolute, bloody terror.
Then, the world stopped.
The haunting opera music cut out mid-note. The green gas lamp froze. Even the ripples in the water around my hands turned to solid ice.
A sound like a massive whip breaking the sound barrier shattered my eardrums.
SNAP.
A violent, sickening force grabbed me by the spine. It didn't pull me forward; it violently yanked me backward through space and time. Extreme vertigo slammed into my brain, so intense I couldn't even scream.
Colors inverted. Gravity ceased to exist.
And then—
[System Alert: Entering Tier 4 Mirror Dimension]
[Scenario: The Symphony of the Sinking Tower]
"Ahhh... my fucking head hurts so much," I groaned, pressing both hands against my temples.
I blinked, gasping for air, my heart hammering violently against my ribs.
I was standing in the exact same spot. The rotting red velvet. The tarnished gold trim. The freezing black water pooling around my ankles. The green gas lamp flickering on the wall.
TICK.
...
TOCK.
I stared at the heavy iron lever on the wall.
What... what just happened?