The summit was quiet.
Not the fragile quiet that came before violence, nor the empty kind that followed it—but something heavier, as if the world itself was holding its breath. Mana residue drifted through the air like fine ash, faint and shimmering, settling slowly over fractured stone and collapsed bodies.
Seo Yura stood alone.
Around her, her party lay scattered across the summit, unconscious or barely breathing. Chests rose and fell unevenly. A weapon slipped from slack fingers and clattered once before going still. No one moved to attack. No one could.
She turned her head slowly, taking them in, counting breaths the way she always did after battles went wrong. Relief came in quiet increments. They were alive. Broken, but alive.
Only then did she look back at him.
Bael.
The name echoed in her mind, heavy with meaning. A title pulled from old grimoires and fragmented translations, something she'd read about once and dismissed as myth layered over fear. First King. One who ruled legions. One whose voice commanded obedience.
She swallowed.
"Bael..." she said instead, the name feeling strange and dangerously intimate on her tongue. She hesitated, then corrected herself aloud, softer. "Amon."
He did not react. If anything, he seemed to accept the sound of it without comment, as if names were tools and she had simply chosen the right one.
"You're certain they'll live?" she asked after a moment, gesturing weakly to the fallen behind her.
"Yes," he replied. "The command disrupted consciousness, not function. They will wake."
No reassurance. No apology. Just a statement of fact.
Yura nodded, shoulders sagging a fraction as the tension she'd been holding finally eased. The quiet stretched again, long enough that she became aware of her own breathing, the faint tremor in her hands.
She folded them together to still them.
"I thought… when we reached the summit," she said, choosing her words carefully, "that this would be where we died."
Amon turned his gaze fully on her then. Not sharp. Not cold. Simply attentive.
"That was the expected outcome," he said.
She let out a weak, humorless breath. "I figured."
Silence returned, thicker this time. It wasn't uncomfortable, exactly—but it pressed in on her thoughts, forced them into the open. She found herself speaking again before she'd fully decided to.
"Why didn't you kill us?" she asked.
It wasn't an accusation. It wasn't gratitude. Just a question that had been circling her mind since the moment she was still standing.
Amon did not answer immediately.
"Killing you," he said at last, "would have ended the disturbance. Nothing more."
Yura frowned slightly. "And that wasn't enough?"
"It would not have changed the structure that produced you," he replied. "Nor the one that will produce others after you."
She absorbed that, brow creasing as she considered his words. "So you let us live… because it was pointless?"
"Yes."
The honesty of it caught her off guard more than any threat could have.
She huffed a quiet laugh, then shook her head. "That might be the strangest mercy I've ever heard."
He did not deny it. Did not claim it.
Another pause.
"What do you want?" Yura asked suddenly.
The question surprised even her, but once spoken, it felt inevitable. She met his eyes, steady despite the exhaustion weighing her down. "Not what you're supposed to want. Not what the tower demands. What you want."
Amon regarded her for a long moment.
"Demons are not shaped by desire," he said. "Only by accumulation."
She waited, sensing there was more.
"We grow stronger through consumption," he continued evenly. "Through killing. Through taking what remains when others fall. Authority. Souls. Territory. Each victory adds weight. Each conquest expands what already exists."
There was no pride in his voice. No revulsion either. Just truth.
"We do not evolve," he said. "We do not change direction. We only become more of what we already are."
Yura listened without interrupting, though something in her expression tightened. "And humans?"
"You begin weak," Amon said. "You fail. You fracture. You adapt."
His gaze shifted, not away from her, but deeper—like he was recalling something long observed. "You change fundamentally over time. You grow toward something new."
A faint crease appeared between his brows.
"I only grow into myself."
The words settled heavily between them.
For a moment, Yura didn't know what to say. She'd heard countless justifications for violence, for cruelty, for inevitability. This wasn't one of them. There was no attempt to excuse, no effort to soften the reality he described.
"Do you enjoy it?" she asked quietly.
Amon answered without hesitation.
"No."
The simplicity of it struck her harder than any confession could have. She stared at him, really looked at him this time—not as the final boss, not as Bael, not as the end of the tower—but as something bound to a role it had never chosen.
The summit remained silent.
And in that silence, for the first time since she'd begun climbing, Seo Yura felt like she was speaking to someone who truly understood what it meant to be unable to change.
Amon was the one who broke it.
"I observed you for a long time," he said.
Yura stiffened slightly, then relaxed. Of course he had. She didn't ask how.
"At first, it was incidental," he continued. "You were simply another variable moving through my domain. An inefficiency. You delayed progress. You interfered with outcomes that would have otherwise resolved cleanly."
She winced faintly. "That sounds… about right."
"That was not the feeling," he said. "Not yet."
His gaze shifted, not away from her, but inward—focused on something he did not fully understand himself. "What followed was unfamiliar. You acted against reason repeatedly, yet the consequences did not align with failure. Each time you should have broken, you did not. Each time compromise would have increased survival, you refused it."
He paused, then added, "It disrupted my expectations."
Yura let out a small, uncertain breath. She wasn't sure where this was going, and that frightened her more than any threat.
"I do not experience admiration," Amon said plainly. "Nor envy. Nor aspiration. Those require the capacity to become something else."
She nodded slowly.
"What I experienced," he said, "was deviation."
The word hung there, stark and precise.
"A flaw," he went on. "A contradiction in my existence. I am static. Immutable. I do not change." His eyes returned to her. "And yet, because of you, something did."
Yura's chest tightened.
She tried to speak. Failed. Her mouth opened, then closed again, thoughts scrambling for purchase.
"I am aware of how foolish this sounds," Amon said, as if anticipating her reaction. "I am also aware that this sensation does not serve my function. It does not increase my authority. It does not strengthen my domain."
He exhaled slowly. "And still, it persists."
She shook her head faintly, overwhelmed. "Amon… I—I don't know what to say to that."
"I am not asking you to," he replied.
Relief and something sharper cut through her at the same time.
"What I am telling you," he said, "is why I have made a decision."
Her heart skipped. "What decision?"
He answered without hesitation. "I will end this tower."
The words hit her like a physical blow.
"No," she said immediately, stepping forward despite herself. "You can't just—do that. If the tower collapses—"
"It will," he said calmly. "One way or another. That outcome is inevitable."
She shook her head harder now. "Then why—why like this?"
"Because," Amon said, "I am making a bet."
Her breathing came fast, shallow. "A bet on what?"
"On you."
The way he said it—without emphasis, without drama—made her throat tighten painfully.
"You are capable of change," he continued. "Not just personally, but structurally. You act against systems that reward cruelty, even when doing so disadvantages you. That is not hope. That is persistence."
He met her gaze steadily. "The world you inhabit will continue to produce towers. Afflictions. End-points. I cannot prevent that."
Yura swallowed. "But you think I can."
"I think," he said, "that you can make the world hesitate again."
She laughed weakly, a sound halfway to a sob. "That's… that's too much. You don't even know me."
"I know enough," he replied. "And I know myself."
She stared at him, disbelief and fear warring in her chest. "And where does that leave you?"
Amon answered without self-pity, without bitterness. "I have no place in that world."
The words were not tragic. They were factual.
"I cannot become better," he said. "You can."
Her vision blurred.
"No," she whispered. "That's not—this isn't fair. You don't get to decide this alone."
"I am not," he said.
Slowly, deliberately, he reached up and placed a hand over the center of his chest. The air around him shifted, responding to his intent.
"This," he said, "is my core."
The stone beneath their feet faintly vibrated, as if reacting to the truth of it.
"If it is destroyed," Amon continued, "my authority will collapse. My existence will end. The tower will lose its anchor."
Yura's breath hitched violently. "Stop. Don't say it like that."
"You must strike here," he said, lowering his hand to reveal the faint, pulsing point beneath his skin. "With sufficient force. Without hesitation."
Her hands began to shake uncontrollably.
"I am ordering you to do it," Amon said.
She looked up at him, eyes wide and wet. "You can't—don't do this. I never wanted this ending. I just wanted—"
"Peace," he finished quietly.
She nodded, tears spilling freely now. "Yes."
"This is the only form of peace I can offer," he said.
She stepped back, then forward again, torn. "There has to be another way. We can talk. We can—"
"There is no other outcome where I remain," Amon said gently. "And I will not allow my existence to continue shaping the world into something you are fighting against."
Her shoulders shook as she broke down fully, sobs tearing out of her as she clenched her fists. "I don't want to kill you," she cried. "I never wanted to kill you."
"I know," he said.
That, more than anything else, shattered her.
Slowly, as if afraid the moment would vanish if he rushed it, Amon closed his eyes.
"I place my end in your hands," he said. "Do not look away."
Light began to gather.
Her weapon trembled as she raised it, hands slick with tears. The summit seemed to recede, the world narrowing to a single point between them.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
The light surged.
Everything went white.
—
Amon gasped.
He lurched upright with a sharp intake of breath, heart slamming violently against his ribs. The sensation was wrong—too fast, too loud, too fragile. Air burned his lungs as he dragged it in, chest heaving.
He looked down.
Human hands. Shaking. Scarred, but small. Weak.
The room around him was unfamiliar—white walls, harsh lighting, the steady beeping of some distant machine. The scent of antiseptic filled his nose, sharp and overwhelming.
His head spun.
"What the fu—"