He woke in a vast white room that stretched as far as a football field in every direction. The space was so blank, so painfully plain, it didn’t even feel like part of the Tower.

  There was no furniture. No markings. No doors. Nothing but endless white.

  But that wasn’t the strangest part.

  People stood everywhere.

  They were scattered across the massive chamber in loose clusters, all wearing the same expression—confusion. Some whispered to each other. Others simply stared at the void as if waiting for the walls to shift.

  There weren’t twenty of them. Not thirty.

  There had to be more than forty.

  Rain froze.

  That didn’t make sense.

  On the first floor, there had been only fifty participants at the start—and many of those had died. At most, twenty-five… maybe thirty should have survived.

  So who were the rest?

  A quiet unease settled in his chest.

  He wove through the murmuring crowd, brushing past shoulders as fragments of conversation drifted around him.

  “Where are we?”

  “What is this place?”

  “Is this the next floor?”

  No one had answers.

  Eventually, he spotted the two people he had been searching for: Roxy and Light.

  Relief flickered as he approached. They were sitting against the white floor, close together. Roxy looked pale, her breathing slow and heavy. Light’s back was pressed to the wall, shoulders slumped with exhaustion.

  Rain explained quickly what had happened with the goblins. Light’s eyes widened when he realized that Rain had killed the remaining ones himself. Rain didn’t bother mentioning any “help”—he wasn’t in the mood to be humble.

  After all, if he hadn’t been stabbed by that goblin earlier, he would have killed every last one on his own. In his mind, he had done exactly that.

  Roxy, however, looked worse.

  Light explained that she had collapsed from mana depletion after casting her fire spell. He had carried her the rest of the way.

  She didn’t fully understand why, but the status screen had given her part of the answer. Mana wasn’t separate from the body—it was tied to it. When too much was consumed too quickly, the body simply shut down.

  Her limbs had gone completely immobile. From her neck down, she hadn’t been able to move at all.

  Rain listened carefully.

  Apparently, Tower climbers fell into two categories: Regulars. And Irregulars.

  Regular people received essences—well, some of them did. Roxy didn’t know much about essences, only that the status screen said they were given starting on the second floor of the Tower. Every Regular who received one had it tied to skills, forming a personal core power—a foundation for abilities granted by the Tower itself.

  Irregulars were different. Instead of relying on the Tower, they relied on themselves.

  They used mana.

  There were two types of mana users.

  Conjurers and Augmenters.

  Conjurers—like Roxy—wielded staffs and conjured spells: fire, water, earth, and so on.

  Augmenters reinforced themselves with mana. They could coat weapons to make them stronger, enhance their feet for speed, or fortify any part of their body. Essentially, they became living weapons.

  All this information gave Rain a headache. Partly because Roxy spoke in an annoyingly clipped, tired tone. But also because it was an overwhelming amount of information, much of it seemingly impossible.

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  But then again… the situation itself was insane.

  Rain couldn’t help but wonder why the system favored Roxy.

  Why had it spoken to her so openly, gifting her knowledge it had denied to everyone else? Why had she been guided, informed, almost… acknowledged — while the rest of them were left stumbling in ignorance like blind animals thrown into a slaughter pit?

  As the thought lingered in his mind, a sudden shift rippled through the vast white chamber they stood within.

  The air thickened.

  The silence deepened.

  Something had entered.

  At the center of the room, space itself seemed to distort, folding inward before unraveling like torn fabric. From that distortion, a figure stepped forward.

  It was draped in a massive black cloak that flowed unnaturally, not swaying with gravity but writhing as if alive. The fabric clung and stretched, then loosened again, as though it were breathing.

  Its movements were wrong.

  Limbs bent at angles that should have snapped bone. Its posture shifted between tall and small in a matter of seconds. Its silhouette warped, narrowing into a feminine frame before broadening into something distinctly masculine.

  Its body did not settle on one form.

  It changed.

  Constantly.

  It was Ashlore.

  No one spoke this time.

  No one screamed as they had before.

  Rain didn’t even realize he had stopped breathing until his lungs began to burn.

  He found himself comparing Ashlore to the goblins he had slaughtered on the first floor — and the comparison felt laughable.

  How quickly could Ashlore have killed those fifty goblins?

  Minutes?

  Seconds?

  The thought made his stomach tighten.

  Ashlore seemed different now. Less violent. Less eager.

  There was something almost… delighted in the way the cloak curled around its shifting frame.

  Carefully, Rain activated Eyes of the Vampire.

  His vision sharpened, focusing past the folds of the cloak and into the shadows beneath the hood.

  Through the darkness, he could just barely make out the curve of a mouth.

  It was smiling.

  Not politely.

  Not warmly.

  It was a wide, stretching grin that seemed carved too deeply into a face that did not quite belong to either man or woman.

  “Congratulations,” Ashlore said, the voice emerging low and resonant.

  As the body shifted into a more feminine shape, the tone softened, becoming almost soothing — almost gentle.

  “All of you have passed the first trial.”

  Its head tilted slightly.

  The smile widened.

  “Unfortunately… many of you did not.”

  A ripple of unease passed through the survivors.

  “Because of the losses sustained on the first floor, we have merged two groups into one. That,” Ashlore continued, lifting a long, dark finger and pointing slowly from person to person with unnatural speed, “is why there are exactly fifty-two of you.”

  It had counted them in less than two seconds.

  A faint shadowy aura trailed from its fingertip as it moved.

  Ashlore cleared its throat — a strange, unnecessary sound, considering its anatomy seemed optional at best.

  “I have combined you for the sole purpose of Floor Three, which requires a minimum of forty participants. We cannot risk insufficient numbers.”

  Its tone flattened slightly, already bored of its own explanation.

  “Two of you will instead participate in Floor Two.”

  A murmur spread through the room.

  “This deviation from standard sequence is irregular,” Ashlore added, almost lazily. “However, the mortality rate of Floor One has forced our hand.”

  The cloak shifted again.

  From somewhere within its folds, Ashlore drew forth a single sheet of paper.

  It looked ordinary at first glance — aged parchment, neatly folded — but when Ashlore unfolded it, the paper bore no creases, no damage, no imperfection. It was pristine, as though folding were merely an illusion.

  “I have been instructed,” Ashlore said, glancing down at the page, “to read a formal apology.”

  Its voice changed again — this time adopting a tone almost mocking in its sincerity.

  “I am deeply sorry for this predicament. As a token of goodwill, each of you shall receive one item representing your deepest desire — something you hold closest to your heart. Naturally, this gift must comply with the laws of the Tower.”

  A pause.

  “I trust you will find it satisfactory.”

  — The Architect.

  The word lingered.

  The Architect.

  No one seemed to understand who that was.

  Rain exchanged a brief look with Light, confusion mirrored between them. Roxy looked as though she wanted to react as well, but exhaustion had drained the strength from her expression.

  Then—

  Ashlore snapped its fingers.

  In that instant, something shifted in the air.

  An object materialized in the hands of every survivor.

  Rain’s eyes moved quickly across the room as the fear of Ashlore that had once gripped everyone’s faces began to melt away. One by one, their expressions transformed into disbelief… then into something brighter. Some gasped. Some dropped to their knees. A few began to cry as they clutched the items they had received — precious things they must have longed for more than anything else.

  Others simply stared in stunned silence, holding objects they had clearly lost long ago.

  Rain turned toward Light and Roxy.

  Roxy’s exhausted expression changed instantly. The dullness in her eyes vanished as she looked down at her arms. Tears welled up without warning as she lifted a small stuffed animal — worn, soft, and clearly old. She pulled it tightly against her chest, hugging it as if afraid it might disappear.

  Light stood quietly beside her, holding a single necklace in his palm.

  He wasn’t crying.

  He just stared at it, a faint, almost fragile smile forming on his face as his fingers slowly closed around the chain.

  Everywhere Rain looked, people held something deeply personal. Nothing dangerous. No weapons. No armor. No tools of survival. Just pieces of memory. Pieces of their hearts.

  One man even sat on the floor with a beautifully prepared gourmet meal resting in his hands, eating it slowly while tears streamed down his face, as though each bite carried him back to somewhere he could never return to.

  Rain slowly lowered his gaze to his own hands.

  And froze.

  They were empty.

  There was nothing resting in his palms.

  His fingers tightened instinctively, as if he had simply failed to notice it.

  But there was nothing there.

  Confusion twisted in his chest.

  “What…?” Rain muttered under his breath, staring at his empty hands as the sounds of quiet sobbing and soft laughter echoed around him.

  For the first time since entering the Tower, a different kind of unease crept into his mind.

  Why had everyone else received something…

  And he had not?