Chapter 273: Divine Wrath
Steel slammed into steel with the force of a siege weapon, the spikes meeting through flesh and bone before the two slabs finished closing. The old man disappeared between them instantly. What burst out from the edges was not a body anymore, but a violent spray of blood, shattered fragments, and torn cloth driven outward by the pressure of the trap. Warm droplets crossed the distance and struck Kael’s boots, Christy’s legs, and the lower edge of Hakim’s robes. A piece of broken dagger spun once across the stone before landing near the entrance, its blade still slick with blood.
For several seconds, none of them spoke.
The fire gathered around Kael’s arm remained there, flickering uselessly as he stared at the iron slabs. He felt that something was wrong with the exit; he could see strange structure in the minimap, but he had not known it would be something like this. That was the first thought that crossed his mind. The minimap had shown the exit. It had shown the safe direction, the path beyond, and the monsters that had been in the ravine.
It had not warned him that the beacon itself had teeth.
Christy’s face had gone pale. All the anger that had been there moments earlier was gone, replaced by the sort of stunned horror that came when someone died too quickly for hatred to enjoy it. The old man had betrayed them. He had tried to strand them over a ravine. He had called her something Kael had been ready to burn him for saying. Yet seeing him crushed into nothing by an exit that had looked safe left no room for satisfaction.
Hakim slowly pulled his hand out of his pocket. Whatever he had intended to use remained hidden in his palm for a second before he let the hand fall to his side. His eyes remained on the trap, though the thought settling into him was not difficult to understand.
If Kael had reached the exit first, that would have been him.
The slabs remained shut for several long breaths before opening again with a grinding shriek. What remained of the old man slumped down between them in pieces too ruined for the tower to pretend this had been anything but execution. Blood spread along the floor and into the carved lines around the threshold, sinking into grooves that had been hidden until now.
Only then did a notification appear in front of the three survivors.
[Trial Condition Updated.]
[Three Climbers Remain.]
[Proceed to the Exit.]
Kael stared at the message, then at the trap.
His expression hardened.
"This wasn’t part of the original trial," he said.
Christy looked toward him, still struggling to pull her gaze away from the remains. "How do you know?"
"Because the trial needed three of us alive before," Kael replied, lowering his arm as the flames faded into the gauntlet. "If it always had a trap waiting to kill the first person through, it wouldn’t have changed the rule halfway through the run. Someone changed the condition, then placed that thing there to make sure whoever rushed ahead died."
Hakim glanced at him sharply. "You believe someone wanted one of us dead?"
Kael looked at the iron slabs once more, then down at the blood spattered across his boots. His first instinct was to think of the group. Christy was injured. Hakim knew the desert. The old man had been weak and panicked. Any of them could have run first once the condition changed. Yet the moment the thought settled fully, the answer became uncomfortably clear.
Not just one of them.
The person most likely to arrive first.
Kael looked at his own gauntlets, at the enormous body the old man had feared, then toward the cliff he had climbed in minutes while carrying two people.
"Not one of us," Kael said. "Me."
No one had an answer to that.
The exit stood open beyond the blood-slick trap, harmless now that its intended kill had already been consumed. That was the ugliest part of it. The passage beyond did not pulse with danger or threaten them again. It waited as though it had fulfilled a simple requirement and now had no further interest in what had just occurred.
Kael stepped forward first, but stopped before crossing the blood-stained threshold. He lowered his hand, pressed two fingers against the stone beside one of the hidden grooves, and felt the mechanism through the structure as best he could. The trap was spent. Whatever force had armed it no longer moved beneath the surface. Even so, he did not trust it enough to simply walk through.
He turned toward Hakim. "Throw something across."
Hakim did not question him. He picked up a broken piece of wood from the ground and hurled it forward. The debris struck the ground beyond and rolled several feet without anything reacting.
Kael nodded once. "You go first. Christy follows. I go last."
Christy frowned immediately. "Why are you going last?"
"Because if it decides to close again, I have the best chance of stopping it long enough for you to pass," Kael replied. Then, seeing the look on her face, he added, "Don’t make this into something dramatic. I’m already annoyed enough."
"We probably won’t meet again for a while," she stole a quick kiss from Kael’s lips, he was not in the mood for it, but he didn’t stop her. "Let’s meet again."
She looked like she wanted to say more, but in the end, she only tightened her grip around one dagger and followed Hakim toward the doorway. Hakim moved cautiously, stepping around what remained of the old man without looking down for too long. The instant he crossed the threshold and nothing happened, Christy followed, limping hard but fast enough to clear the gap.
Kael remained behind for one last moment.
He did not like the old man. The man had betrayed them, tried to strand them, and died with an insult still fresh on his tongue. But the fact that he deserved anger did not mean Kael enjoyed the sight of him smeared across a trap meant for someone else. Especially when that someone else was probably Kael himself.
"Stupid old bastard," Kael muttered, then stepped through the exit before the tower decided it had not been entertained enough.
The world flashed white around him.
*****
Far from the climbing floors, far beyond any corridor that living challengers could reach, a sound rolled through a place where sound should never have existed.
It began as a low tremor, then rose into a violent roar powerful enough to make the lights scattered across the empty plane flicker. There was no sky above the place and no earth beneath it, only an endless dark expanse where pale motes drifted in slow orbits around a miniature image of the Tower. The structure hung in the center of nothingness, impossibly detailed despite its size, every floor represented by thin layers of light and shadow that shifted whenever a climber moved within them.
Several motes had gathered closer to the lower floors.
One of them brightened sharply when the roar faded, and laughter rippled from it with open delight. "Ulsal," the voice said, barely restraining its amusement, "you underestimate human greed far too much."
Another mote spun in a lazy circle around the miniature tower, its light taking on a warmer hue as it joined the mockery. "Quite the shame. Three million Insight spent, a modification hidden well enough to keep even the administrators confused, and your lovely little execution failed because one terrified old man decided betrayal was faster than trust."
More lights stirred around them. Some did not laugh aloud, but their interest was obvious in the way they drew closer, savoring the humiliation. Constellations rarely cared when one another lost a minor wager. This was different. Insight measured influence, authority, attention, and the ability to interfere with a system that did not bend easily. Three million was not a playful bet. It was an investment large enough to reveal obsession.
One mote remained silent.
Its light was darker than the others, deep red folded around a core of black, as if a dying star had learned patience instead of fading away. Ulsal did not answer the laughter. He did not lash out, nor attempt to justify the plan. The trap had been sound. Kael was the strongest among the surviving climbers, the one most able to pass the ravine, the one who should have reached the exit first once the rule forced competition upon them. The Tower had accepted that logic. The altered condition was lawful. The hidden execution fit the Trial of Endurance perfectly, because any climber who lowered his guard in front of an exit had failed to endure until the true end.
Three million points. One to change the rule, one to make the trap, one to hide the change...
It was perfect...almost.
There had only been one flaw.
Ulsal had expected the powerful one to act first.
He had neglected the desperate one.
The miniature tower shimmered, showing three figures vanishing from the altered floor and moving beyond his reach for the moment. Ulsal watched the largest silhouette disappear last, without hesitation, without understanding how narrowly the trap had missed the person it had been built to consume.
The laughing mote drifted closer, voice turning sharper now that Ulsal still refused to reply. "No retort? No claim that this was somehow planned? I expected more from someone willing to bleed so much currency just to murder a climber in a sub-ten floor."
Still, Ulsal said nothing.
There was no value in answering beings who wanted only the sound of his irritation. There was no value in mourning an unsuccessful measure, not while the problem still climbed. Insight could be recovered. Rules could be bent again. Opportunities would emerge as long as Kael continued stepping upward, greedy for power he did not understand and careless enough to keep taking what should never have belonged to him.
A small pulse ran through Ulsal’s light.
The others quieted slightly, not because he had spoken, but because they felt the intent behind it.
This had never been merely about a talented climber breaking records or moving through floors faster than he should. Kael had taken something valuable from him. Not once, where chance could be blamed and swallowed, but twice. Two treasures pulled from Ulsal’s own treasury and claimed by the boy as if the Tower had simply chosen to reward him. Two pieces that should have remained hidden, waiting for a hand worthier than some level-one brute who learned too quickly and survived too stubbornly.
The trap had failed.
That only meant the next one could not rely on probability.
Around the miniature tower, one of the observing motes laughed again, though the sound had become more cautious now. "There it is. I can feel you thinking. You really plan to keep doing this?"
Ulsal’s light finally shifted, its dark red glow compressing until it resembled an eye narrowing upon the climbing floors.
When his voice came, it was quiet enough that the laughter died immediately.
"He will return what he stole," Ulsal said. "If he must be broken into pieces before the Tower accepts the return, then I will simply pay the cost."
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