No one was meant to start there.
Not on that floor. Not in that place.
So deep beneath that the world itself forgot that it existed.
It didn't have a number.
The others had names, titles, rumors. They had maps etched in blood, scrawled notes from the broken-minded. Traces of those who had failed to climb them. And the stories of those who had.
But this place—this floor—had nothing.
It was lower than the first step. Lower than failure. A dead root beneath the foundation of everything.
There were no lights here. Only faint pulses of blue-white glow that slithered through the roots like veins beneath rotting skin. The walls were alive, and asleep. The air was too still, as if holding its breath.
And then, for the first time in an age, the tower exhaled.
Two shapes stirred in the dark.
One lay curled in a web of roots, still and silent. The other clawed its way out from a collapsed nest of bone and stone, shivering with breath.
They had no names. No memories. No reason to be here. But something old had opened its eyes again, and it had chosen them.
On their skin, faint marks began to glow. Twin symbols. Not matching, but connected.
A hum echoed through the foundation of the world, too deep to hear, too cold to ignore.
Somewhere above them, one hundred forty-eight floors waited.
Somewhere below, something watched.
And between the two, the climb began.