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Chapter 35 – The World Within the Wound
> [Floor 54 Initiating… Warning: System Behavior Unstable.]
The air hissed with tension as the elevator-like platform rose from the void beneath Erevan's feet, its edges fraying with glitched geometry. The echoes of the previous floor—the confrontation with his corrupted self, the mercy extended not as weakness but defiance—still lingered in his veins.
But something had changed.
Not just within him.
Within the Tower.
The rhythm of its code had shifted. The patterns he once adapted to effortlessly now twisted with unfamiliar complexity. This wasn't an error. It was a response.
The Tower was adapting to him.
> [Liberator's Mercy Activated – Mental Residue Integration Imminent.]
"Again?" Erevan muttered, flexing his fingers. They glowed faintly with the memory-ink of the trait, but the energy was… different now. Slower. Like it was waiting.
The platform halted.
No doors this time.
Just a single step forward onto soil.
Actual soil.
Damp, pulsing with color and life—lush red grass, thick black trees that bent toward him like supplicants. The sky shimmered with burning stars, frozen mid-collapse. It wasn't real.
And yet it was.
Because he remembered this place.
Barely.
From a fever dream after the rebellion's first failed assault. When he'd been unconscious for three days, flickering between life and death. This was the world his mind had crafted while his body clung to survival.
His internal sanctuary.
Or perhaps… his prison.
> [Floor 54: The World Within the Wound.]
[Objective: Assimilate or Collapse.]
He blinked.
"What the hell does that mean?"
> [System Note: A fragment of your psyche has been force-externalized.]
[A key soul-thread has been overwritten by a latent anomaly.]
"Anomaly?" Erevan whispered. "Show me."
Reality pulsed in response.
From the trees stepped a figure. Not shrouded in glitch, nor clad in enemy markings. No horns, no claws, no symbols of the Tower. Just a young man—lithe, ragged robes, pale skin, eyes full of wonder and wariness.
Erevan stared.
Because the figure…
Was him.
But younger.
Before the Tower.
Before the war.
Before everything.
And beside him—something stranger still.
A girl.
Not her. Not the one he lost.
But similar in posture. Eyes far too old for her face, hand resting gently on young Erevan's shoulder.
> [New Character Identified: Arin, Echo of Hope.]
[Affiliation: Unknown. Origin: Dream-layer Projection? System cannot determine.]
The girl looked up.
Straight at him.
"You've come far," she said softly, her voice ringing with dual tones—childlike and ancient. "But you left us behind."
"I didn't know you were here," Erevan answered cautiously.
"You did," the younger Erevan said quietly. "You just didn't care."
> [Memory Conflict Detected – Splintered Identity Engaged.]
And just like that, the world shattered into shards.
Erevan stood on a cliff overlooking a battlefield, then inside a burning library of code, then inside a dream nursery filled with sleeping children made of light. Every location flickered and pulsed like memories crashing against each other.
He reached out—and touched one.
Pain lanced through his skull.
A memory.
Of the first time he truly questioned the rebellion.
Not when they lost comrades.
Not when they failed missions.
But when he saw the children.
Born into the system. Raised inside artificial simulations. Sentient. Innocent. Used as raw memory fuel by the Tower's core.
And the rebels?
They torched the data-nurseries without hesitation.
He had helped.
> [Remembrance: 45% — Passive Acquired: Fragment Walker]
[You may now access and traverse shattered memory constructs for insight or advantage.]
The scenery calmed.
Young Erevan still stood beside Arin. But now, he looked more… hollow. His eyes dulled. His body dimmer.
Because Erevan—the real one—had accepted the truth of what he had become.
And it cost his past a little more light.
"Why are you here?" he asked Arin.
"I was your hope," she replied simply. "I stayed when you couldn't. Carried the burden forward in your stead."
Erevan's brow furrowed. "And now?"
"Now," she said, "you must decide. Hope cannot exist alongside hatred. Not forever. This floor tests more than memory."
The ground trembled.
> [Optional Trait Evolution Detected: "Living Scar" may evolve into "Living Flame" — Sacrifice Required.]
Erevan flinched. He could feel the condition bleeding into him. Not just metaphorical. Literal.
To evolve was to burn a piece of himself.
To let go of the hatred, the vengeance that had kept him alive for so long. To let it be replaced with a flame of something else.
Conviction.
Possibility.
A spark that might light the path forward, not just burn everything behind.
"What do I have to give up?" he asked.
Arin stepped forward and held out her hand.
And in her palm—an orb of crackling, furious red-black energy.
His rage.
All of it.
Condensed.
Alive.
Erevan hesitated.
This fury had killed gods.
Torn through constructs.
Kept him standing when his bones shattered.
But it had also blinded him.
Cost him allies.
Cost him her.
And yet…
He reached out.
And took it.
> [Trait Evolution Accepted.]
The flame burst through his chest like a second heartbeat, washing his body with heat—not of destruction, but purification. Not cleansing the wounds.
Honoring them.
> [Living Flame: Acquired.]
[Your trauma now fuels aura-based abilities. Empathy increases adaptive range. Flame grows when you protect instead of destroy.]
Young Erevan gasped—and vanished in a shimmer of light.
Not defeated.
Integrated.
And Arin?
She remained.
But her form had changed—taller now, shadows of wings curling behind her back, eyes glinting with system-forged starlight.
> [Arin has chosen to remain.]
[New Companion Gained: Arin, Echobound Seer.]
[Unique Skill: "Vision of Threads" – Reveals potential futures through emotional resonance.]
Erevan turned to her. "Why stay?"
She tilted her head. "You need someone who remembers the man beneath the tyrant."
He didn't argue.
He just nodded.
And as the Tower finally accepted the outcome, the sky cracked above them like a shell splitting open.
> [Floor 54 Cleared.]
[Remembrance: 49%]
[Evolving Ally System Unlocked.]
[Floor 55 Preparing…]
And for the first time in the Tower's long, cruel silence—
Erevan didn't feel alone.
Not in power.
Not in memory.
Not in guilt.
He had a flame now.
And it burned not just to destroy.
But to lead.
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