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Chapter 28 – Echoes in the Broken Sky
By Dorian Blackthorn
Tagline: In a tower that breaks the soul, only monsters climb to the top.
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The sky above Floor 52 was wrong.
It wasn't broken like the others—shattered skies, glitched clouds, stars frozen mid-birth. No. This one was too perfect.
Azure. Calm. Birds flying in mechanical loops across painted clouds.
A lie.
Erevan stepped into a world he remembered from a lifetime ago.
A village. Small. Wooden fences. Lavender fields stretching out like dreams left unfinished.
His boots left no sound on the cobbled road.
There were no enemies. No traps.
Just… silence.
And scent.
Lavender, like his mother used to crush between her fingers.
He hated this floor already.
> [Floor 52 – Echo Simulation Detected.]
[Warning: Cognitive Anchors Unstable.]
[Remembrance Threshold Breached: 20%]
[New Trait: Unlocked Memory Fragment – "The One Who Waited"]
[System Observation: Suppressed.]
The last line made him pause.
The Tower wasn't watching.
That had never happened before.
Which meant something else was.
He stepped past the village well. Water rippled inside—but didn't reflect him. Instead, it showed her.
The girl with frostbitten lips.
The one he had left behind when the Core's choices tore their paths apart.
Her image in the water was older now. Eyes tired. Hands calloused. And behind her stood hundreds—maybe thousands—of faces.
People Erevan once knew. Allies. Enemies. Strangers who died screaming his name.
Then they were gone.
The well dried up.
And from the fog, a child stepped forward.
A boy.
Barefoot. Skin tanned from the sun. Eyes wide with wonder.
Himself.
Not the warrior. Not the Abysswalker. Just Erevan. The boy who believed.
The child tilted his head. "Do you remember what you wanted?"
Erevan didn't answer.
He couldn't.
Because the Tower had taken that answer from him long ago.
But the child smiled anyway. "I do."
The village around them crumbled, as if it had only ever been made of ash.
And now the sky did break.
Not shattered.
Screamed.
The same sound from the Core.
Only now, it carried a voice.
One not from the System.
But something older.
> [Administrator Override Detected.]
[Override Key: 000 – "The Dreaming One" Initiating Contact.]
[All Observation Protocols Suspended.]
[Cognitive Firewall: Cracked.]
[Remembrance Acceleration: 37%]
Erevan dropped to one knee.
The pressure wasn't weight. It was memory. Raw, unfiltered.
It hurt.
He saw himself—not as he was now—but before the Tower even existed.
A scientist.
A rebel.
A boy holding a dying girl's hand as they created the first shard of the Tower's code.
The Tower hadn't just been an enemy.
He helped build it.
Only, back then, it wasn't a prison.
It was hope.
Then betrayal.
Then blood.
Then cycles upon cycles of ascent and slaughter.
The Tower adapted. It evolved. And Erevan forgot.
But the Tower never did.
And neither did the one watching him now.
A voice echoed through the broken sky—calm, deep, neither male nor female.
"You're remembering too quickly, Erevan. You'll break."
He growled, staggering to his feet. "I've broken worse."
"Then tell me…" the voice whispered.
"Why did you give her soul to the Tower?"
He froze.
> [ERROR – Data Corruption: Emotional Sync Unstable.]
[Caution: Abysswalker Stability at Risk.]
The sky pulsed. A door appeared in the middle of the ruins—simple, wooden, the kind he used to sneak out through as a child.
Behind it, a staircase spiraled downward—farther than any floor had gone so far.
At the bottom?
Truth.
Or madness.
> [Path Unlocked: Floor ? – "The Room That Remembers You."]
[Optional Descent Available.]
Erevan looked at the door.
Then at his own reflection in the cracked sky.
Not a tyrant.
Not a savior.
Just a man running out of excuses.
And yet…
He stepped forward.
Because even if it was a trap—
It was his.
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To be continued in Chapter 29 – "The Room That Remembers You."