A flash of light, and nothing more.
The world twists, fades, reforms. When they regain form, Sakolomi, Salomi, and Kai stand at the entrance of the Inverted Tower.
The floor, made of liquid marble, reflects their distorted silhouettes — as if the Tower were already sizing them up.
Salomi steps forward first, confident.
She snaps her fingers, and the air tears before her in a breath of shadow and feathers.
A creature emerges, slowly materializing: black angel wings, skin pale almost transparent, eyes too ancient for a face so young.
Sakolomi jolts.
His eyes widen, incredulous.
— Shushu… ?!
The demon inclines his head slightly, a nearly human smile on his lips.
His voice is soft, charged with a strange nostalgia.
— Father. It has been so long…
Sakolomi freezes, then shakes his head.
— Don't say nonsense. You're still as dramatic as ever…
(He crosses his arms.)
But I see you haven't lost your presence. You look exactly like the time you showed us colors — Grafay, Yuki and me and the others … when you were only a baby.
Shushu sketches a melancholy smile.
— It's strange… I only have fragments of those memories. As if I dreamed those lives.
Salomi looks to the sky.
— Very touching, your reunions.
(But her voice becomes more serious.)
We don't have time to linger. We must reach the bottom of this tower.
Kai frowns.
— The bottom?
You mean… all the way down?
Sakolomi nods.
— Yes. We are at the top, and that is precisely the problem.
The deeper we descend, the closer we get to Oniyurei.
And the more dangerous the things we will see will be.
Some truths of this place can devour the mind.
Kai steps back slightly.
— And how many floors, exactly?
How long will it take?
And why on earth do we start at the top of a tower?
Salomi sighs, shrugging.
— That's exactly it, Kai. The Inverted Tower is a paradox.
The deeper you descend, the higher you rise toward the truth.
As for time…
(A small amused pout.)
Let's say if you walk quickly, maybe a few days.
If you lose your mind, a few centuries.
— Tsk… great, mutters Kai.
Sakolomi interrupts them with a gesture.
— Enough talk. We move on.
He places his foot on the first stair.
The world breaks.
Without warning, the Tower begins to tremble.
An invisible force separates them instantly, as if space itself refused their union.
Salomi, Kai, and Sakolomi disappear each in a burst of dark light.
Sakolomi finds himself alone in a corridor without end, walls made of flesh and memory.
He sighs, used to this kind of torment.
— Obviously… this Tower loves solitary trials.
(He tightens his cloak.)
But… I hope they get out of it.
Salomi, on her side, stands with Shushu.
They have not been separated.
The reason is obvious: Shushu is not alive in the eyes of the Tower.
She views him as an extension of Salomi, a weapon rather than a being.
Salomi smiles, amused.
— Good.
(One can feel in her eyes a flare of defiance.)
Let's see who reaches the bottom first, Sakolomi…
Shushu spreads his black wings.
— The world here still breathes. It watches us.
— Let it watch, Salomi answers, stepping forward.
I have never been afraid of a dream.
Kai, alone, already walks in another space.
The stairs he takes bend, split, twist into roots, then into spirals of stone.
Each step rewrites gravity.
Yet he continues, stubborn, silent.
Ahead of him, on a wall of mist, symbols ignite.
An enigma.
A passage to the next level.
— Very well…
(He cracks his fingers.)
If this tower wants to play, it will fall before me.
Breaths. Echoes. Silences.
The Inverted Tower began to probe them.
Time had distorted.
Perhaps a day. Perhaps a week.
Or perhaps… nothing at all.
In Oniyurei's Tower, duration lost all meaning.
Here, reality decays.
Sounds become colors.
Smells, memories.
Thoughts, silhouettes.
And emotions, worlds opening and closing in a heartbeat.
Each descending step seemed to erase a layer of identity.
The Tower did not test strength — it dissected the being.
It read in the entrails of the soul.
And what it read, it showed.
Sakolomi advanced to a new floor.
A plain of moving shadows stretched before him, endless, horizonless.
The ground undulated like a thick sea, breathing under his steps.
He stopped.
A sound.
A quiver.
Then the ground exploded.
Gigantic black hands sprang from the depths, plowing the surface in a crash of shadow.
Soon, titanic silhouettes emerged: beings made of night, faceless, nameless, whose mere presence made the air tremble with visceral fear.
Sakolomi braced himself.
His eyes glowed a red light, his breath slowed.
The giants roared in a mute voice, then lunged at him.
The ground trembled, the sky contracted.
Sakolomi leaped aside, unleashing a spinning strike in return.
Each blow pulverized the creatures in an explosion of dark mist.
But barely destroyed, they reformed immediately, more numerous, more twisted.
And something changed.
Their shadowy matter distorted, recomposed…
Heads sprouted on their torsos, on their arms, on their legs.
Faces without eyes.
Open mouths, screaming.
— Save us…
— Save us…
— Save us!
Their cries echoed like an echo in the soul, cold, inhuman.
Sakolomi frowned.
These voices… were not those of monsters.
They resembled pleadings.
Fragments of souls, perhaps.
Victims trapped by the Tower?
He stepped back, watching the masses reform.
The air vibrated, saturated with despair.
— "Enough... "
He knelt, closed his eyes, and focused his mana.
A colossal breath made the plain undulate.
On his right hand, ancient symbols lit up, tracing a spiral of white and gold energy.
— Killer... Divine Punch!
His fist struck the void.
The impact pierced space like a cosmic cry.
Energy waves pierced the world, cleaving the ground of shadow to its foundations.
The giants exploded, dismembered, annihilated in colorless light.
But this strike was not a simple magical assault.
It bore the mark of a meta-conceptual order, a signature of the Being.
Even deprived of the direct link with Saiko, Sakolomi remained a pseudo-deviant:
capable of shaping, if only for an moment, the lower layers of reality.
The plain froze.
Silence fell.
The shadows ceased, frozen in grotesque poses.
Then, slowly, very slowly, they began to dissolve…
not into dust, but into memories.
Faces, voices, scenes of lives began to float around him — like bubbles of memory bursting in the air.
A mother holding a child.
A soldier dying under an inverted sky.
A great mythical being kneeling before a broken altar.
Whole lives… swallowed by the Tower.
Sakolomi stood motionless.
Then, suddenly, everything shifted again.
The shadow under his feet opened.
Something — no, someone — stood beneath him, watching, waiting.
The shadowy floor, already moving, suddenly became damp.
A cold wave spread there, as if something older than light breathed there.
Sakolomi wanted to retreat — but nothing.
His body refused to obey.
Even his magic, usually vibrant and docile, dispersed into the void, as if snuffed by fear.
Then, he saw it.
A silhouette formed slowly, first formless, then loosed, until it took a human shape.
Its skin seemed reddish, but it was not a color: it was a resonance, a living reflection, as if its body bled inverted light.
Movable patterns, like embers tattooed on its arms and chest, traced ancient symbols that pulsed faintly.
But what was most troubling — it was its face.
Or rather, its absence.
Where a gaze should have been, there was only a black void, deep, unfathomable, swallowing everything projected into it.
No expression, no emotion.
Just the void, and hair of black ink floating around its head, as if trying to snatch the light.
Around its waist, a long black fabric, almost liquid, hung in tatters.
At times, it seemed to come alive, undulating like a blood pool made conscious.
A dark, heavy, living halo vibrated around it, twisting space with each pulse.
Sakolomi trembled.
He had never felt anything like this — not even before the Deviants, not even before Saiko.
This was not ordinary fear, but existential, primal terror.
This entity did not threaten him only physically: it erased what he was.
The voice fell.
— "You... why do you keep not knowing who you are?"
The echo resounded through the whole hall, but also within him — in his mind, in his soul, even in the memory of his name and existence.
Sakolomi wanted to answer, but no sound came out.
His throat burned, as if the mere act of speaking violated a forbidden law.
Then, the ground opened further.
From the dark surface sprang translucent snakes of shadow, hissings in the void.
They crawled in silence, sliding to his legs.
Sakolomi tried to conjure a seal, to draw on his mana reserves, but nothing: the creature had stolen his will.
Each snake bore a moving symbol on its head — a rune he did not recognize, but which inspired a deep unease.
Then, suddenly, the creature stopped.
The serpents froze.
The air grew heavy, almost solid.
The smile appeared then.
A strange grimace, too wide, revealing thin, sharp, spectral-white teeth.
It was not a human smile: it was the smile of a abyss that decides to have a mouth.
— "You, in fact... who are you really?"
Sakolomi remained speechless.
The entity's tone was no longer threatening — it was perplexed.
As if it had just discovered something impossible.
— "You are unlike anyone.
Where do you come from? What world gave you birth?..."
The silhouette slowly places a hand on its chest, and the darkness around it hums.
— "I am Oniyurei.
Or rather... the shadow that speaks for you.
The avatar of what you seek to meet at the bottom of this tower."
The void seemed to shudder at these words.
A rain of dark sparks fell from the inverted sky, as if the world itself held its breath.
— "I came earlier, for your mode of existence lies to itself.
You do not know what you are.
You are not yet ready for the truth… nor for me.
You do not deserve the Tower.
But the Pit of Whispers."
Upon these words, the ground roared.
The shadow liquefied, then exploded like an ocean of ink.
Sakolomi felt gravity crumbling beneath him.
His body suddenly regained its freedom — only to be rejected again.
He fell.
Into an endless chasm.
An abyss without light.
And in his fall, one phrase echoed, slow, repeated, almost pleading:
— Remember what you were before you were born…
Then, silence.
And the Tower closed.