There are days when you get to feel like a god—dripping power, glistening with confidence, basking in the undivided attention of your enemies and lovers alike.
This was not one of those days. My knees were still wet with blood. My arm had just been regrown by a woman who looked like she wanted to cry and kill me in the same breath. And behind me, the prison was beginning to collapse, as if the Tower itself had finally grown bored of all our posturing and decided to speedrun its apocalypse.
I still didn't know exactly why the Tower had started fracturing ever since the third floor—the slow rips in reality, the flickering walls, the rumble beneath our feet like something ancient and hungry shifting in its sleep. And yet, I could only suspect that it had something to do with her. The Red Mistress, her name, her influence, lingering like perfume at a crime scene.
There were too many questions. Too many pieces that didn't fit.
But from here on out? I'd dig them up. One by one. With charm, with steel—hell, with violence if necessary.
I turned back, slowly, savoring the weight of each step like a final bow. The nobles—what a generous term for such simpering meatbags—had begun spilling out of their cells, blinking at me like baby deer unsure of whether I was salvation or damnation in a corset. One woman in a shredded gown looked ready to throw herself at my feet, which, while flattering, was also frankly just very sticky at the moment. She reached out as if to plead.
"No," I said, raising my hand. "Absolutely not. I'm not leading a conga line of aristocratic dead weight up a collapsing tower. You've got legs, you've got magic, some of you even have working moral compasses. Use them."
There was a sputter of protests—some weak cries about honor, duty, reparations—but I had already turned my back. Let them squabble their way out the opposite side of the chamber in preparation to descend the tower, or at the very least find refuge among Captain Kane's ship, wherever it may be now.
This was for their own good. The battle we'd just endured had made one thing painfully clear: the Tower wasn't playing games anymore, and from here on, survival would come at a cost—one I couldn't afford to let others pay for me. I simply couldn't risk dragging them into the oncoming war I was about to face.
Without another word, I strode through the doors I'd kicked open moments before, not flinching at the shards of metal curling in my wake. The hallway beyond was silent. My party followed, no questions asked. Behind us, the ceiling groaned like a dying god. Bits of plaster and stone rained down like the Tower itself was coughing up its sins.
We stepped into the elevator. It was a box of brushed steel and tarnished gold, humming with residual magic and the kind of low, anticipatory dread you get before a really good orgy or a really bad execution. The doors hissed shut. I didn't even look back.
The climb was quiet. Too quiet. I should've been celebrating. We'd killed a creature I'm pretty sure had never been born, only imagined into existence by someone who needed trauma given form. I had my arm back. My coat hadn't even gotten that dirty. But something... shifted. A pressure in my gut. Not fear, exactly. No. Something uglier. A knowing. The kind that creeps into your dreams and makes your teeth ache.
The elevator stuttered. Flickered. Like it had considered dropping us to our deaths and decided against it purely out of politeness. Then the doors parted, and we stepped out into light. And gods. Gods, what a cruel fucking light it was.
The hallway was beautiful. Too beautiful. Stark white, the kind of sterile that felt sculpted and unholy all at once. The floor was marble, patterned like a designer's fever dream—black veins swirling in perfect, unnatural symmetry, gold tracing the edges like some vain deity's signature.
And then there were the mirrors. So many mirrors. They lined both sides of the hall, each one framed in gilded excess—baroque spirals, screaming cherubs, the whole overcompensating aesthetic of someone who just discovered wealth and was using it to mask generational insecurity. The mirrors faced each other. I stepped closer and peered in.
Endless. My reflection bounced back forever, two mirrors caught in an infinite pissing contest of vanity. I squinted. Something felt wrong. Too deliberate. Too well placed.
And then I saw it. My breath stilled like it had been slapped straight from my lungs.
The elevator to the next floor was just up ahead.
No tricks. No traps. Just... there. It stood at the end of the hall like a punchline with no joke, an invitation without a threat. And that, more than anything, set my nerves on fire. Nothing in the Tower came without strings. This was a place built on consequences and curveballs. A plain, obvious door was practically a trap in itself.
And then it hit me like a hangover after a three-day orgy.
Vincent. He wasn't here.
My heart gave a traitorous flutter. I spun on my heel, searching. Nothing. No boots. No cocky grin. No smug line about how long it took us to catch up. If this single hallway was the sixth floor, and Vincent wasn't here... then he'd already made it through. Alone. I started pacing.
"No. No, no, no," I muttered, raking a hand through my hair like I could pull a better answer out of my scalp. "He wouldn't. He couldn't have."
But he had. Either that, or he was somewhere on this floor, watching. Hiding. Planning. Willow reached out, placing a steadying hand on my shoulder. "Cecil. Breathe."
I did. Eventually.
From then, I approached the elevator to the next floor slowly, my boots echoing too cleanly on the polished floor. No glyphs. No blood. Not even a sassy inscription in a dead language warning us of our inevitable demise. Just a sleek, inviting elevator door. I reached out and pressed my hand to the surface.
Nothing.
Pressed harder.
Still nothing.
"Of course," I hissed, curling my fingers into a fist I desperately wanted to punch something with.
The others fanned out instinctively. Leo pounded his fist against a panel with all the grace of a frustrated bear. Miko ducked beneath a mirror, scanning for some invisible latch or trigger. Willow was already murmuring enchantments under her breath, tracing luminous glyphs in the air like she was weaving a spell one thread at a time.
Me? I leaned against a mirror, all melodrama and martyrdom, preparing to deliver a soliloquy about the futility of doors.
And then—without warning—my hand passed through.
It was like dipping into a bath drawn by a ghost—cool, rippling, and wrong in a way that tickled the edges of instinct. I jerked back. The surface shimmered like liquid silver, then hardened again into glass. I blinked, then tried again, this time gentler, and the mirror accepted me.
"Well," I muttered, my lips curling with the sour delight of someone discovering a secret he didn't want to keep, "that's not ominous at all."
The others turned. I gave them a smile that practically screamed, "I'm about to do something stupid and fabulous."
"It's a portal," I said.
Miko grinned. "Should we all jump in, or are we picking straws?"
I glanced at the mirror, then back at them. "I'll go first. If I die, name a building after me. Preferably something sexy."
And then, with the flair of a man who had too much eyeliner and not enough self-preservation, I stepped through the mirror.
Crossing the threshold was like falling into water without the splash—weightless, seamless, too quiet. A moment of displacement, of disorientation, and then I was upright again, standing not in another world, but in the same white-and-gold corridor with same marble floor and obnoxiously indulgent mirrors.
At first, I thought nothing had changed. But then I turned—and saw movement in the mirror directly across from the one I had entered. The surface rippled. And then out stepped someone I recognized immediately, though the sight chilled me more than it should have.
It was my body.
My frame. My hair. My clothes. But it wasn't me, not entirely. The posture was wrong. Hesitant. Careful. It moved like someone trying to wear me as a costume.
And in that same instant, I looked down, and nearly shit myself at the sight.
My limbs were too slender, my stance too narrow. My hips swayed in a way I had never permitted them to. Everything about this body felt alien and intimate.
I was Miko.
Or at least I was wearing Miko's body like an ill-fitting truth I'd tried too long to ignore. My breath caught—smaller lungs, softer edges. I twisted, experimentally. The way this body moved could make the gods blush. And not in a way I liked. Not yet. Not now.
"Wait—!" I shouted, panic rising like bile in my throat as I turned back toward the mirror.
But I was too slow.
Leo was already moving, grinning like a man about to cannonball into a fountain. He stepped into the mirror without hesitation. And in the same breath, the mirror across from his entryway rippled.
Its surface convulsed, warping once, then twice, before it expelled a body—Leo's body.
But it wasn't him anymore.
What emerged was Willow in Leo's skin, blinking with disoriented alarm at the limbs she now commanded. Her movements were sharp and awkward, like someone wearing clothing stitched for a stranger.
She touched her borrowed arms as if they might not be attached, disbelief carved into the angles of her face—his face.
Her expression twisted, horrified beneath the mask of Leo's careless charm. Her mouth, Leo's mouth, opened slowly, her voice uneven and too deep for her panic.
"Oh no," she whispered, thick with dread.
Behind me, Leo—the real leo—stood frozen in Willow's form, just outside the mirror he had left behind. He blinked, once, then dropped his gaze to the floor, face flushed a deep, miserable red.
Meanwhile, Willow was already pacing in stiff, clumsy strides. The way she moved suggested that her limbs didn't respond the way she expected, and she kept casting glares at her own hands, as though they might revolt again.
"This isn't happening," she muttered under her breath, then louder, "This is so not happening."
There was a volatile charge to her presence now, like Leo's physicality had become a weapon she didn't trust herself to hold.
Leo glanced up at her—and then quickly down again. His fingers curled inward, shoulders rounding with that telltale retreat he always did when the room got too loud. His usual self-effacing stillness had become even more fragile hidden between Willow's sharper edges. He said nothing. Just a deep, embarrassed inhale and averted eyes as he tried, desperately, not to stare at the unmistakably feminine curve of his own—her—chest, now attached to him like some cruel joke the gods had drafted after drinking a bit too much wine.
Just then, Willow snapped. She spun on him like a blade pulled too tight. "If you touch anything of mine," she hissed through Leo's teeth, "anything—I swear I will find a way to castrate your soul."
Leo flinched. Or maybe just trembled.
I had to intervene before the whole thing turned into a spiral of body horror and misplaced threats.
"Enough!" I barked. My voice cracked—higher than I remembered. Miko's voice. I hated how soft it sounded, too melodic for rage. But it did the job. They both froze.
I leaned back against one mirrors frame, trying to breathe through the wrongness of my own borrowed limbs. Miko's body was all grace and silent strength, but I felt like a thief inside it—like I'd broken into someone else's memory and tried to live there.
And in that stolen stillness, I finally understood what this floor was trying to do. This wasn't just a puzzle of flesh. It was a crucible of identity. A twisted examination of envy and the allure of someone else's ease. Who wouldn't be tempted to stay? Who wouldn't wonder what it might be like to never go back?
And that was the point. The Tower didn't just want us to solve riddles—it wanted to test whether we could hold onto ourselves when the ground shifted. When our bodies became strangers and our desires started whispering betrayal.
But we weren't here for comfort. We were here to progress.
The mechanism was clear now. The mirror didn't transport bodies—it traded consciousness. One in, one out. Always in pairs. In that instant, a chilling gap was left in my logic: Vincent had come alone. No one to exchange with. No way to set the trial in motion. And yet, he'd passed.
Or maybe he hadn't.
Which left two possibilities. Either Vincent had broken the rules, skipping past the mechanism entirely. Or he was still on this floor, somewhere, somehow, hiding.
My stomach tightened as I stood straighter. We had to keep moving. We had to map the rules completely, piece together the edge of the trap before it snapped shut. I turned to Aria.
"Alright," I said. "We keep testing the mirrors. Try every pairing. If something resets or triggers, we'll know. Aria—you're next."
He met my gaze without flinching, elegant even in stillness. "And if I end up in Miko's body too?"
A flicker of grim amusement tried to rise. "Then we start a dance troupe. Try not to trip over your own elegance."
He gave a single nod, not a smidge of fear in his posture, then stepped forward, eyes closed shut, and disappeared through the mirror next to him without another word.
We waited.
Long enough for the silence to feel personal, like the Tower was trying to see which of us would crack first.
But nothing came back the other side. There was no ripple. No shape. No shimmer. The opposite mirror stayed blank, still as a priest caught mid-sin.
And just like that, Aria was gone.