Opened his eyes in the room he always returned to, where everything seemed intact, but touching the table revealed something had changed.He was not alone, though no one else breathed.She was there, at the edge of visibility, a thread of light bending upon itself, barely perceptible, yet enough to hold him.
He could not see her clearly. Never could.But he felt her presence, her breath in his memory, the warmth of a hand that no longer existed.It was the softness that kept his sanity, the guidance that pulled him from the chair when despair pushed him toward nothingness.
Yet while she held his soul, his body existed elsewhere.In the tower.That tower of bone and crystal, where every step seemed to scream his name and every shadow watched him.There, the whispers were not mere echoes—they were promises of answers and punishments.There, a second protagonist waited, someone who had learned the codes of this hell, and could show him a path… or a worse fate.
Vaathan advanced cautiously. Each movement tore him apart, each shadow tempted him to fall.The air there was heavy, but unlike anything he had known.It was not scent or temperature: it was emotional weight, the density of despair intertwined with the memory of what was lost.
He remembered an instant, a laugh he thought forgotten, a melody that would never play again, and he saw her.Her figure, as intangible as mist, watched him and pushed him not to yield, to move forward even when it hurt.
And so he walked, between worlds, between reality and the tower.Each step a choice: surrender or continue.Each stair, a question: who was he, who was she, who should save whom.
At a crossing of shadows, he heard the sound.It was not a lament, nor a scream.It was an invitation, a thread promising to reveal more, to make sense, even if the truth would break him.
Vaathan realized then that there was no turning back.His heart, split between memory and pain, had to decide: continue or vanish.And as his hands clutched the edge of the bone staircase, he felt a faint warmth.It was not his own.It was hers.His beacon.His guide.His reason not to let the worlds devour him entirely.