The ninth floor did not open like the others.
It peeled.
The door split vertically down the center, layers unfolding like pages from a book soaked in something that had once been alive. A sour scent of ink, rot, and memory spilled out, curling into Veyne's nostrils like a question he couldn't answer.
He stepped forward, and everything turned to silence.
Not quiet. Total erasure.
No footsteps. No breath. Not even the whisper of cloth. The air was dense, thick with something unseen. It made his skin tighten, like something watched from behind the skin of the world.
Devouring Insight activated.
But this time, the vision glitched. Fractals of light burst and died in his vision.
[Error: Identity field too unstable to decode.]
That had never happened before.
The hallway ahead was pitch black, and yet Veyne saw perfectly.
Not with eyes.
With understanding.
The walls were lined with alcoves—slots where once statues may have stood. Now, each one was empty… except for a name scratched in, and a symbol.
He passed the first: LETHE — a cup turned over.
The second: CHIORA — a mouth sewn shut.
The third: VEYNE — a mirror broken across the center.
He paused.
"Why is my name here?"
The tower didn't answer. It never did when it truly mattered.
From the shadows behind the walls, something stirred.
Not a creature.
A thought.
Veyne clutched his chest. A pressure unlike anything he had felt pressed against the core of his being—not his heart, but his identity. His sense of self.
Something wanted in.
And it didn't want to devour him. It wanted to wear him.
A low tone shivered through the space.
Not a sound. A wordless idea.
"He's ready."
Figures rose from the darkness.
They weren't real.
They were echoes. Phantoms made from memory. Of people he might have become, paths he might have taken.
A Veyne in scholar's robes.
A Veyne clad in white, eyes empty.
A Veyne who still wept at night.
A Veyne who had killed everyone.
Dozens.
They surrounded him in a slow circle.
None spoke. But all accused.
Devouring Insight activated.
This time, it worked.
[Constructs of Self-Divergence]
[Type: Unanchored Wills]
[Purpose: Collapse the core through contradiction]
They were not there to fight.
They were there to unmake him.
Each one whispered directly into his mind, all at once.
—"You could have saved her."
—"You enjoyed it."
—"You're not the original."
—"You let your mother burn."
—"You don't even know who you are."
He stumbled.
Not physically—mentally.
His Revelation Instinct began to fray. Threads of his skill fluttered like cloth in fire. The devouring power recoiled, uncertain.
For the first time since the Tower claimed him, Veyne felt fear.
Real fear.
Not of death.
But of becoming nothing.
One echo stepped forward. The one in white, eyes void-black.
It opened its mouth and spoke in his voice:
"Let me in. You've failed enough."
Veyne looked down at his hands. They flickered—half-real.
But something rose in him then.
Not pride.
Not rage.
Something simpler.
Spite.
"Even if I am broken," he growled, "I'm mine."
He reached deep, past skill, past essence—into his memory.
The real ones.
A hand that held his when he was small.
A laugh over cheap soup.
The way rain smelled in his first winter.
Devouring Insight: Soul Stabilization initiated.
Light pulsed from his chest—red, dark, hungry.
Not to destroy.
But to anchor.
Each echo burst into dust, one by one. The hallway groaned. The pressure lifted.
The tower trembled.
A door formed at the far end.
Above it, a new carving:
[You Refused the Hollow]
[New Trait Gained: Unyielded Core - Immune to external identity erosion.]
[Essence Gained: Echoheart]
Veyne stepped through.
He didn't smile.
But he felt solid.
And in the silence behind him, the Tower whispered:
"So that's who you are…"