[Floor B88: ??]Error. Metadata Not Found.Stability: 23% and falling.
The floor beneath them pulsed like a heartbeat—sick, irregular, broken.
Naia's boots hit the ground first. "What... is this?"
The space around them glitched. Walls flickered between textures—stone, steel, and bone.
Calen's eyes darted. "We didn't step into a floor. We stepped into a memory crash."
Lucien reached out. His fingers passed through a wall. Then it re-solidified, nearly crushing his hand.
[Caution: Localized Reality Fragmented. Tower Protocols Corrupted.]
The Tower itself was broken here.
Lucien smirked. "I think we found a floor the Tower tried to delete."
As they ventured deeper, they passed frozen echoes.
A girl made of static, screaming in silence. A man endlessly falling through a crack in the floor. A room that replayed its own destruction every 10 seconds.
[You are in: Sector ECHO-NULL]Status: quarantined. Origin unknown. Player data inconsistent.
Calen knelt beside a wall covered in scribbled code.
Naia read aloud: "This floor doesn't exist."
Then something spoke.
"But you do. And that is enough to summon me."
Reality shattered.
And Player 7 stepped forward.
He wore no armor. Only a tattered cloak. His face was covered in a glass mask, cracked and flickering.
[ENTITY: PLAYER 7 – True Name Redacted]
"You broke the Rite. You climbed together. That means you can no longer be ignored."
Lucien stepped forward. "Who are you really? Another climber? Or something worse?"
Player 7 tilted his head.
"Once, I was like you. Now I am what remains after too many contradictions."
"This floor remembers everything the Tower tried to forget. And so do I."
Naia raised her blade. "What do you want?"
Player 7 pointed at Lucien.
"To offer him a choice."
"Lucien. Your system was never random. It was seeded. Designed. By me."
Lucien froze.
"I was the first to reach the Apex. I rewrote the Tower's laws. And they punished me for it—cast me into this fragment. But before they did... I scattered pieces of myself across the floors."
"Your power. Your lies. They come from me."
Silence fell.
Then Lucien grinned. "So I'm your heir?"
"No. You're my mirror. And I want to see what you'll become."
"But only if you survive this floor."
Player 7 vanished.
And the Tower began to scream.
The ground buckled. The sky above them cracked like glass.
[EVENT: GLITCHSTORM INITIATED.]
Fragments of deleted floors began raining down—chunks of failed levels, abandoned trials, pieces of dead players' memories.
A beast formed from corrupted code—half-lion, half-blood, all wrong—charged at them.
Lucien shouted, "Don't trust the environment! Nothing here follows logic!"
Naia dove into the creature's path. Her blade passed through.
But her words wounded it.
"You were never real! You're just a leftover lie!"
The creature howled—losing shape.
Calen followed, praying in a language that didn't exist. The air obeyed. Lightning struck the glitch-beast.
Lucien closed his eyes. Opened his system. And saw something new.
[Trait Unlocked: Echoborne – You can rewrite fragments of forgotten code.]
He raised his hand. Spoke a command that shouldn't exist.
"Run: Rewrite_Beast.exe – Terminate."
The creature folded into light. Gone.
The floor calmed.
But only for a moment.
[EVENT: GLITCH LOOP APPROACHING. FLOOR WILL REBOOT IN 5 MINUTES.]Escape or be deleted.
Lucien turned to the others. "We have to use the glitch. Turn it into a gate."
Naia: "You think we can escape through the crash?"
Lucien nodded. "We're not climbing floors anymore. We're hijacking the Tower."
They ran.
Behind them, the floor collapsed inwards, screaming code, fracturing memory.
Ahead: a flickering light. A gateway formed from error logs and broken pathways.
They jumped through.
And landed somewhere that didn't exist.
[Welcome to Floor ??? – Path Divergence Confirmed.]
A choice lay ahead.
And above, on a throne of nullspace, Player 7 watched.
"Now the real Tower begins."