"Alright, then," Ajax said, his voice low with interest. "Try summoning them."
Orion blinked. "Try summoning what?"
"Your Fangsteel Requiem trait," Ajax replied, the words spoken like a title carved in steel.
"My daggers?"
"No, your grandmother's biscuits. Yes, the daggers."
Orion let the sarcasm roll past him. "How am I supposed to do that?"
Ajax inhaled as if readying for a lecture. "It's not as complicated as you think," he began. "Awakened climbers fall into two main categories—those with passive traits, and those unlucky enough to have active ones. Your daggers are active. Rare, powerful, but often inconvenient." He paused, then added, "When you awaken, and you start killing creatures, you have a chance to steal passive aspects—pieces of ability or instinct stolen from slain creatures. When you clear a trial, you receive active aspects."
Ajax continued without waiting for confirmation. "Each active trait or aspect you obtain gets stored in your Essence Library. Think of it like… a shelf inside your soul. When you want to use one, you don't cast it like a spell. You reach inward, focus on what you want, and pull it forward."
He drew a breath. "Summoning your trait is like picking a book off that shelf and opening it to the page you need."
"…You just made that sound a lot more complicated than it probably is."
Ajax gave a snort. "Wouldn't be the Tower if it made sense. Now shut up and try."
Orion sighed. Slowly, he closed his eyes.
He didn't know what to reach for—only that something in him responded to the idea of reaching. It wasn't movement. It wasn't logic. It was sensation. Instinct.
There.
A flicker in the dark.
Like a lantern behind a closed door.
He pulled on it and the world stirred.
A breath of wind swept through the field—soft at first, barely more than a sigh—but it thickened as if drawn from some deeper well. The tall golden grass bent with it, whispering against Orion's legs like a warning.
Then came the shadows.
They stretched unnaturally from beneath his sleeves, spilling from his skin like ink poured into sunlight. They didn't follow the logic of the sun overhead—they curved up his forearms, crawling towards his palms like smoke caught in reverse.
Orion didn't flinch. He watched.
From each hand, something began to emerge. Not suddenly. Not all at once.
A slow accumulation of black ferrofluid—thick and oil-slick—bubbled up from the centers of his hands. It moved as if alive, rippling with hunger, gathering itself in coils and strands until the mass hovered just above his palms.
Then it shifted.
The fluid jerked inward, compressing in a single breathless motion. There was a hiss—metallic, organic. A sound not made for human ears.
And then, without fanfare, the daggers were there.
Two weapons. No ornament. No glow. Just sleek, functional death.
They floated a finger's width above his hands—not held, not wielded. Present. Matte black from edge to core, their curved blades were streaked with veins of cold steel gray, like volcanic glass shaped into precision.
They didn't shine. They absorbed light.
The wind died.
Silence fell over the field like a held breath.
Orion stared at them, not moving. His fingers twitched by instinct, but the blades remained just out of reach, as if waiting for his permission.
But that wasn't the strangest thing.
The strangest thing was the feeling.
They didn't feel like extensions of his will. They didn't feel like tools, or even weapons.
They felt… hungry.
There was a pull in the air, a hollow pressure that settled just beneath his ribs. Like something inside the daggers was watching him—gauging his worth. Wanting.
"…They're alive," Orion murmured.
Ajax didn't answer at first.
Then, in a voice that sounded genuinely awed, he said, "Holy sand crawler… They're beautiful."
Orion's pulse didn't slow. He could feel the weapons—not just in the air, but inside his blood. Their presence hummed through his chest like distant thunder.
They weren't content to simply exist.
They were waiting to be fed.
And then, as if sensing the moment, a translucent interface shimmered into being in his peripheral vision. He didn't summon it—it just arrived, responding to the daggers' awakening.
A new line had appeared beneath the trait:
— Evolution Requirement: 200 Soul Shards
Orion narrowed his eyes. "Soul Shards…" he said aloud. "You never told me what those were."
No response.
"Ajax?"
Still nothing.
"Ajax, what are Soul Shards?"
"Huh?" Ajax's voice snapped back into focus. "Sorry. I got distracted. Did you see the way those blades just formed? Like—like ferrofluid manifestation laced with tethered bind logic. That's crazy. That's not just active trait design, that's some kind of primordial crafting protocol. Who made these?"
"The shards," Orion repeated, sharper this time.
"Right. Right, sorry." Ajax coughed like he was trying to hide how impressed he still was. "Soul Shards are… kind of like currency, but not just that. They're the crystallized remnants of slain beasts—fragments of what they were. Soul, memory, energy, instinct—all compressed into a shard. You get them when you kill something."
Orion tilted one blade closer with his thoughts. The dagger responded instantly, angling in the air like a hawk turning to face prey.
"And the stronger the creature…?"
"…The more shards you get," Ajax confirmed. "Or the higher grade they are. Depends on the rank of the beast."
Orion frowned. "Rank?"
"Yeah, yeah—don't worry. I'll explain. It's a whole thing."
Ajax paused for a second and seemed to contemplate where to start, then, "The Tower doesn't just toss you into a world full of random beasts and expect you to guess what'll kill you," Ajax said, voice settling into a cadence that reminded Orion of a tired professor forced to explain the obvious. "There's a system—an old one. Every climber follows it if they want to survive more than a week."
Orion adjusted his stance, eyes still fixed on the floating daggers. "I'm listening."
"Creatures are categorized into seven Classes based on their nature and threat level. It starts simple—Lesser, then Beastly, and Aberrant, then it gets much less simple, Chaotic, Primal, Cataclysmic, and at the top… Unholy."
He let the final word sit for a moment.
Orion raised a brow. "You expect me to believe something called 'Unholy' is just part of the standard classification?"
"You'll believe it after you see one, but got your sake I hope you never do," Ajax muttered. "Lesser-class beasts are dangerous, sure, but they're still grounded in biology. Beastly ones stretch that. Aberrant is where things get weird. Chaotic? Think eldritch—tentacles, melting screams, beasts that break the rules of nature."
Orion's lips tightened.
Ajax continued. "Primal and Cataclysmic are rare and almost always tied to major events—Trial guardians, ruin bosses, ancient continent-breakers. And Unholy…" He hesitated. "Those are walking plagues. The Tower doesn't create them. It contains them."
Orion said nothing for a while, just letting the wind move through the grass, the smell of earth and iron swirling around the daggers.
"And each Class has Grades?"
"Yeah. First Grade is elite. Second is balanced. Third is the lowest. A First Grade Beastly might be more dangerous than a Third Grade Aberrant. Grade reflects an individual's development. Class reflects its kind."
"So full classification would be something like…"
"First Grade Aberrant Bone Leech. Second Grade Chaotic Flame Wraith. Third Grade Beastly Spite Hound. Stuff like that. Once you hear it, you'll know what you're dealing with."
"Got it," Orion said.
"Also," Ajax added, "Soul Shard yield usually scales with Class and Grade. A First Grade Primal beast drops more shards—or rarer types—than a Third Grade Lesser."
"Which means stronger beasts are literally more valuable."
"Exactly. It's part survival, part economy."
Orion slowly nodded.
He lowered his hands. The blades dissolved once more—ferrofluid retreating, shadows coiling back into his sleeves. The wind that had risen quieted again, like the field had finished listening.
"…Everything here," he said at last, "has a price."
Ajax replied softly.
"Everything."
For a moment, he did nothing.
Just… breathed.
The world was no longer pressing against him. No longer judging. There was time here. Air. Space to think, space to feel. The weight of the Tower loomed over everything, yes—but in this clearing, on this warm day, it hadn't pressed its hand down yet. The gods weren't watching. The sky didn't glare.
He stepped forward onto the old dirt road.
Dust kicked up around his boots, thin as ash, the path winding gently toward the village in the distance. Duskmere. Orion let his gaze wander as he walked—along the fields, the treeline, the sky. The birds had returned to their morning chorus. A few clouds drifted like lazy sails above the hills.
He found himself thinking of Nortis.
Not the city—the outskirts. Where the land was softer, where the roads weren't paved and the rivers were clean enough to drink from. He remembered the crunch of gravel underfoot, the distant bark of dogs. That small square market where Lillia used to steal fruit just to tease the vendors. That wind that always carried pollen and campfire smoke.
This place smelled the same.
"…damn, sentimental much?" Ajax said suddenly.
Orion didn't flinch this time. "Right. Forgot I have a roommate now."
"Correction: you are the roommate. I was here first."
Orion snorted. "Guess I'm squatting."
"Oh, it's worse than that. You're the worst kind of houseguest. Didn't knock. Didn't wipe your feet. Took the whole damn body."
"Want it back?"
"Gods, no. That body was cursed. Literally. You're doing me a favor."
Orion let a breath out through his nose. The banter was light. Almost normal. And for a second, he allowed himself to feel that normalcy. To pretend he wasn't stranded in an unfamiliar world with no allies, no map, and a clock ticking toward some trial he couldn't name.
"So," he asked, voice soft but steady, "what do I do now?"
A pause.
Then: "We need shelter," Ajax said. "Sun's past the midpoint. You've got maybe two hours before it dips behind the range."
"I'll make it to the village in ten minutes."
"Yeah… about that."
Orion stopped walking. "What?"
"You're headed the wrong way."
He blinked, looked down the road. The slate rooftops of Duskmere were closer now. Smoke curled from chimneys. People moved in the distance. It looked peaceful.
Too peaceful.
"I'm not exactly… welcome there," Ajax admitted. "Some stuff happened."
"Define 'stuff', Ajax."
"You ever try to unionize the blacksmith's apprentices, sabotage a Lordling's duel, and accidentally burn down half the grain reserve in the same week?"
Orion turned fully, raising a brow. "You did all that?"
"Allegedly."
"Right."
Ajax cleared his throat. "Anyway. I moved. Off-grid."
"To the forest?"
"Above the forest. I built what I like to call… the Tree Castle."
"…You mean a treehouse."
"I mean what I said. Three platforms, rain catch system, rope ladder, a damn hammock. It's an architectural marvel, and it is mine."
Orion sighed and turned off the road. The wheat rose around him again, golden stalks brushing against his hips as he cut back toward the distant treeline.
"It's that way," Ajax confirmed. "Straight shot. I'll guide you."
The sky was dimming already, the shadows from the grass growing longer. Somewhere in the trees ahead, a crow let out a raspy caw. The breeze picked up again—colder now, laced with the breath of dusk.
"Do I need to worry about anything out here?" Orion asked, narrowing his eyes.
Ajax hesitated.
"…Not really."
"Not reassuring."
"Well, less to worry about than in the village. Plus, my tree castle has traps."
"That somehow makes me feel less safe."
"You wound me."
Orion pushed through the last crest of the field and saw the tree line clearly now—dense trunks rising like spears, moss curling around the bark, the light between the branches already falling into shadow.
And he took a step forward.