Danny didn't pause when the next gate opened.
The tower hesitated—just for a fraction of a breath—as if bracing itself before allowing him through.
But Danny stepped forward anyway, gentle as dawn, unstoppable as noon.
The shift into Floor 500 was the first time he felt the weight of history in the air.
Not danger.
Not hostility.
Something deeper.
Recognition.
The floor manifested as a sweeping expanse of white stone—ancient, cracked, etched with symbols older than anything the Buddies or dragons or even the Wolf King had ever studied. It wasn't a battleground or a labyrinth or a test of skill.
It was a memorial.
A hundred stone statues stood in rows, each one carved with reverence. Warriors from different worlds. Champions of ages long gone. Titans, dragons, mages, mortals, machines—every figure frozen mid-stride, mid-roar, mid-strike.
Danny stepped softly between them.
The floor breathed around him, dust motes drifting in the sunlight pouring from a ceiling painted like an eternal dusk.
"Champions," he murmured, running a hand gently along one stone arm. "You all climbed here, too."
The statue didn't move.
But something in the stone warmed—responding to the creation energy he carried.
Danny bowed his head briefly.
"Rest."
He continued forward.
Each statue he passed glowed for just a moment, as if acknowledging the presence of a golden flame they once fought beside—or against—in a forgotten age.
The tower didn't attack him here.
It didn't dare.
It simply watched as Danny crossed the Hall of Old Champions in a silence so deep it felt sacred.
At the far end, the gate rippled open.
He stepped through.
Floor 501: The Starting Pulse of Chaos
The shift was violent.
The moment Danny entered, the air exploded into motion.
Screeching winds ripped across the chamber.
The floor fractured into dozens of platforms rotating like displaced continents.
Lightning speared upward from cracks in the void.
Gravity flipped twice in the span of a heartbeat.
Danny's feet skimmed one platform before the gravity reversed—sending him floating upward.
He inhaled, eyes brightening.
"Alright. Let's stabilize you."
He touched the air.
The golden aura around his fingers shimmered, spreading like soft ripples. Gravity shuddered. Lightning dimmed. The platforms slowed their rotations, their movements syncing to Danny's heartbeat.
His heartbeat was steady.
Calm.
Creative.
The chaos bent.
Danny's feet settled gently onto a stable platform.
"You don't have to break yourself to test me," he said softly. "Just find your rhythm."
The tower answered him with three guardians rising from the shifting stone—massive armored statues wielding jagged weapons forged from the same storm energy that powered the room.
They raised their weapons.
Danny held out one hand.
The storm recoiled from him.
The guardians faltered, the lightning around their weapons flickering uncertainly.
He didn't strike them.
Didn't blast them.
Didn't move.
He simply walked forward.
The first guardian swung.
Danny ducked under the arc, touched its chest, and whispered:
"Rest."
The guardian's body froze, stone cracking softly before dissolving into dust that floated upward like snowflakes.
The second lunged.
Danny sidestepped, placed a palm on its back, and breathed.
It crumbled.
The last raised both arms, lightning wreathing them like a crown.
Danny closed his eyes.
"Enough."
The lightning shattered, dissolving into harmless sparks.
The guardian bowed its head before disintegrating.
The tower's runes dimmed around him.
PASS.
Danny stepped through the next gate.
Floor 520–550: The First Climb of Pressure
The middle floors were meant to break spirits.
Illusions designed to overwhelm.
Tests that bent reality itself.
Spirits imitating loved ones begging you to turn back.
Echoes of your failures and your fears.
Danny walked straight through them.
A battlefield of illusions tried to recreate his toughest moments—a younger Danny kneeling in the ashes of a destroyed forest, Swift lying injured beside him, Jake standing alone against a tidal wave of darkness, Jimmy using humor to hide his worry, Sedge Hat smiling sadly beneath his shadowed hat brim.
The Danny in the illusions begged.
Accused.
Cried.
"So many mistakes…
So much destruction…
Why fight again?
Why climb?
Why keep going?
You'll only lose more…"
The illusions reached for him.
Danny reached back—
and pulled them into a gentle embrace.
"You're not me," he whispered softly. "You're echoes of pain. But I'm still here. I'm still walking. And I won't let the past break me."
Light burst from him like gold bleeding into morning sky.
The illusions dissolved peacefully.
The tower adjusted again.
It was learning.
Not to stop him.
To match him.
To rise with him.
Floor 551–575: The Tests of Endurance
The tower tried physical exhaustion next.
Miles of spiraling stairwells.
Platforms that required immense strength to cross.
Infinite loops that reset unless the fighter hit the exact pace of the floor's heartbeat.
Danny ran.
And kept running.
His body was not just driven by strength—it was powered by alignment. His movements were fueled by golden fire, but more importantly by purpose.
He didn't sprint.
Didn't push to the point of reckless burnout.
His stride was constant, measured, efficient.
Every step was a cycle of breath.
Every motion a quiet promise.
At the peak of Floor 570, a massive rotating cylinder tried to shove him off into an abyss.
Danny placed his hand on its surface.
The entire mechanism slowed.
Then stopped.
He walked across it.
"Balance," he whispered. "Everything wants balance."
Floor 575 was a desert of burning sand that tried to swallow him.
Danny clenched his fist.
Golden light flowed through the sand.
It turned cool beneath his feet.
He continued.
Floor 580–599: The Celestial Choir
This stretch was famous.
Many fighters never made it through.
Not because it was deadly—
—but because it was beautiful.
The chamber opened into a massive amphitheater of floating steps, glowing runes, and hundreds of structures channeling energy into the sky. Every step Danny took struck invisible chords—notes echoing through the chamber, vibrating through the bones of fighters who passed before him.
The tower sang to him.
Not in words.
In emotion.
In longing.
In grief.
In hope.
The Celestial Choir was a memory of the tower's builders—beings of creation who dreamed of testing champions to one day protect the multiverse.
Danny walked up the shifting steps, feeling a warm ache in his chest as the music surrounded him.
"Is this what you've been waiting for?" he murmured.
The music swelled at his words, answering without language.
A single figure appeared at the top of the steps—a construct shaped like a woman, made of light and crystalline voice.
She radiated sorrow.
She raised a hand and whispered—not in speech, but in sound:
"Why climb?"
Danny met her gaze.
His eyes glowed with dawn.
"Because everyone is climbing too. And someone has to reach them."
The construct shuddered.
Then bowed.
The entire choir bowed with her.
The platforms aligned perfectly in a staircase.
Danny stepped upward.
Floor 600: The Tower Holds Its Breath
When Danny entered the six-hundredth floor, he expected resistance.
Expected guardians.
Expected tricks.
Expected traps.
What waited was silence.
A perfect, mirrored chamber.
No enemies.
No puzzles.
No traps.
Just his reflection.
Danny frowned slightly.
"Are you… thinking?"
The tower said nothing.
It was processing.
Studying.
Trying desperately to understand the flame he carried.
Trying to anticipate the calamities climbing behind him—the Wolf King and Shadeclaw, Bones, the dark Buddies, the twisted fighters of chaos.
Trying to see if he could be the pillar the tower once hoped for.
Danny reached out and pressed one hand to the mirrored floor.
His reflection pressed its hand back, golden flame shimmering across both palms.
"I'm not your creator," Danny whispered. "But I understand your purpose. And I promise—when we reach the top, nothing is going to destroy what you protect."
The mirror softened like water.
His hand passed through.
A gate appeared.
He stepped into it.
Toward Floor 700
Danny climbed faster now.
Faster than the Wolf King.
Faster than Shadeclaw.
Faster than the tower's ability to restructure.
Every step was a blur of creation energy.
Golden afterimages trailed behind him.
Rifts closed before he reached them.
Pits filled with stone as he approached.
Guardians bowed rather than fought.
The tower had stopped resisting.
It was preparing.
Danny closed his eyes briefly as he reached Floor 650.
He could feel the others climbing.
Jake bruised and battered but rising with bronze resilience.
Swift cutting through fractals of reality with silver precision.
Jade sending explosions of chi through anything the tower threw at him.
The Wolf King roaring up the floors like a burning hurricane.
Danny placed both hands together.
Golden light pulsed outward.
"Wait for me," he whispered. "All of you."
He stepped into Floor 700.
And the tower whispered back, stone trembling with ancient awe:
"Golden one.
We remember now.
And we will rise with you."