Phase Two wasn't a battle. It was a mirror.
Overseer Ironwood stood before the massive iron gates of the inner stadium. Behind him, a colossal spire rose toward the mana-glass dome, its surface shifting like liquid mercury.
"Combat ability is useless if you cannot defeat yourself," Ironwood rumbled.
He gestured to the structure. "This is the Spire of Reflections. It reads your mana signature, your muscle memory, and your fears. It will generate a floor specifically designed to counter you."
The 200 survivors shifted uneasily. Fighting monsters was one thing; fighting a dungeon that knew your moves before you made them was another.
"You will enter in teams," Ironwood continued. "You ascend floor by floor. The Spire will generate 'Echoes'—constructs that mirror your abilities. Defeat them to climb. The first fifty teams to reach the 10th Floor pass to the finals."
Kael stared at the shifting mercury of the Spire. To others, it looked like magic. To him, it looked like a complex scanning algorithm.
"It copies us?" Eren whispered, gripping his staff. "Kael... if it copies your Ashfire... we're dead. I can't heal through that."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "It can copy data," he muttered. "But let's see if it can copy a crash."
The Celestial Perspective
High above, perched on the invisible rafters where gravity seemed to bend around her, the woman in the white mask watched.
Her name—in the tongue of the lower worlds—was irrelevant. But among the Star-Forged, she was known as Lyris, the 7th Custodian.
Her eyes, glowing with a soft, nebular violet light beneath her mask, were not looking at the arena. They were peeling back the layers of reality, staring directly at the soul of the boy named Kael Kane.
What she saw made her immortal heart skip a beat.
Inside the boy's chest, entwined with his nervous system, was a burning, tangled root of code and starlight. It wasn't the crude, mass-produced "Systems" that the humans had awakened during the Great Fracture ten years ago.
Those were scraps. Debris. Garbage tossed from the Celestial Realm when the dimensions collided.
But the thing inside Kael...
[ Artifact Identification: ORIGIN SEED (Damaged) ] [ Source: The Primal Architect ] [ Status: Bound to Mortal Host. ]
Lyris gripped the edge of the rafter, her porcelain fingers leaving deep indentations in the enchanted steel.
"Impossible," she whispered, her voice vibrating with a harmonic frequency that no human could hear.
The Origin Seed was the source code of reality. It was the tool used to build stars, to edit physics, to weave dimensions. It was supposed to be lost in the void during the Fracture.
And now? It was being used by a malnourished, angry human teenager to climb a tournament tower.
"It should have incinerated him," Lyris murmured. "A mortal shell cannot hold the weight of an Origin. He should be ash."
But he wasn't ash. He was adapting to it. The system was broken, glitching, and wild—but he was forcing it to work.
She raised a hand. She could end it now. A simple snap of her fingers would separate the Seed from his body (and likely vaporize the city block in the process). It was her duty. The Seed was too dangerous for a primitive species.
But she paused.
On the arena floor, Kael stepped into the Spire. And for the first time in centuries, the Custodian felt something other than duty.
Curiosity.
"Show me," she whispered. "Show me how a monkey wields the hammer of a god."
The Spire: Floor 1
The inside of the Spire was a white void. Kael and Eren stood on a platform of floating glass.
[ Floor 1: Initiated. ] [ Scanning Targets... ]
The air shimmered. Across the room, the mercury pooled and rose, taking shape.
Two figures formed.
One was a perfect copy of Eren, holding a staff that glowed with green light. The other was Kael. Same messy hair, same leather armor, same scar on his arm.
"It really is us," Eren said, his voice trembling.
The Echo-Kael raised its hand. A perfect Fire Spark ignited in its palm.
"Eren," Kael said calmly. "Shield up."
The Echoes lunged. The Fake-Eren cast a speed buff on Fake-Kael, mirroring their exact strategy from the Culling. Fake-Kael shot forward, a blur of speed, aiming a fire blast at real Kael's chest.
Kael didn't move. He watched his copy approach.
The Spire analyzes mana flow, Kael thought, his mind racing at the speed of the Sanctum simulations. It copies the 'Correct' version of the skill.
Fake-Kael fired. The flame roared.
Real Kael activated Ash Phase.
But he didn't use it correctly.
In the Sanctum, Kael had learned that if he flooded the Ash Phase with too much mana, it didn't just turn him to smoke—it caused a "texture error" in the space around him.
[ Skill Modification: Ash Phase (Overclocked) ]
Kael's body didn't just vanish. He stuttered.
He flickered in and out of existence like a bad hologram, vibrating violently. The Fake-Kael's fire passed through him, but because Kael was flickering so fast, the Spire's targeting system couldn't lock on.
[ Error. Target lost. Target found. Target lost. ]
The Echo-Kael froze, its logic processing confused.
Kael solidified instantly behind it. "You can copy the code," he whispered. "But you can't copy the bug."
He drove his dagger into the Echo's neck.
The Echo shattered into glass shards.
Across the room, Eren was dueling his own double. "I can't hit him! He heals every time I hit him!"
"Stop fighting it!" Kael shouted. "Eren, invert your flow! Don't heal—overload!"
Eren blinked. "What?"
"Cast Minor Heal on him, but push all your mana into it at once! Overheal him!"
Eren didn't question it. He pointed his staff at the Fake-Eren and screamed, dumping his entire mana pool into a single healing spell.
[ Skill: Major Heal (Forcefully Applied) ]
The Fake-Eren glowed blindingly bright. Its mana circuits, designed to mirror a steady flow, couldn't handle the sudden surge of positive energy. It bloated, glowing like a lightbulb about to burst.
Pop.
The Fake-Eren shattered into light.
Kael smirked, wiping ash from his cheek. "System logic 101: Even a healing potion is poison if you drink a thousand gallons at once."
[ Floor 1: Cleared. ] [ Time: 00:42 ] [ New Record. ]
The Observation Deck
General Kaelen stood up, knocking his chair over. "Did you see that? The Spire... it froze. The construct stopped moving before the boy hit it."
Researcher Oris was typing furiously on his datapad, sweat beading on his forehead. "His mana frequency is oscillating. The Spire is trying to read him, but every time it does, it gets a 'Null' value. It's like fighting a ghost."
High in the rafters, Lyris watched the boy ascend to the second floor.
"He is using the Origin's instability as a weapon," she noted. "He is hacking reality's combat engine."
She lowered her hand. She wouldn't delete him. Not yet.
"Climb, Anomaly," she whispered. "Let us see if you break the tower... or if the tower breaks you."