Cold resolve settled in her chest, but facing Loren, Erika knew well — this wasn't a decision one could make alone.
She turned to look at Loren, who still wore an expression of confusion and lingering fear, took a deep breath, and spoke in a tone as steady and as indisputable as she could manage:
"Loren, we have to leave. Leave the Black Tower."
Loren's brow immediately furrowed, his voice instinctively dropping low. "I know it's dangerous, Erika. But what's outside? Lands freshly scorched by 'Divine Judgment', patrolled by the Creed's enforcers, wilderness with no cover or supplies. The Tower at least… has walls."
"Walls won't stop what truly wants to get in," Erika shook her head, her gaze calm and lucid. "And these walls aren't ours. Quinn didn't take us in out of kindness. We are merely variables he hasn't processed yet, specimens under observation, or—'things' that might be useful someday."
She deliberately used Quinn's own term.
Loren paled slightly. He clearly grasped the danger of this suspended state, yet still clung instinctively to the only shelter at hand. "I understand he's not entirely trustworthy, but at least we're safe for now! If we leave, we won't even have 'temporary safety'!"
"Safety?" Erika exhaled softly. "Quinn tolerates us today because the cost hasn't touched his bottom line. But what about next time? When the Sanctum sends not a probe, but a true purge—and part of the reason for it is precisely because we're here."
Her eyes locked onto Loren's.
"I don't want to wait until that day to find I've become a 'lesion' he must excise."
Silence stretched between them. The air tightened, almost thick enough to hear their breathing.
Loren's fingers curled unconsciously, then slowly relaxed. He feared the wilds, and he feared Quinn—both dangers were equally real and suffocating.
Finally, his shoulders slumped.
It was the posture of giving up argument, of accepting reality.
"Are you sure about this?" Loren looked up at Erika, his tone complex. "Even if it's a dead end out there?"
"Staying here, in the long run, might be a dead end too," Erika replied with unsettling calm. "And one that drags others down with us."
After a brief silence, Loren did something that surprised Erika—he stepped forward, positioning himself slightly behind and to the side of her, his gaze fixed down the dim corridor.
"Alright," he said, struggling to maintain a noble-like composure, though his voice remained slightly taut. "I'll go with you."
Erika was taken aback. She hadn't asked Loren to follow.
"I know it might be worse out there," Loren cut him off, his tone stiff as if convincing himself. "But letting you go out alone to die, while I stay here waiting for 'Divine Judgment' or for the wizard's mood to change someday… doesn't sound smart either."
He paused, his voice dropping lower.
"At the very least… we can watch each other's backs."
Watch each other's backs.
It wasn't an oath, nor an unbreakable alliance, but a primal survival instinct—in this malicious world, two equally weak, equally hunted individuals could at least serve as warning and rear-guard for one another.
A complex surge of emotion welled in Erika's chest: gratitude, responsibility, and the heavier pressure that came with it. She simply nodded, offering no thanks.
"Good."
The two stood in the dim corridor, no longer just fugitives who had narrowly escaped death, but gamblers now placing bets on their next fate.
The stakes were their lives, the chips were observation, courage, and that tiny yet crucial interdependence.
The path ahead remained dark.
But at least this step was one they chose to take themselves.
They exchanged a brief glance. Tension and anticipation passed wordlessly between them.
"Perhaps…" Loren said quietly, "we don't need to leave the Tower itself immediately."
He bit his lower lip lightly, raising a hand to point towards a patch of deeper shadow down the corridor. "Maybe… there's a way for us to move briefly, without relying entirely on Quinn."
Loren's words sparked like a flint, suddenly illuminating a dim corner of Erika's mind.
"Authority? Fissures?" Erika whirled to face Loren, voice hushed but urgent.
Loren nodded, gesturing somewhat uncertainly. "Right… when Mister Quinn had me organize inventory earlier, to make it easier for me to move things between a few fixed storage rooms, he temporarily gave me a bit of… let's say, short-range transit permission within the Tower? I can make them open briefly, but only inside the Tower."
Tower-internal pathways… but that's enough! Erika's heart gave a heavy thud. He quickly recalled their initial entry into the Black Tower: not at the base, nor in their current living quarters on an upper level, but on some mid-level space, dusty and filled with discards, brought up via a platform.
"The level we came in on!" Erika said swiftly. "Remember? That place full of old books! If we can get back to that level, or find a similar area close to the Tower's outer wall, something less core…" His train of thought grew clearer.
Loren's eyes also lit up, but were quickly clouded by worry again. "But how? We know almost nothing of the Tower's layout. Using fissure authority randomly, what if we end up somewhere wrong, trigger alarms, or just drop into some deadly spot…"
"Which is why we need to test, to observe," Erika interrupted, his tone carrying a calm born of desperation. "The wizard is asleep. This might be our best chance. Even if we can't leave immediately, just confirming a path, figuring out some patterns, knowing where might lead outside is enough."
They hesitated no longer and moved at once. They descended via the platform to a section of wall at what they remembered as their entry level. The Tower's constant light sources provided slightly dimmer illumination in some areas, casting long shadows. The air held that unique mix of old paper, dust, and faint energy reverberations.
Loren closed his eyes first, brow furrowed in concentration, seeming to strain to recall and sense. He raised a hand, fingers slightly splayed, towards the empty corridor air ahead. After a few seconds, a faint, twisting, flickering thread of pale light began to manifest in the air before his fingertips, struggling to outline an irregular edge. Sweat beaded on Loren's temple; maintaining this guidance was clearly not easy.
Erika held his breath, every muscle taut, senses heightened to the extreme. He not only watched with his eyes but tried to 'touch' the flow of energy around them. He could feel it—centered on that faint thread of light at Loren's fingertips, the constant energy latent in the surrounding air and walls was undergoing an extremely subtle disturbance and reorganization.
The pale thread of light struggled to extend and interweave, gradually forming a fuzzy, wavering circle of light about a meter in diameter, its edges constantly writhing. The interior of the circle no longer showed the corridor, but a deeper, dust-filled gloom, where the outlines of tilted shelves and piled shadows were vaguely discernible. The fissure was forming!
"It's working… but it's very unstable, quick!" Loren hissed, his face pale, clearly the effort of maintaining this fissure to the indistinct area was immense.
Without hesitation. Erika grabbed Loren's arm, and like arrows loosed from a bow, they plunged one after the other into the pale circle of light that had just stabilized enough to admit them!
Passing through the fissure was a brief, strange sensation, like squeezing through a layer of cold, slick gelatinous film, accompanied by a faint energy hum in their ears. The next instant, their feet found solid ground, and the light before them abruptly dimmed.
They had succeeded.
They now stood in an immensely vast, yet chaotically dilapidated underground space resembling a giant scrapyard. This was clearly a lower region of the Black Tower. The air was thick with dust, the smell of rotting paper, metal rust, and a faint hint of mildew. As far as the eye could see, darkness stretched up to an invisible ceiling, amidst countless collapsed, tilted, mountainous piles of metal and wooden racks stuffed with unidentifiable debris: broken instrument parts, scroll fragments, dulled crystal clusters, twisted metal sheets, and, more abundantly, hills of books covered in thick dust, many already rotting and fused together. Faint light seeped from somewhere, barely outlining the jagged, menacing silhouettes of this colossal "junk graveyard."
The environment was strikingly similar to, if not an extension of, the area they had passed through when rescued!
Erika's heart raced, not from fear, but from hope and confirmation. They had truly reached the Tower's lower levels! An exit might lie somewhere in this chaos!
"Quick, look for any passage leading outside, or traces of the direction we came from!" Erika whispered, his eyes scanning their surroundings like torches.
Yet, the very moment they prepared to begin their search—
A low, slow vibration, seeming to emanate from the Tower's deepest core, appeared without warning. Then, from the shadows of a debris pile not far from them, several points of dark red light, like the slowly opening eyes of a slumbering beast, lit up in sequence.
It was not an exit.
It was some internal Tower defense mechanism, or… slumbering "debris," accidentally activated by their arrival.
Their reconnaissance had instantly transformed into a fresh crisis. They froze in place, cold sweat breaking out anew. But this time, besides wariness, there was a cold sharpness in Erika's eyes—at least they were no longer sitting ducks, but facing a challenge they had to confront themselves in the active pursuit of a way out.