The ceiling did not collapse.
It receded.
Stone pulled away from itself as if distance had been forgotten. The chamber elongated upward, the upper wall stretching, repeating, stacking into itself in clean vertical intervals. The mechanisms froze mid-motion, then duplicated—brass frameworks echoed above and below, perfectly aligned, endlessly deferred.
The telescope remained where it was.
Everything else became height.
Alex staggered back instinctively, wings flaring for balance. The air thinned—not cold, not warm, just less. Sound followed suit. His breath reached only a short distance before vanishing, swallowed by the rising shaft.
Catwalks unfolded along the walls, not built but revealed, layered one above another, each identical in width and spacing. No ladder connected them. No stairs bridged the gaps.
Movement entered his periphery.
Not Phantoms.
Not even the system cared to elavorate
Its form was heavier. Denser. Their wings were intact—feathered, not fractured— their body resembled that of a human wrapped in cloth like a mummy.
It watched arrogantly as if it were only here to send a message
It did not rush him.
It adjusted.
One drifted closer, wings beating with slow authority. Its gaze did not lock onto Alex's center mass or his weapon.
It watched his altitude.
Alex launched upward.
The response was immediate—not pursuit, but correction. The Herald rose in parallel, maintaining distance without effort. Another emerged above, then another below, forming a loose vertical alignment.
Not a surround.
A scale.
Alex thrust forward, spear igniting as starfire condensed along its length. The blow landed cleanly, tearing through one Herald's wing—
—and met resistance too great for the angle.
The counterstroke came without flourish.
A wing clipped his side.
Pain detonated white-hot as bone cracked. His right wing tore along the joint, the force spinning him sideways. Ascension failed mid-burst, power dispersing into nothing.
There was no ground to catch him.
Alex fell.
The Tower did not rush past. The walls slid by at a steady, measured pace, repeating stone and shadow and catwalk in endless sequence. His vision tunneled. Air tore past his ears, but the sound never rose.
Impact came sudden and brutal.
Metal screamed as his body struck a catwalk below, momentum folding him hard against the railing. Something in his leg shattered. His breath left him in a voiceless gasp as his back struck again, then stopped.
Silence.
Above him, wings passed.
The Heralds did not descend.
They hovered briefly, then turned away, attention already shifting upward—as if the metric had been satisfied.
Alex lay still.
Pain arrived late, spreading in waves too large to process. His wing twitched uselessly, feathers bent at wrong angles. He reached for magic out of reflex.
Starfire sputtered.
Ascension did not answer.
Frenzy stirred—and he crushed it down, teeth clenched, refusing the burn.
Healing.
He tried Lux first. The rune flared weakly, light pooling uselessly around the break without knitting it. The pain sharpened instead, as if the body rejected the attempt.
Another breath.
Another try.
Nothing held.
The Tower did not respond.
Alex laughed once, breathless and raw, the sound swallowed instantly by the height above and below.
So this is outside.
He shifted his arm—and hissed as bone grated.
There was one thing left.
Tempus.
The rune sat heavy on his mind uninvoked, intertwined with consequence.
Not permission.
Not safety.
Alex focused—not on the fall, not on the fight, but on the instant before impact. Not to undo it. Just to step sideways from it.
The rune answered reluctantly.
Time did not rewind.
It creased.
The world lurched. Pain blurred. For a fraction of a second, the catwalk was elsewhere—offset just enough.
Alex slammed down again.
Still broken.
But not as badly.
His leg was cracked instead of shattered. His wing screamed but held together, barely. The railing bent instead of breaking his spine.
Tempus went silent.
Alex lay there shaking, sweat cold against his skin, chest heaving.
Above him, the Tower continued.
Below him, it waited.
The walls stacked endlessly, patient and uncaring, each repetition identical to the last. No beginning. No summit.
Alex dragged himself upright inch by inch, gripping the railing until his vision steadied. He did not look up.
Not yet.
— — —
The Tower did not end.
It continued.
Alex dragged himself along the catwalk, breath scraping his throat raw. Each movement sent a spike through his wing, the joint barely holding together. Below him, the shaft fell away into repetition. Above him, the walls stacked endlessly, identical layers of stone and shadow receding into height without conclusion.
He did not climb.
He descended.
Slowly. Carefully. Catwalk by catwalk, lowering himself where he could, letting gravity do the rest when his strength failed. The Tower did not resist him. It did not assist. It simply allowed descent, as if direction no longer mattered.
When he reached the base, the space had not changed.
The telescope remained where it had been.
Unmoved. Unconcerned.
Alex collapsed against the plinth and stayed there until the shaking passed. Time lost shape. Pain dulled into something manageable—not gone, never gone, but contained. He bound his wing as best he could. Reset bone where it would allow. Lux answered only enough to keep him conscious.
Hours passed.
The Tower remained vertical.
Eventually, he stood.
Alex returned to the telescope.
Up close, the brass frameworks were scorched from his earlier adjustment, the red gaps between the concentric rings faintly warm, as if they had retained heat longer than the metal should have. He pressed his palm to the plinth and closed his eyes.
This was not a lens anymore.
It was a channel.
He fed Ursa Ignis into the structure—not all at once, not violently. He let it seep, guiding the starfire through the brass, into the runic disc, across the red seams between the rings. The metal accepted it greedily. The gaps glowed faintly, not resisting, not distorting.
He understood then.
The telescope had never been meant only to observe.
It had been built to carry.
Alex turned to the damaged pulley system. The collapsed arm still held tension, locked out of place by time and debris. He placed his hand against it and invoked Tempus—not to reverse the damage, not to restore it.
Just enough.
The moment before collapse folded inward.
The arm snapped free.
The pulley screamed as it released, the barrel jerking violently upward. Stone cracked. The aperture split as both lenses shattered under the sudden realignment, glass exploding inward and outward in a spray of fractured light.
Alex staggered back.
The telescope now pointed straight up.
He did not hesitate.
Ursa Ignis surged.
Not a beam.
Not a strike.
A compressed mass of starfire tore free, funneled through brass and rune and broken glass, launching upward into the shaft in absolute silence. No recoil shook the chamber. No shockwave followed.
The fire vanished into height.
Alex did not look up.
— — —