“This is about my business license,” the man said while the long metal shard of cosmic darkness shifted slightly deeper into his eye. “I have all the correct paperwork,” he insisted. “Just check the drawer over there.” He nodded to his left, where there was no drawer.

Hugo, Damian, and I exchanged looks, all of us unsure how to proceed.

The man appeared to be middle-aged and looked like he hadn’t shaved or slept in the past couple of days. He wore a ruffled gray suit that could’ve belonged to a businessman from the Victorian era. A thin trail of blood dripped down his cheek from the wound that the shard was inflicting. Though if it was causing him pain, he seemed completely unaware of it. In fact, he looked remarkably good, given his circumstances.

The three of us had stumbled across him in a forest a few miles away from this floor’s town. He was bound to the trunk of a tall oak tree with a series of thick ropes. Whoever had put him there hadn’t bothered to explain why, and the System too, was eerily quiet when it came to this guy.

“The paperwork is right there!” he yelled, frustrated at our inaction.

Despite all being heavily armed, the three of us took a step back.

The shard sticking out of his eye shifted again. Moving of its own accord, half a centimeter deeper towards the man’s brain. I cringed at the sound of its rough edges grinding against bone. But that wasn’t the worst part. No, it was the aura that the shard gave off that I could only describe as profound menace. Wisps of shadow radiated off of it and tendrils of darkness caressed the man’s cheek. Almost like it was trying to keep him calm as it moved closer to the man’s brain.

Hugo gave the man a sympathetic look and asked him, “where do you think we are?”

The man struggled against his ropes in anger before settling down. “Is that a joke? We’re in the basement of my house. My brother tied me to a post down here while he searches for the documents at my office.”

“How did he tie you up?” I asked skeptically.

It would’ve been difficult for one man to tie another to a tree like this against their will. You’d need at least one other person to hold them in place against the trunk. Another alternative would be knocking them unconscious first, but then he’d be sitting down against the tree rather than standing by it.

The man experienced a brief moment of confusion as he searched for the answer to my question, and then his eyes lit up. “He must’ve drugged me since I woke up like this.”

He said it with vindication, but the way he’d struggled to remember made me even more certain that this thing had already reached his brain.

“You poor man,” Hugo said. “Don’t worry, we’ll help you get free.”

The man grunted in appreciation.

Damian and I shared a look, and he motioned for us to move out of earshot to talk. I nodded and dragged Hugo with me before he could make any more promises to the suspicious gentleman.

The man clenched his jaw and anxiously watched us. He knew we were his only hope of getting free, so he tried to contain his frustration.

Damian glanced back longingly at the way we’d come through the forest. He wore a light, dark green jacket with a belt of small brown pouches around his waist, and a second belt of pouches running diagonally across his body like a bandolier. He was our expert with traps, and those pouches contained all manner of alchemical nastiness that had helped us progress several of the floors. His main weapon though, remained his silver crossbow that was slung across his back with an explosive bolt pre-loaded onto it that he assured us was perfectly safe. Usually, he took whatever the Tower threw at him with a kind of stoic resignation, but if he was wearing a wristwatch, then he’d be tapping it right now.

“What are we still doing here?” asked Damian. “We finished this floor and were on our way back to the elevator. This whole thing smells like a distraction or a trap. I say we leave him and move on to the next floor.”

I know Hugo wanted to help the man, but Damian had a point. Anything that looked suspicious in the Tower almost always ended up being dangerous.

Hugo however wouldn’t hear of it. “He’s going to die if we don’t help him. That thing in his eye is inching closer to his brain. We have to save him before that happens.”

Damian snorted. “As if it hasn’t already.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He’s already hallucinating,” I said. “He thinks he’s in his basement. The shard has already reached his brain.”

“Not to mention the fact that he doesn’t even realize it's there,” Damian added.

“But if the shard is moving in deeper, then it’s because it wants something,” Hugo insisted. “There’s some specific function it hasn’t fulfilled yet. He’s also still alive and relatively healthy, minus his eye. If we walk away, then he’s dead for sure. We have to help him.”

“How?” Damian asked. “By pulling out the shard? How well did that work last time?”

He was referring to when we’d first met the man. As standard practice, Tower Climbers touch things in order to receive identification messages. We normally poke and prod anything that looks vaguely magical or dangerous for info, but in this case, the aura of the shard had kept us away. Instead, Hugo sent a spirit summon to do it for us. He’d used Archer, a female cloaked spirit summon, to touch the man. When no System message had appeared for the man, she’d moved on to touch the shard. As soon as she’d made contact with it, her form instantly dissipated. Not only did no message appear from it either, but Hugo informed us that Archer was seriously damaged and he would not be able to resummon her for some time.

“If you’re worried about direct contact, Lucas could conjure a rope out of blood to pull the thing out,” Hugo said.

I nodded. “That’s true, but I’m more concerned with who tied him up and why. What if he’s not the victim? What if he’s a threat someone dealt with the best way they knew how?”

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Someone had felt he was dangerous enough to leave out here. Was it because they felt it was too dangerous to kill him, or because they were waiting for something to happen? The shard was moving deeper into the brain. Perhaps there was a purpose behind it.

Damian sighed. “Again, I ask why bother? We’ve basically picked this floor clean. I doubt whatever experience we’d gain from this will be worth much.”

He could be right if this turned out to be nothing. I felt torn. Hugo, the most empathetic among us, felt bad and wanted to save him. I sympathized, but it was curiosity for the mystery surrounding the shard that was keeping me here. The fact that no identification messages had come up made it all the more enticing.

“When has anything in the Tower been random?” I asked. “Even if this is a trap, when was the last time we encountered one that didn’t have a reward at the end of it?”

Damian was unswayed. “Maybe it's not a trap. Maybe it’s a glitch.”

I hated to admit it, but he had a point there too. The glitches had started a little while ago, and while they were infrequent, they were an ongoing concern. Just the other day I was making what to a layman looked like fleeing for my life, but was actually a tactical retreat when a tree glitched in front of me. It just appeared, and I ran headfirst into it, almost knocking myself out in the process. The other glitches had been minor objects disappearing and reappearing. An unspoken fear the three of us carried was what would happen if the elevator were to glitch with us inside of it.

“This is too elaborate to be a glitch,” I said. “Look at the shard. You felt it the same as I did. That’s power. Now I want to find out if there’s a way that we can use it. But don’t let us keep you. You can go on ahead, and we’ll regroup later.”

“What? So I can hear from Roan that this thing got you both killed and feel guilty? Nah, I’d rather we just finish this.”

“Aww, are you saying you’d miss us?” Hugo asked.

He started heading back towards the man and muttered, “Lucas is the only one who knows how to work the sound system in the apartment.”

The man didn’t hide his relief at seeing us return. He smiled broadly and said, “just get these ropes off of me, and I’ll see that the three of you are handsomely rewarded.”

“We still have a few more questions,” I said.

His smile dipped, but he nodded. “Ask them.”

I glanced at Damian, his crossbow now casually resting in his hands. We’d spent enough time together that I knew he wouldn’t hesitate if something went wrong. It would work too. I’d seen him use that type of bolt before. The explosion wouldn’t be big, but it was more than enough to turn the man’s entire upper half into red paste.

“What’s your name?” Hugo asked.

The man sighed. “Do we really have time for this?”

The shard shifted ever so slightly. He was right about time being against us. The shard was large enough that his death was an almost certainty once it got deep enough. But the questions mattered. We needed to know who he was and how he came to be this way if we were going to help him.

“My name’s Donald,” the man began. “I was betrayed by my greedy, conniving brother several weeks ago after we had an argument at the brewery. He told me that I needed to see a doctor. That I wasn’t right in the head. He’s always been jealous of me because I’m the eldest and father left me in charge of the family business. So what if I occasionally knock over a glass or grasp for the doorhandle and miss it by a couple of inches? I’m getting older. It’s natural for my eyes to get a little weaker.”

A hidden message appeared in companion chat from Hugo that only I could see.

Hugo: What does that mean? Is it his brain?

Lucas: The shard is hiding its presence to him, but it can’t actually replace his eye. With only one working eye he’s lost his depth perception, which is why he’s having trouble gauging the distance of things. It still doesn’t explain how he ended up here though, or why he thinks he’s in his basement.

“So far, everything you’ve said has made sense,” I replied. “And then what happened?”

“He came to me yesterday in my home. Said he wanted to apologize and brought a bottle of booze for us to share. I drank from it first and then it was lights out. Once I woke up here, I yelled for help, but nobody came until you three arrived.”

He gasped and twisted in the ropes.

“What is it?” Hugo asked.

Donald grimaced. “It’s these spasms. I’ve been stuck here for too long. My whole body hurts and my head is killing me.”

Lucas: That’s more true than he realizes.

Hugo: Can we untie him now?

Lucas: So he can do what? Roam around a fictional basement? If he can’t see the forest he’s in, who's to say anything he believes is real?

Hugo: You think he’s lying?

Lucas: No, it’s quite possible that he believes it.

Hugo: Maybe we should deal with the shard first? You pull it out, and Damian quickly hands Donald a health potion. I know that pulling it out might kill him, but it's better than any of the other options.

I shrugged. It was worth a shot.

I took Damian aside and told him the plan. The expression on his face told me that he didn’t have a lot of confidence that it would work. But he knew it was the fastest way to move us along, so he merely nodded and held his crossbow one-handed with a health potion in the other.

“Okay Donald, I need you to close your eyes,” I said.

He gave me a skeptical look. “Why?”

Because I don’t want your head to move when I try to pull the shard out, I thought to myself.

“Because the ropes are… uh… enchanted. I need to use magic to cut them and the effect will be very bright. It’ll blind you if you see it.”

Donald frowned. “Why would my brother use magic ropes? I mean, where would he even find such a thing?”

I folded my arms. “Look, do you want out or not?”

Donald nodded and closed his one good eye. The shard shifted again, moving slightly deeper. Had it sensed something? Was it aware? I know there was an energy coming off of the thing, but now I hesitated to do anything at all. Maybe Damian should just shoot the guy to put him out of misery and blow the shard up into a million tiny pieces.

A fresh drop of blood rolled down Donald’s cheek. It was black this time, which unnerved me even more. I guess if I was going to do this, then it was now or never.

I summoned a palm-sized summoning circle in the air that became a Hemorrhage gate. A portal to my domain which was filled with blood that I could control and weaponize. But today it would be a tool instead, and hopefully, save a life for a change.

I drew a line of blood out, shaped it into a rope, and floated it towards Donald. My guess was that this thing wouldn’t leave easily, so the plan was to wrap it around the end of the shard and then yank it out with one quick tug.

I threw the blood rope at the shard and felt it connect. Then I blinked… and everything was different. I was now on my knees in the dirt. Damian and Donald were nowhere in sight. Some loose ropes on the ground next to the tree that looked like they’d been cut.

Hugo flew down to see if I was alright. I was relieved that not everyone was gone, though my head felt strange when I stood up. It was like I’d experienced an epiphany and then forgotten it, but the sensation remained. It was deeply unnerving.

“What just happened?” I asked.

“You started talking gibberish and then cut him free. He took off running into the woods. Damian went after him.”

I felt a wave of disgust, like my skin was no longer my own.

Hugo was concerned. “Lucas, are you alright?”

I was breathing heavily to try and calm myself down. After a moment, the feeling passed, and I thought about what had just happened. How that thing had gotten into my head as soon as the blood that I was controlling had made contact. It had used that connection as a conduit. I could touch the shard, but it could touch my mind. I shivered. What the hell had it done to me?

“Why didn’t Damian just shoot him?” I asked, annoyed that he’d gotten away.

Donald or the shard clearly posed a threat, and Damian had made it quite clear how trigger-happy he was in this situation.

“He did.” Hugo pointed with a wing. Sure enough, one of the tree trunks had a hole in the center of it with a few wisps of smoke curling around it.

I raised an eyebrow. “He missed?”

“He shot one-handed and Donald was much faster than we expected. Speaking of which, now that you’re okay, we should probably try to catch up with them.” Hugo sounded worried.

“Why do you say it like that?”

“Because Donald is running in the same direction that the town is in.”

Oh.

I took off running and Hugo followed in the air. Maybe we weren’t too late to stop whatever was going to happen.