Chapter 1
For those without the mark, death is permanent. For those with the mark, death is finite. So wills the Tower, which is Infinite.
~ Korl Shade, First Tower Keeper
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“Form ranks!” The voice bellowed, deep, strong, firm. Commander Kin Phyr “For today is the day you lot die!” Cheers erupted from the crowd, all of whom had come for this momentous day.
“For the Tower wills it,” a man said solemnly. He stood, clad in black robes, in front of a massive steel gate. His eyes stared down at all gathered before him, “so shall it be.” He was Lynal Shade, Seventeenth Tower Keeper. The man tasked with speaking with the Tower and executing its will. The man responsible for the entire city that existed, by the Tower’s blessing, at its base.
My heart beat in my chest, thumping with excitement. I moved with trained precision, finding my set place in the ranks, as we took up our position. This was all ceremony: A show put on for the people. Once we passed through those gates, once we completed the march to the base of the Tower and set foot within, it would be different. Once we were within the Tower, it was every man for himself. The only guaranteed outcome… our deaths.
“How far you think we’ll make it, Ash?” The dark-haired man beside me, Nyle Minn, asked. Like me, he was eighteen. Like me, he’d been chosen by the Tower, marked with the Tower’s sigil, the coiling snake eating its tail, in the shape of a sideways eight. The sigil that marked us as climbers and set our fate in stone. To climb the tower, and to die.
“You?” I asked, glancing his way with a wry smile. After eight years of training, ever since our marks appeared on our tenth birthday, the day when the Tower assigned everyone their set role, his body, like mine, was lean. We’d trained day in and day out, honing our skills with every possible weapon imaginable, training in both the physical and arcane, to prepare for this moment. “I’d say you’ll be lucky to make it past the first floor.”
Nyle made to hit me but froze, catching the eye of our commander ahead of us. The grizzled warrior was in his seventies, having weathered the hazards of the Tower for fifty years before being given the honor of training the new climbers. He was powerfully built, covered in scars, and had eyes that could silence you with a single gaze. Eyes that were dead and worn from a lifetime of climbing, that had focused, for only a second, on the pair of us.
Nyle and I waited in silence, the air buzzing with anticipation, for the massive, ornate gates to open. The Tower Keeper finished his prayers, gave a nod, and then, without any visible sign of how, the gates creaked inwards, as if inviting us down the cobblestone path that led to the gleaming, white tower.
“Forward,” The Commander shouted, and our bodies tensed, years of disciplined training taking hold. “March.”
The sound of a hundred feet all stepping off in tandem, ironclad boots echoing as one on the cobblestone as we drove our heels down with each step, heralded our departure. Each and every one of us had been outfitted with basic leather armor, simple swords, and wooden shields. But our boots, those were different. They were ceremonial, meant solely for the purpose of this parade, this show for the people. The sound of a hundred footfalls echoing as one. The lives of many, for a single purpose. Announcing our approach, our acceptance of our fate, as climbers of the Tower.
“No one dies on the first floor,” Nyle whispered beside me, using the sound of our marching to mask his voice. “You know that.”
“Doesn’t mean you won’t,” I replied, my smirk returning. “Everyone’s already begun taking bets on who dies first.”
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I saw him scowl from the corner of my eye, though my focus was fixated on the massive tower. It had always been there, impossible to miss. The only proof I’d ever need that gods existed. The massive tower climbed impossibly high into the dark world above, disappearing into the dark stone above. Without the tower, life would be impossible. Our entire civilization existed because of it.
The rocks and stones that made up the cavernous dark expanse we called home were unable to support life. Everything, from the food we ate, to the materials we used to build and craft everything from the smallest eating utensil to the massive cathedral that housed the Tower Keeper and his acolytes, was gathered from within the Tower. The Tower, with its glowing exterior, formed from a material unlike any I’d ever seen, was also the only source of natural light. Everything else, all the other illumination in the city, was either the result of magic from various arcane sources, or the mundane, orange flickering of burning wood. The latter though, was the rarest form of light of all. To burn such a precious material from within the Tower was a luxury only the wealthiest, or mightiest, could afford.
“How far do you think you’ll make it, then?” Nyle pressed. His gaze, too, was drifting upwards as he took in the tower. The march from the gate to the base of the tower was roughly a mile. And with every step, the sheer magnitude of it became even clearer. We were less than ants to a god. Each of us was as insignificant as a single speck of dust in the entire world we knew.
“I’m shooting for the fifth.” I said, though I only partially registered I was responding. Before us, the ivory doors waited. Each door, thirty feet in height, was as thick as three men. They opened to signal Dawn, the start of the day. The doors would close to signal Dusk, the end of the day. There were twelve hours of each, denoted by twelve gems inlaid in an arch around the two doors.
The door on the left had a burning sphere inlaid with gold and was known as the Door of Dawn. The door on the right, which had a gleaming silver sphere inlaid into it, was known as the Door of Dusk. At the bottom left of the arch, was the gem that would light up when Dawn was upon us. All twelve gems were pitch black, showing we were in the final hour of Dusk. Through the day, each gem would light up, from left to right, denoting the hours. At night, each gem would turn dark, from right to left, continuing to countdown the time. A system, set in stone by the Tower, to give guidance to the people who worshipped it.
“That’s even crazier than me dying on the first.” Nyle replied. “You know something I don’t?” With the Commander’s back to us, the grizzled man, covered in plate mail, marching like a lone sentinel before the formation, Nyle risked elbowing me. “You pay someone off to guide you?”
I let out a slight huff and shot him a look. “You know that’s not permitted.” I said. “This first climb, our first ascent, is sacred. To break tradition,”
“Is to break ourselves.” Nyle replied blandly. “Yeah yeah, I know the teachings.”
“You better,” I replied sharply. “You’ve been blessed, same as me, with the mark. And you know, same as I do, what they do to those who forsake their duty, or blaspheme against the teachings.”
The mere mention of it brought the thought to my mind. A lifetime of unending suffering, endless torture. It was rare for those to go against the Tower, to forsake the callings of the jobs they’d been given. But those few who did, were chained for eternity beneath the cathedral, at the mercy of Tower Keeper, and his acolytes. We’d been shown the depths, once, where they kept those who’d turned against the teachings. And while we couldn’t see past the darkness within, the cries of pain, the inhuman screams, and then, the deafening silence, broken by occasional sobs and weeps… was enough to ensure we knew our place.
“Way to really dampen the mood,” Nyle said with a heavy sigh. We were nearly there. “You do know today was supposed to be a joyous day for us, right?”
I chuckled, biting off my response as the Commander’s voice bellowed over us, “Platoon,” he held up his right, gauntleted hand, closing it as he spoke. “Halt.”
Our final steps hit stone. Our heels drove together, sending a single, final echo around the empty expanse that existed on either side of the path. Just as the sound dissipated, the void consuming it with silence, a new sound rumbled forth. The ground beneath us shook, and the two doors before us swung slowly outwards, as the bottom left gem glowed brilliantly to life.
“The Tower welcomes you recruits.” Our Commander said, his back still to us. “Show the Tower, show us all, what you’ve learned over the past eight years.” He drew his weapon, a blade of pitch black, that seemed to glow with a strange blue light. An artifact he’d received, according to his tales, by defeating the boss on the seventy-fifth floor. He pointed it towards the opening before us, the entrance to the Tower, a blinding white wall of nothing. “Go forth and make me proud.” His sword blazed to life, and his voice amplified. “Go forth and die.”
And with that, as one, we all rushed forward to our deaths. The Reaping had begun.