They ran deeper into the maze. Kael's right shoulder throbbed beneath his torn sleeve, while Taryn and Lysara moved with the stiffness of fresh bruises. The great, robed statues paused, then sank back into the shadows.
The ground changed as they went. The stone had turned warm and faintly alive. Cracked black rock spread beneath Kael's boots like a sea of ink caught in one dark ripple. Its surface held a liquid sheen, soaking up the pale green glow leaking from the floor fissures. Along with the change came a rhythmic thrum. It shook the soles of his boots and traveled deep into his bones. The slower, steadier vibration belonged to the tower itself. A massive heartbeat rolled up from the Spire's base, matching the Shattering-sigil on his palm.
Kael stopped and studied the broken statues in the dark. With each beat of the Spire's heart, bright blue light crossed the black floor, connecting his hand to the structure. Heat moved through his forearm, no longer burning. It anchored him.
"Can you hear that?" he asked, throat raw in the thin air.
Taryn slowed. Bioluminescent rift-scars caught in her auburn hair as she adjusted her patchwork armor. "Hear what, Marcus? The ground? It's always like this near the thresholds. The Spire's almost alive."
"Not the ground," Kael said. "The voices."
The air began to carry the familiar discordant harmony of the Nameless Choir. Psychic grief vibrated through his teeth. Taryn's knuckles whitened around her dagger as she stared into the mist.
"Marcus, you were supposed to be one of them." Taryn barely whispered. "After you died. But you're here instead."
Kael froze. Her words settled with the weight of a verdict.
If the Choir was made of climbers drawn to the Spire, Marcus Reed's voice belonged there. He had died on Floor Fifty long ago. His survival violated everything they knew about the Choir. That explained the shock on Taryn and Lysara's faces when they had found him: not relief, but the sight of a ghost that had walked back into the room and refused to dissolve.
The synchronization from the barrier still moved through him. Kael's memories remained, including Chicago, the rain, and his sister, but the body no longer felt borrowed. The name Marcus Reed belonged to the body at last. It was the name this flesh could answer to.
He exhaled slowly. "I am Marcus Reed."
The sigil flared bright cyan. The light sharpened, protesting Kael's disappearance, then steadied brighter than before. The brutalist wall ahead grew lighter. Its resistance gave way like a door yielding to pressure. Internal friction vanished. The left-handed body answered as his own.
Lysara stepped forward, her starry skin catching the dim light as she leaned on her staff. Violet rifts flickered in her eyes.
"The Choir isn't the only thing here that speaks," she said. "There's another. It speaks in riddles. Climbers call it the Keeper of Echoes."
Marcus considered the name. His investigative mind marked the Keeper as a major threat. The Spire housed a being beyond the Choir, something larger and more aware than he had imagined. He had to release Kael and the past that shaped him. Only then could he take up the role this body demanded.
Lysara looked up into the open dark where the plaza's ceiling should have been. "I've known climbers who made it to the twentieth floor, some even to the fiftieth, and none of them ever saw its face. It only comes as a whisper."
She aimed her staff at a huge black pillar rising from the mist. Blue runes glowed along its height, lighting the broken plaza and the way ahead.
As they drew closer, the Choir's melody stopped. The silence swallowed the soft clink of Taryn's vials. Then a sharp whisper moved through the air, rippling across the ink-dark floor beneath their boots.
The voice carried none of the Choir's layered grief. It was singular, ancient, and heavy with absolute judgment. Runes along the pillar shone brightly. The Keeper of Echoes spoke, and the words carried through the harsh ruins:
"Light fractures, stars fall."