When Arin opened his eyes, he was falling.
Not through air, not through time — but through everything. Fragments of the tower spun around him like debris in a storm: stone, steel, data, memory, all unbound and alive. The light here had no color, yet it burned his eyes. The air had no sound, yet it roared in his bones.
Tera's voice flickered through static.
"Arin! You're between layers — the system can't stabilize this zone!"
He twisted mid-fall, trying to find footing, but there was none. Then, with a sound like a forge's heartbeat, something solid caught him.
A platform formed beneath his feet — floating, circular, shimmering like oil on water. All around him stretched a vast emptiness where reality itself bent inward. Threads of blue and gold crisscrossed the void, pulsing like veins through a living thing.
"This isn't one of her levels," Arin said, breath ragged.
"No," Tera answered softly. "It's what happens when creation and correction overlap. You broke the tower's logic."
"Feels like it's breaking me too."
Before he could move, a ripple spread across the air. The light condensed, forming shapes — half-built structures, weapons without edges, constructs without faces. They hovered silently, flickering between forms as if trying to remember what they were supposed to be.
One of them turned toward him.
Its outline shifted rapidly: man, woman, child, flame, blade — never one for more than a heartbeat. When it spoke, its voice carried dozens of tones layered together.
"We are the Unfinished."
Arin froze. "What… are you?"
"Echoes discarded by both forges. Fragments that failed to fit the pattern."
Tera's sensors crackled. "Arin, these are the anomalies I detected. Pieces of the tower that neither you nor Seren chose to save."
Arin looked around — there were hundreds of them, drifting like ghosts, half-forgotten dreams stitched together from memory and code. Some reached toward him, not in hostility, but longing.
"We remember warmth," they whispered. "We remember pain. We remember both. And now, we burn without name."
He clenched his fists. "You shouldn't exist like this."
"Neither should your world," the voices answered.
Before he could reply, the void convulsed. A pulse of raw energy surged through the plane, making the constructs scream. The blue threads turned white-hot; the gold ones blackened like burnt parchment. The two colors twisted together violently — order and chaos colliding.
Tera's voice cut in: "The tower's collapsing into itself! If you don't anchor here, both you and the anomalies will be erased!"
"Anchor how?"
"The forge! Every layer needs one! Build something — anything!"
Arin staggered toward the center of the platform. The floor rippled, responding to his intent. His hammer appeared in his hand, heavier than ever, its glow flickering like a dying ember. Around him, the Unfinished drifted closer, their whispers turning into song — not words, but a chorus of broken rhythms.
He set his stance and slammed the hammer down.
The void screamed.
Sparks erupted — not from metal, but from memory. Fragments of everything he'd ever made swirled around him: the first blade he'd forged as a child, the pendant Seren had once given him, even the failed prototypes they'd thrown away.
Each piece melted into light and joined his work.
The forge took shape — unstable, uneven, yet alive.
It wasn't built from perfection. It was built from everything incomplete.
The Unfinished watched, their forms flickering brighter. Some reached out, letting parts of themselves flow into the metal. Others simply sang. The forge began to pulse, beating like a heart again — a real one this time.
Tera's voice softened, almost reverent. "You're creating a bridge…"
The realization struck him: "Between both worlds."
Yes. Between the rigid perfection Seren had built and the chaotic freedom he represented. A middle ground — a forge that could contain both pain and peace without consuming either.
But the tower didn't want balance.
The light above shattered, and a new figure descended — vast, faceless, wrapped in ribbons of data and flame. Its body flickered with Seren's golden hue and Arin's blue resonance intertwined, unstable and furious.
[System Override Entity Manifested — "The Mediator"]
[Purpose: Stabilize by Elimination.]
It landed like a falling star, cracking the platform in half.
Tera screamed, "It's the tower's self-defense system! It's trying to erase the contradiction!"
The Mediator raised its blade — a weapon forged of both their signatures, white fire wrapped in blue shadow — and swung.
Arin barely blocked. The impact sent him skidding back, cracks spiderwebbing beneath his feet. The Unfinished scattered, their voices crying out like wind.
"You want to destroy me?" Arin shouted. "Then you'll have to erase the forge too!"
He brought the hammer down again.
The forge flared.
The Unfinished surged forward, wrapping around him, lending fragments of themselves to his strength.
Their voices merged into one:
"Forge the bridge. Remember the flame."
Arin roared, channeling everything — his grief, his defiance, his hope — into a single strike.
Hammer met blade.
The explosion tore through the void.
Light and shadow spiraled together, twisting until neither could be told apart. The Mediator screamed, its form unraveling. The forge shattered — but its ember, the same one he'd carried from the Floor of Origins, floated upward, glowing fiercely against the collapsing dark.
Arin fell to one knee, breath shallow, eyes fixed on the ember.
"Did it work?" he asked.
Tera's voice was faint, static-wrapped. "You didn't destroy it… you changed it. The tower is no longer one or the other. It's both."
He looked around. The void was gone. The fragments had settled into a horizon — half gold, half blue. Above, a single light pulsed at the top of the unseen tower.
Seren's forge.
He tightened his grip on the hammer. "Then the path's open."
Tera floated beside him, damaged but steady. "You understand what that means, don't you?"
"Yeah," he said, eyes burning with quiet fire. "No more tests. No more echoes. Next time, it's her."
He took a step forward. The new world trembled, forming a staircase of alternating colors beneath his feet — gold and blue, perfection and imperfection intertwined.
The climb began again.
And above, for the first time, Seren looked down from her forge and felt something crack.