As Minho crossed over the threshold of the doorway, his heart pounded in his chest. The air around him was cold and still. The familiar weight of the Tower's presence seemed heavier now. The walls before him were pure, flawless white crystals that stretched to the ceiling, their surfaces aglow with an almost ethereal light. Delicate but imposing, they were as if carved with a purpose, each holding secrets within its translucent surface.
The room felt vast, much too vast for a single corridor. Still, it was empty except for the innumerable crystals. Their pure white surfaces shimmered, reflecting light in strange, almost hypnotic patterns.
Minho stepped forward cautiously, and his boots rung soft echoes off the floor, smooth as crystal. He ran his cold fingers along the closest crystal with no pain going through him yet, but one would say very much alive-thriving-like in a completely different way to those pulsing walls he found himself facing all along. "No grotesque twisting of flesh, no oppressively wrong feelings.".
Yet, in that movement, something in the air shifted. The stillness was replaced by the faintest hum, subtle resonance that seemed to emanate from the very walls of the room. Minho paused. His senses felt heightened. For some reason he couldn't describe, this room unnerved him.
He stepped further into the room.
*Click.*
It was a faint sound, yet clear. Almost as if some sort of switch had been flipped. The air thickened and then a soft glow flared to life before him, emanating from one of the crystals.
Minho watched as the surface of the crystal began to ripple, its once-still surface bending like some sort of distorted mirror. And then, an image began to take shape within it-an image both alien and yet utterly familiar.
Inside the crystal, there was the figure of a man; he was tall, with dark hair, in the middle of what basically was a cavernous chamber. His body coiled into tense readiness, his hands wrapping on the hilt of the sword, his eyes narrowed facing some foe not seen. Sweat beaded down his forehead as his muscles tensed, ready for a strike.
Minho leaned in closer, his eyes scanning across the figure. He knew exactly what this was: the crystal was showing him another Raider's trial-the battle in real-time. This figure wasn't just any Raider; he was a competitor, someone making his way up the Tower just like Minho was, fighting through his trials on some other floor.
He turned to the other crystal, attracted by the soft glow that had lit up its surface. As his hand touched the edge, the image inside flickered back to life.
This time, it was a woman-young, with short-cropped hair, an air of confidence about her. She stood in a wide arena-like area, her arms up in ready preparation. Around her, monstrosities of creatures, distorted and grotesque in shape. Yet there was something different in the way she moved. The movements were fluid, practiced. Every strike, every dodge, seemed premeditated, almost as if she had fought such creations a thousand times.
The hum in the air thickened and came from everywhere around him. The crystals were no longer reflections but windows into the lives of other Raiders-their struggles, victories, and omissions of weakness. The floor of the Tower was not a simple battlefield for Minho; it was a battlefield for all, or for anyone who had stepped into these walls.
Minho moved around the crystals and watched as a few more formed. A young man, grim-faced, tussling with a labyrinth of twisting vines as he fought on. An older woman, face grizzled and scarred, felled a towering beast with a single heavy axe fall. A boy, barely a lot older than Minho himself, with leaping fire flying from his outstretched palms as he squared off against several flying creatures:.
It was a weird thing, seeing these warriors, these competitors, these Raiders-each of them with their own story, their own struggle, each of them seeking strength in the Tower.
But it was the motives behind those fights that interested Minho. No, it was the *interconnectedness* of them all: each crystal, each window, each glimpse into the life of another Raider-it felt as though they were all interlinked. Each one fighting his own battles, but all of them bound by the same urge: to conquer the Tower.
Minho stepped back, eyes wide, as the hum in the air grew louder, like the walls alive with the memories of each Raider that had ever ascended these floors.
But then, just as suddenly, it stopped.
The crystals flickered and went dim, the images fading. There was silence again, stillness in the room.
Minho felt it all settle over him like a weight: The Tower was a place not just of trials and monsters but one of *witnessing*-a place that itself was going to seem to *watch* every moment, every single raider and climber's tiniest instant of struggle.
The stillness in the room took on another kind of feel, heavier. The white crystals that surrounded him were no longer inert; they were alive with a purpose, their translucent surfaces reflecting something greater than any one man could know.
Minho turned and walked toward the center of the room as his mind reeled with the implications of all he had just seen: the others, their fights, their moments of triumph, their failures. And somewhere among them, his place in this endless climb.
*Was this the real gift of the Tower? Minho wondered.
Not the power, but not even the skills, just the very *essence* of strength-shared, witnessed, and perhaps even *sacrificed*.
Minho was silent for a moment. He had been healed. He had been rewarded. But why? And what did the Tower want from him in return? Was he to be just another face in the crowd, just another competitor, or was his journey something more?
He looked toward the far end of the room, to a narrow passageway that invited entrance. The walls there, unlike the crystals, were dark-like the Tower itself had turned its gaze away for a moment.
Minho moved toward it, a sense of purpose filling him. There was no more time to wonder.
He had seen the others. But he wasn't through.
The Tower was waiting.
And Minho would not be an observer.