Whatever went up, has to eventually come down. Kael was in the process of experiencing that.

The horizon he’d been thrown into wasn’t some clean cinematic arc. It was a violent, gut-twisting launch that stole the ground out from under him and then stole time right after.

For a few heartbeats, there had been that stupid, weightless float, just long enough for his brain to whisper this can’t be real, and then gravity remembered him.

Now it was the opposite. Not floating. Not falling. Plummeting.

Wind tore past his ears so hard it turned into a constant roar, like the world itself was screaming. His stomach lagged behind his spine.

His arms flailed once, then locked in tight without him deciding it, his body trying to make itself smaller in the air like that would bargain with physics.

Terminal velocity, terminal here meant, he’ll become a splatter of blood once he meets the dirt at this speed. There was no slowing this down. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

His mind tried to do math, distance, height, angle, time, then immediately failed because numbers were useless when the answer was "you’re dead." His lungs dragged in air too fast, too thin, too sharp. The taste of iron lingered from the earlier coughing, but even that got drowned by adrenaline so raw it felt like it had teeth.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit!" He could only curse as he braced for impact.

He braced out of instinct more than logic. There was no correct posture for turning into paste. Still, he tried, tucking his chin, pulling his arms in, twisting his body like he could cheat the angle and hit something softer than stone or the rapidly approaching forest.

His eyes watered from the wind and from the sheer stupidity of the situation. Of all the ways he expected to die in this tower, stabbed, burned, eaten, getting thrown like a rock by an old man with a smile wasn’t even on the list.

Even his body forgot to cough and act like it was failing from the sudden realization that death is far faster than one would care to expect.

The pain in his chest, the burning in his lungs, the pressure building behind his ribs, gone. Not healed. Just silenced by something more immediate. For a moment, he wasn’t a dying man. He was a falling object, and his body’s only priority was impact.

The blur of dirt roads gave way to the outskirts of the city; he had long flown past it and was halfway toward a dark smear of a tree line. Leaves and branches flashed closer, too close, too fast. He couldn’t even tell if they were real trees or some tower-grown imitation that looked right from a distance and lied up close.

Just as he reached a tree line where he was sure that the branches would not be enough to break his fall, The Fist King appeared right on top of one of the branches.

No warning. No build-up. No "presence" ripple, no sound, no shift. One second, there was empty space where the branch was... and the next second, there was a massive man perched on it like he belonged there.

Kael could have sworn the bastard was standing on a leaf atop a twig on a tree, which was incredulous for someone his size.

It wasn’t just incredulous, it was insulting. The branch didn’t bow. The leaf didn’t fold. The twig didn’t even tremble. It was like the Fist King’s weight had asked permission from the world and the world had said yes.

Kael’s brain tried to process how, center of gravity, distribution, foot placement, then immediately gave up. There wasn’t time for explanations. There was only the ground swallowing him in a blink.

"Can’t go down yet," was the last thing he heard from the Fist King who grabbed and threw Kael again.

The grab wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t cruel either. It was efficient, fingers like iron hooks catching Kael mid-fall as if he’d been dropping at walking speed instead of screaming toward death. For a fraction of a second, Kael’s momentum fought the grip, pulling his shoulder tight enough that he thought it would pop.

Then that force got redirected.

Not absorbed. Not slowed. Redirected, like the Fist King had just decided gravity was optional today.

"FUUAAAA!" another curse, and Kael went flying again...

This time, the world tilted sideways. Trees became a green-black blur. Sky became a smear. His guts tried to climb into his throat. The wind slapped the sound out of him, leaving only that animal noise, ripped straight from panic and altitude. The pressure in his chest flared again for half a heartbeat, then the air stole it away as he spun.

He didn’t even get to be grateful for not dying. The next fall was already waiting.

****

"The fuck was that, back then?" Iori asked.

He didn’t ask it like a casual question. He asked it like a man grinding his teeth down to the root, still tasting humiliation and blood from the first floor. The memory of that street, that basilisk, that bastard with the gauntlets, none of it sat right in him.

The leader of the group, the senior Sun Clan member, stopped walking.

They were away from the shop district now, deeper in Sun Clan territory, where the streets widened, and the buildings looked less like a market and more like a fortress’s veins. The noise of the city dulled behind stone and distance. Even so, the senior paused like the question had weight, like the wrong answer could draw it back.

He looked up and sighed, "You’re still new, you don’t know a lot about this tower..." he turned to Iori. "I respect your experience, you’re one of the Hounds of the Sun Clan, but that man..." The senior member sighed, "Not even Mathew can easily aggravate him."

The way he said Mathew’s name wasn’t praise. It was a measuring stick. A warning wrapped in respect and resentment.

"That strong?" Iori asked.

His tone tried to stay flat. It didn’t succeed. There was something raw under it, part disbelief, part irritation that the world had the audacity to contain someone stronger than what Iori thought was "strong."

"No, that fucked up in the head. He killed an entire clan just because one of their members bumped into him."

The statement landed like a brick. Not because it sounded impossible, this tower was full of impossible things, but because it sounded casual. Like that kind of massacre was a footnote.

"That’s an overreaction..."

Iori said it automatically, like his mouth hadn’t checked with his brain first. Even he knew how weak it sounded the second it left him.

"That’s pretty normal from otherworlders."

The senior didn’t smile. He didn’t even look amused. He said it like it was weather. Like you didn’t argue with storms.

"Wait, you mean, he’s not from Earth? Is that a thing here? Other world?"

The question made a few of the older members shift. Some looked away.

"Worlds, where do you think the monsters come from? Sure as shit Goblins weren’t people of Earth. You should have realized it by then. This tower, links many worlds together... and that guy comes from a world... I don’t know, they call it Murim. Nasty place. Dangerous one too"