A heavy, oppressive silence fell over the altar.

Mirela, standing a few feet away, gasped. "Master! You can’t go up there! If it is a trap designed to kill you, we should just leave! We can find another way to awaken your class!"

Klaus looked at Mirela, and then he looked down at Anya. He didn’t look scared. He just let out a tired, cynical sigh.

"We can’t leave, Mirela," Klaus stated bluntly, stating the obvious reality of their situation.

He gestured toward the massive dark iron doors leading back outside.

"The purple spatial barrier surrounding this tower slammed shut the exact second we crossed the threshold," Klaus explained, his tactical mind having already analyzed their escape routes. "It’s a permanent lock. There is no control mechanism outside, and there is no magical lever down here. We are soft-locked in this zone."

Klaus pulled his wrist gently out of Anya’s grip.

"It’s a rigged game," Klaus said, his dark eyes staring up at the towering obsidian pillars. "The Second King trapped the awakening item at the top of the tower, and he locked the front door behind us. We either beat his trial and claim the legacy, or we stay trapped inside this dome until we starve to death."

The reality of their situation sank in. The Endless Tower wasn’t a sanctuary; it was a massive, inescapable prison cell.

The heavy, suffocating tension in the air was palpable. Klaus was exhausted, running on fumes and manic adrenaline, staring down the barrel of a rigged boss fight designed by a 300-year-old tyrant.

Mirela couldn’t stand the heavy atmosphere. She was just a maid, a demi-human girl from a ruined village, but she wanted to be useful. Her domestic survival instincts kicked into overdrive.

"Well... if we are going to be here for a while, we need to prepare," Mirela announced, breaking the grim silence with forced, practical optimism.

She pointed her staff toward the dark iron doors.

"Master, the Armored Dire-Bear that died pulling the Caravan... its body is still out there on the black stone," Mirela suggested rapidly. "That is tons of high-quality, insulated meat. We can’t let it go to waste. If we drag the carcass inside the tower, we can butcher it. We can use the splintered wood from the carriage wreckage to build a fire and set up a proper, warm camp right here on the ground floor."

It was a brilliant, practical suggestion. It gave them a project, a way to anchor themselves to survival instead of dwelling on the impending death trap.

Klaus looked at Mirela. His dark eyes softened slightly, recognizing the effort she was making to keep the party functional.

"Good idea," Klaus agreed smoothly. "You two head outside to the Caravan. Start gathering the heavy supplies, the food crates, and the wood. Bring it to the front doors. I will stay in here and... prepare the area for the camp."

Mirela smiled brightly, relieved that she could contribute. "Yes, Master! Come on, Anya. I will show you the Caravan!"

Mirela held her hand out.

Anya didn’t move immediately. The six-year-old Shinigami looked up at Klaus. Her striking purple eyes peered directly through the heavy, cynical walls of his mind, reading his surface thoughts with absolute clarity.

She knew he was lying.

Anya let out a long, heavy sigh that sounded incredibly out of place coming from a child. It was the sigh of a weary, ancient soul dealing with a stubborn mortal. But she didn’t argue. She knew he had made up his mind, and she knew there was no stopping the Soul King once his path was set.

Anya reached out, taking Mirela’s hand.

"Okay," Anya said quietly.

She let Mirela lead her down the massive stone steps of the altar, walking across the sprawling obsidian floor toward the dark iron doors.

As they stepped out of the tower and back onto the dead, silent ground of the sanctuary, Mirela squeezed the little girl’s hand gently, trying to act like a comforting older sister.

"Are you still cold, Anya?" Mirela asked warmly, looking down at the child bundled in the blue tunic and scarf. "We have some sweet bread hidden in the back of the Caravan. I can heat it up for you while we gather the wood."

Anya stopped walking.

She stood a few dozen yards away from the tower entrance. She didn’t look at the Snow Caravan, and she didn’t answer the question about the sweet bread. She turned her head, looking back over her shoulder at the massive, yawning void of the dark iron doors.

"Father is not preparing the camp," Anya stated bluntly, her purple eyes glowing faintly in the dim light. "Father is going upstairs."

Mirela froze, her blood turning to ice. She spun around, staring back into the dark interior of the cavernous hall.

"Master!" Mirela screamed, dropping Anya’s hand and sprinting back toward the doors.

But she was too late.

Inside the Endless Tower, Klaus hadn’t wasted a single second.

The exact moment Mirela and Anya had stepped out of the hall, Klaus had completely dropped the casual, domestic facade. He didn’t want them anywhere near the crossfire of whatever was waiting at the top of the tower, and he absolutely refused to let them watch him die if the trap sprang shut.

He was going to solo the boss room.

Klaus drew his iron sword. He didn’t conserve his energy. He tapped directly into the deepest, most volatile reserves of his core. He channeled maximum-output elemental wind magic into his boots, reinforcing the spell with a thick, heavy layer of pure white Soul Mana.

He bolted toward the back of the cavernous hall, aiming for the massive, monolithic spiral staircase carved directly into the inner wall of the obsidian tower.

Klaus hit the first step at a full sprint.

He didn’t run up the stairs; he exploded upward.

BOOM!

The sheer, concussive force of his launch generated a massive sonic shockwave that rippled through the cavernous hall, shattering the pale blue flames burning in the pillars.

Klaus moved with terrifying, blinding speed. His boots cracked the ancient black stone with every single step. He ascended the spiral staircase so fast that the world around him turned into a dizzying, continuous blur of dark obsidian.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The sonic booms echoed endlessly up the massive shaft of the tower, sounding like rhythmic cannon fire.

He climbed higher and higher, pushing his physical body to the absolute breaking point. His lungs burned, his muscles screamed in protest, but the Beast’s Vitality and the raw power of the Soul Mana kept him accelerating.

He knew the tower was miles high. He expected the climb to take hours.

But the Endless Tower was built on the magic of the Old Gods. As Klaus poured more and more Soul Mana into his ascent, the very fabric of space inside the stairwell began to violently distort and bend around his body.

The endless, spiraling stairs suddenly warped, folding inward on themselves. The distance collapsed.

Without warning, the dark, continuous curve of the obsidian wall abruptly ended.

Directly in front of him, resting on a wide, flat landing, was a set of massive, wide-open double doors.

The doors weren’t made of iron or obsidian. They were made of pure, blinding white light. The aura bleeding out of the open threshold reeked of impossibly dense suffocating, ancient Soul Mana.

It was a pressure so heavy it felt like swimming through wet concrete.

This was it... The pinnacle... The trap of the Second King!

Klaus didn’t slow down. He didn’t pause to catch his breath or drink a potion. His dark eyes locked onto the blinding light.

He tightened his grip on his sword, gritted his teeth, and charged straight through the threshold into the trial at full speed.

He crossed the boundary...

The crossing of the threshold was supposed to be the climax of the dungeon.

Klaus had hit the massive, blindingly bright double doors at the apex of his physical and magical acceleration.

He had been moving so fast that sonic booms had rhythmically shattered the air behind him, tearing through the obsidian stairwell with the destructive force of artillery shells.

His sword was drawn and his knuckles were white.

His entire body was flooded with a suffocatingly dense, brilliant layer of raw Soul Mana, ready to completely obliterate whatever monstrosity the Second King had left behind to guard his legacy.

He breached the light, bracing his muscles for the inevitable, earth-shattering collision but the impact never came.

There was no boss monster waiting to ambush him... There was no grand tyrannical Second King sitting on a throne of bone...

The transition was violent, but not physical.

The exact millisecond Klaus crossed the boundary, the deafening, roaring sonic booms of his ascent vanished.

More terrifyingly, the heavy oceanic weight of his Soul Mana was instantly, cleanly severed from his consciousness.

The elemental wind magic pulsing in his legs died. His Beast’s Vitality... his Frostblood Aura... his Rapid Cellular Mend... His mana too... they were all stripped away, leaving him feeling impossibly hollow, light and horrifyingly fragile.

He stumbled forward with his boots hitting a surface that made absolutely no sound.

Klaus froze, his sword raised in a high guard as his dark eyes frantically scanned the environment.

He was standing in a void of endless absolute white.

There were no shadows... There was no horizon line to separate the ground from the sky... It was a sensory deprivation chamber of pure luminescence that stretched out into infinity.

"Show yourself!" Klaus yelled, turning in a circle.

His voice didn’t echo.

The sound simply died the second it left his lips, swallowed by the sheer emptiness of the room.

He waited for an attack... He waited for a trap to spring, for spatial lasers to rain down, or for an army of corrupted guardians to materialize...

Nothing happened then, the absolute whiteness directly in front of him began to tremble.

It didn’t shatter like glass or tear like fabric.

It rippled, acting like a pool of thick, liquid mercury being disturbed by a dropped pebble. The viscous white substance slowly bulged outward, pooling together and solidifying into a massive, floor-to-ceiling mirror.

Klaus narrowed his eyes, tightening his grip on his iron sword. He stared into the glass, expecting to see the reflection of his current self... a blood-stained, battle-hardened killer wearing dark combat clothes with his hands coated in the gore of an elite noble camp but the mirror didn’t reflect the monster he had become.

Staring back at him from the other side of the glass was a child...

Klaus’s breath caught in his throat. His grip on his iron sword faltered with the tip of the blade slowly dropping toward the invisible floor.

The boy in the mirror was tiny. He was no older than five.

He was wearing slightly oversized, faded cartoon pajamas. His dark hair was messy, sticking up in cowlicks, and he was clutching a cheap plastic toy sword in his small, chubby hand.

It was him.

It was Klaus, back on Earth... years before anything actually. It was the version of himself that still believed the world was a good place.

Klaus stared at the boy. For a fleeting second, a strange, nostalgic warmth tried to bloom in his chest but then, the five-year-old’s expression changed.

The innocent child didn’t smile at his older self. The boy didn’t look at the tall, powerful swordsman with awe or admiration...

The five-year-old looked at the current Klaus with disgust.

It wasn’t the petty annoyance of a child.

It was a look of profound heartbreaking disappointment.

The boy’s dark eyes seemed to pierce right through the armor... the stats... and the persona.

The child saw exactly what he was destined to grow up into: a lonely, broken boy who had let his parents die, who had pushed everyone away, and who had let his only friend step into traffic because he was too annoyed to pay attention.

"You let them die," a voice echoed, though the boy’s lips didn’t move.

It was Klaus’s own internal voice echoing from the deepest darkest vault of his subconscious. "You let her die. You failed."

"No..." Klaus whispered, taking a stumbling step backward.

His iron sword slipped from his numb fingers. CLATTER!

The psychological blow hit harder than any physical strike he had ever taken.

It bypassed his defenses and struck directly at the foundational core of his psyche. The memories of Artemis Online... the Gacha system... the Endless Tower... Mirela... Zephyra... Anya... the bloodshed... everything began to violently fray at the edges.

The sheer gravity of his Earthly failures rose up like a tidal wave, drowning out his current reality.

A deep agonizing seed of pure regret blossomed in the center of Klaus’s chest. It was a heavy weight which was a phantom pain that stole the oxygen from his lungs.

"I’m sorry," Klaus choked out, his vision blurring with hot tears he hadn’t shed in years. "I just... I didn’t know what to do. I wish I could go back. I wish I could fix it."

The regret physically rippled outward from his body as a wave of dark energy that crashed against the surface of the mirror.

CRACK!

A massive fissure spider-webbed across the glass. The five-year-old’s disgusted face fractured into a dozen jagged pieces.

SHATTER!

The white mirror exploded outward in a shower of brilliant shards.

The absolute whiteness of the void collapsed, instantly consumed by a rushing, violent tide of pure darkness.

Klaus felt his consciousness completely unravel, his identity as the "Soul King" fading into absolute nothingness as the darkness swallowed him whole.

The darkness didn’t last. It was immediately, violently eradicated by a blinding, searing orange light.

Data flooded Klaus’s brain with the force of a physical blow. The silence of the white room was replaced by a deafening terrifying roar.

The air grew impossibly, blisteringly hot, sucking the moisture from his eyes and scorching the inside of his nostrils.

Klaus gasped, inhaling a thick, toxic lungful of black smoke.

He dropped to his hands and knees, coughing violently. He was kneeling on a cheap faded carpet that was rapidly curling and melting from extreme heat.

He looked around with his dark eyes stinging and watering.

He was in the small, cramped living room of his childhood home back on Earth. The floral wallpaper was peeling off in burning strips.

The ceiling beams above him were groaning under the immense stress with the wood popping and cracking as a raging uncontrollable inferno consumed the house.

Klaus looked down at his hands... They were tiny... He was wearing faded cartoon pajamas.

He was five years old again!

’What... what is this?’ Klaus thought with his young mind racing, completely devoid of any memories of swords or systems. ’Did I... did I go back?’

He had read light novels and comics before.

He knew the concept... Regression.

A second chance granted by some divine entity or the universe itself to fix the greatest mistakes of a broken life.

He had begged for a second chance just seconds ago in the dark, and now... he was here.

He was back at the very beginning!

"Klaus!" a frantic terrified voice screamed over the roar of the fire.

Klaus snapped his head up.

Emerging from the thick choking black smoke was a woman. She was young, her face smeared with dark soot, her eyes wide with panic.

She was coughing violently, using a wet dishtowel to cover her mouth, but she didn’t run for the front door. She ran directly through a wall of flames, ignoring the blistering burns on her arms, and threw herself onto her knees beside him.

It was his mother.

Klaus’s tiny heart physically ached. It was a sharp tearing pain since he hadn’t seen her face in over a decade.

"I’ve got you! Mommy’s got you!" she sobbed with her hands frantically grabbing his small shoulders.

She hauled him off the floor, her surprising strength born entirely from adrenaline.

She turned toward the living room window. The glass was already shattered from the intense heat. Outside, the night air was cool and dark which was a stark contrast to the hellish oven of the living room.

Klaus knew exactly what was about to happen.

In his original past, the front and back doors had been completely blocked by collapsed rubble.

In a final, desperate act of sacrifice, his mother had carried him to this very window. She had thrown him out onto the soft grass of the front lawn, ensuring his survival, just seconds before the ceiling caved in and trapped her inside.

He had sat on the cold grass, crying, listening to her scream as she burned alive and the worst part, the part that had haunted him forever, was what the firefighters had told his father later.

They had discovered a small, hidden cellar door near the kitchen pantry. The path had been completely clear of fire.

If they had just known it was there, if they had just run to the kitchen instead of the window, they both would have survived...

His mother hoisted him up, preparing to toss him through the shattered window frame but this time, Klaus possessed the answer to the puzzle that had destroyed his life. He was a regressor.

He could fix this.

"No!" Klaus yelled, his small, high-pitched voice cutting through the roar of the flames.

He fought against her grip, squirming violently until she was forced to lower him back to the carpet.

"Klaus, we have to go! The roof is falling!" his mother screamed, her eyes wild with terror as a burning wooden beam crashed onto the sofa nearby, sending a shower of sparks over them.

"Mom, this way!" Klaus shouted, grabbing her soot-stained hand with his tiny fingers.

He didn’t give her a chance to argue. Using every ounce of leverage his small body possessed, he pulled her away from the window.

He led her directly through the smoke-filled hallway, ducking low under the toxic black clouds banking against the ceiling.

They reached the kitchen... The linoleum floor was melting, and the cabinets were fully engulfed in orange fire.

"Klaus, the back door is blocked!" she cried out, trying to pull him back toward the living room.

"Trust me!" he yelled.

He dragged her past the burning island counter, heading straight for the small, unassuming pantry door in the corner.

The fire hadn’t reached it yet. Klaus kicked the door open with his small foot. Inside, buried under a few fallen boxes of cereal, was the heavy wooden handle of the cellar hatch.

His mother gasped, realizing what he was aiming for. She dropped to her knees, grabbed the heavy iron ring, and yanked the hatch open as a rush of cool, stale air blew upward.

They scrambled down the wooden steps into the dark cellar, shutting the heavy hatch right as the kitchen ceiling above them collapsed with a deafening terrifying roar.