High School Klaus flinched, falling backward onto his hands.

He stared up at the older battle-scarred man standing above him in utter, paralyzing shock.

He saw his own face, aged by trauma, hardened by a life he hadn’t yet lived, staring back at him with desperation.

"Soul... King?" High School Klaus stammered with the words feeling foreign and heavy on his tongue.

The trance was broken, but his teenage mind simply couldn’t process the sheer impossibility of the situation.

Fake Melanie didn’t look surprised by the sudden, violent intrusion. She didn’t flinch at the iron sword pointed at her face.

She slowly stood up from the sidewalk.

The sweet, obsessive high school girlfriend act dropped entirely, shedding like a snake’s dead skin.

Her posture straightened, projecting an aura of overwhelming arrogance.

She let out a long theatrical sigh.

Her glowing white eyes shifted away from the terrified teenager on the ground, locking onto the furious, panting form of the Older Klaus.

"Well... the fun is ruined," the Second King said. "You have a remarkably stubborn will to survive, interloper. Most hosts surrender to the euphoria by the second memory... You managed to force your consciousness through the barrier..."

"I’m not going to let you digest my soul in a fake world," the Older Klaus snarled, raising his sword into a high guard.

He tried to tap into his Soul Mana, to flood the street with the crushing white gravity of his power, but he felt nothing.

His connection to the system was completely severed here so he was fighting on pure physical instinct.

The Second King ignored his threat. She looked back down at the younger, trembling Klaus on the pavement.

"You broke the immersion, but the rules of the trial remain absolute," the Second King declared, laying out the sinister, ultimate offer of the Endless Tower.

She stepped closer to the teenager, spreading her arms wide.

"Don’t forget my offer, Klaus," she whispered, her voice resonating with terrifying temptation. "You can live here eternally... You don’t have to go back to the cold. You don’t have to fight, or deal with betrayals, or hide behind a wall of apathy. All you need to do is pay the toll."

She raised four fingers.

"Die four times," the Second King commanded softly. "Die four times in the real world, surrender your lifeforce to my vessel, and this world... a world where your Mother, your Father, and Melanie have been saved... will be your permanent, unbroken paradise."

It was the ultimate devil’s bargain.

It was a Lotus-Eater Machine designed to slowly, methodically drain the host’s actual lifespan while keeping their mind perfectly sedated in a matrix of their own fulfilled desires.

High School Klaus stared at her with his breathing shallow. The temptation was still there, burning like a fever in his chest.

Four deaths... Four brief moments of pain, and he could have his family back forever...

"I’ll kill you before you take a single year from my life!" the Older Klaus roared.

He didn’t wait for his younger self to answer and he didn’t hesitate.

Older Klaus lunged forward, throwing his entire body weight into a desperate, sprinting charge.

He raised his iron sword, aiming to drive the metal blade directly through the glowing white eyes of the tyrannical god but the Second King didn’t raise a hand to defend herself.

She didn’t even look at him, instead she just offered a cold, mocking smile.

The simulation was her domain. It reacted defensively to the intrusion of the host’s true consciousness.

As Older Klaus closed the distance, raising his sword for the killing blow, the ambient sound of the street returned in a single deafening instant.

HOOOOOONK!

The blaring, earth-shattering sound of a massive air horn ripped through the air, vibrating the concrete beneath their feet.

Older Klaus only had a fraction of a millisecond to turn his head.

Materializing out of absolutely thin air, completely ignoring the laws of physics and spatial distance, was a massive, ten-ton commercial cargo truck.

It was the ultimate weaponized trope of regression fiction, summoned by the system to enforce the lethal penalty of the trial.

The massive wall of rusted steel and chrome grill was moving at over seventy miles an hour.

"No!" High School Klaus screamed.

CRUNCH!

The impact was immediate, catastrophic, and completely unavoidable.

The massive grill of the truck plowed directly into the Older Klaus.

The sheer force shattered his ribs instantly, crushing his lungs and snapping his spine in half.

He didn’t even have time to scream.

His body was violently launched backward, turning into a broken, mangled ragdoll as he was thrown fifty feet down the suburban street.

The exact second his body hit the asphalt, the entire world shattered into a blinding explosion of pure, agonizing white.

[Your Trial Is Over!]

The harsh, blood-red text materialized in the center of the endless white void, glaring with unforgiving, mechanical indifference.

[You have Failed.]

[Penalty: 25% of your Lifeforce has been gifted to ???]

Meanwhile, in the waking world of the Endless Tower, the silence of the massive obsidian stairwell was broken by the frantic, echoing sounds of desperate footfalls.

Mirela was pushing her body to the absolute limit.

The goat-eared girl was sprinting up the colossal, spiraling staircase, her breath coming in sharp, ragged gasps.

Her lungs burned, and her thighs screamed in agony with every step she took.

She wasn’t an A-rank warrior like Taula... She didn’t have passive stamina buffs or inhuman speed... She was just a maid, driven entirely by unconditional terror for the man who she loved.

She gripped her moon-crystal staff tightly in one hand, while her other hand held firmly onto the small, pale fingers of Anya.

The six-year-old Shinigami wasn’t panting. She moved with effortless supernatural grace, easily keeping pace with the frantic teenager.

"Master!" Mirela screamed into the dark expanse above her, praying he would answer.

There was no response as the sonic booms of his ascent had faded long ago.

They rounded the final, massive curve of the obsidian stairwell. The steps leveled out, leading onto a wide, flat landing made of the same polished black stone as the ground floor.

At the very end of the long corridor, looming like a beacon in the darkness, was a set of massive, wide-open double doors.

They weren’t made of iron or wood... They were composed of pure, blinding white light.

The aura bleeding out of the open threshold reeked of an impossibly dense ancient Soul Mana that made the air feel incredibly heavy.

"We found it!" Mirela cried out in relief, pushing her burning legs to run faster.

She aimed straight for the light, fully intending to charge into the room to help him fight whatever was inside.

Anya suddenly yanked her hand back, breaking Mirela’s grip, and dug her small bare feet into the obsidian floor.

"Stop!" Anya yelled, her striking purple eyes wide with alarm. She pointed a trembling finger toward the glowing threshold. "Do not cross the boundary! That is the testing roo—"

BOOM!

A violent, invisible shockwave of displaced atmospheric pressure suddenly erupted from the open doors.

The force of the blast hit Mirela like a physical wall, throwing her backward onto the hard stone.

She scrambled to her knees, raising her arms to shield her face from the blinding glare of the threshold.

A blur of dark clothing shot backward out of the white light with terrifying, lethal velocity.

It was Klaus...

He was violently ejected from the trial. He flew across the fifty-foot expanse of the landing, entirely airborne, completely devoid of any magical barriers or physical resistance.

His body slammed back-first into the solid obsidian wall beside the corridor.

CRACK!

The sickening heavy thud of bone impacting ancient stone echoed through the stairwell.

Klaus slid down the dark wall, leaving a faint streak of blood against the obsidian, and collapsed into a motionless, crumpled heap on the floor.

His iron sword flew from his loose grip, clattering uselessly across the stone before coming to a rest near the edge of the stairs.

"Klaus!" Mirela shrieked, the terror tearing at her vocal cords.

She dropped her staff and sprinted across the landing.

She didn’t care about the trap. She didn’t care about the crushing aura of the doors.

She threw herself onto her knees beside his motionless body, her hands trembling violently as she reached out to grab his shoulders.

She rolled him onto his back.

When she looked at his face, the breath completely left her lungs. Her heart skipped a beat, seized by an icy suffocating dread.

Klaus didn’t just look exhausted from a difficult boss fight. He looked fundamentally drained.

His usually sharp, youthful, handsome features were gaunt and completely hollowed out.

The natural color had entirely vanished from his skin, leaving a sickly, pale, ashen gray pallor that looked like a corpse left in the sun.

The thick, dark hair on his head was visibly duller, lacking its usual sheen.

Worst of all, faint, premature wrinkles had formed around the corners of his eyes and deeply grooved the sides of his mouth.

He looked unmistakably older.

It was as if an entire decade of his natural lifespan, a full twenty-five percent of his actual time on here, had been violently sucked out of his bone marrow in a matter of minutes.

The Trial’s penalty wasn’t a reduction in stats or a loss of skills.

Klaus’s dark eyes fluttered open for a fraction of a second.

Mirela looked into them.

They were completely dead.

Everything... it was all gone, replaced by a hollow, vacant emptiness of a mind that had been violently broken in half by its own trauma.

"Klaus! Stay with me!" Mirela sobbed hysterically, grabbing the lapels of his dark shirt and shaking him.

Hot tears streamed down her cheeks, falling onto his pale, aged face. "Please! Look at me! I’m right here!"

That desperate, tearful shout, filled with absolute, unconditional devotion, was the very last thing Klaus heard before the darkness rushed back in, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he fainted completely on the cold obsidian floor.

...

The return to consciousness was not a gentle, gradual awakening. It was a slow, agonizing crawl out of a suffocating freezing abyss.

Klaus’s eyelids felt like they were forged from solid lead.

Every single muscle fiber in his body screamed in dull, throbbing protest, radiating a deep ache that bypassed his physical flesh and settled directly into his marrow.

It didn’t feel like the typical mana exhaustion or the lingering soreness of a brutal dungeon raid.

It felt wrong... It felt as if the very essence that kept his heart beating had been violently scraped out of his chest with a rusted spoon...

He slowly managed to pry his dark eyes open.

The blinding, terrifying whiteness of the trial room was gone. The fake, glitching suburban street and the horrific, crushing impact of the ten-ton commercial truck were gone.

He was staring up at a towering, dark ceiling supported by colossal black obsidian pillars.

The flickering light of pale blue flames cast long, dancing shadows across the cavernous ground floor of the Endless Tower.

Klaus realized he was lying on his back on a surprisingly soft surface. It was a large, heavy mattress, smelling faintly of old cedar and dust, likely salvaged by Mirela from the ruined remains of the 300-year-old Mage’s carriage outside, or pulled from the stash inside the Snow Caravan.

He tried to sit up, but his limbs refused to obey the command. A comforting weight was draped across his right side, pinning him to the mattress.

Klaus slowly turned his head.

Lying right next to him, her face buried deeply into his right shoulder, was Mirela.

The goat-eared girl was fast asleep, her smaller hands clutching the fabric of his dark combat shirt in a desperate white-knuckled death grip.

Without even realizing it, Klaus had draped his right arm securely around her waist, instinctively pulling her close.

As Klaus shifted slightly, the rustle of the thick wool blankets broke the quiet silence of the makeshift camp.

Mirela stirred. Her long, silver eyelashes fluttered, and her striking eyes slowly opened. For a split second, they were clouded with sleep, but the exact moment her gaze registered Klaus’s open eyes, a jolt of pure electricity shot through her body.

She pushed herself up onto her elbows, her breath hitching wildly in her throat.

"Master..." Mirela gasped, her voice cracking violently.

Tears immediately flooded her eyes, spilling over her lower lashes and streaming down her pale cheeks.

She didn’t hesitate.

She threw her arms around his neck, burying her face into the crook of his shoulder, and let out a massive, shuddering breath of absolute relief.

"Thank the Goddess," Mirela sobbed. "Thank God you’re alright. I thought... I thought you were gone."

Klaus lay there, staring up at the dark obsidian ceiling.

A week ago... hell, just a few hours ago, he would have stiffened.

He would have looked at the crying girl clinging to him and reminded himself that she was just an NPC, a line of code designed to react to his status condition but as he felt her tears soaking through the fabric of his shirt, and felt the frantic, terrified beating of her heart against his ribs... the act completely crumbled.

The impenetrable, freezing vault of detachment that he had locked his emotions behind didn’t just crack. It shattered into a million irreparable pieces.

He remembered the visceral, horrifying crunch of the truck.

He remembered the sadistic, glowing white eyes of the Second King wearing the face of the girl he had failed to save.

He remembered the suffocating terror of being trapped as a powerless ghost inside his own fractured mind, watching a tyrant play with his deepest regrets.

Klaus was scared... He was scared shitless...

He was thousands of miles away from civilization, trapped inside an inescapable dome of purple spatial energy, fighting a literal god who wanted to hollow out his body and wear his skin.

He was exhausted... He was broken and he simply didn’t have the energy to pretend that he didn’t care anymore.

He was tired of acting as though he was a crazy, unfeeling monster when, in reality, he was just a terrified young man who desperately wanted to survive.

Klaus’s lips thinned into a hard trembling line.

He slowly lifted his right arm and wrapped it firmly around Mirela’s back. He pulled her tight against his chest, hugging her back with a fierce, desperate intensity that completely surprised her.

He buried his face into her dark hair, squeezing his eyes shut as he took a long, shaky breath.

"What happened...?" Klaus rasped.

Mirela sniffled, holding onto him as if he would vanish if she let go.

"You flew out of the doors," Mirela cried softly, her voice muffled against his shoulder. "There was a massive shockwave, and you were thrown all the way across the landing. You hit the black stone wall so hard, Master. When I ran over to you... you were completely pale. You weren’t breathing right. I was so scared. I dragged you down the stairs and set up this bed, but you wouldn’t wake up."

Klaus swallowed the dry lump in his throat. He remembered the ejection and he remembered the red system tab glaring in the white void, telling him he had failed.

"I’m sorry," Klaus whispered genuinely into her hair. "I shouldn’t have gone in alone."

Mirela pulled back just slightly, wiping her wet cheeks with the back of her hand.

She looked down at him, her eyes shining with overwhelming relief.

The fact that he was hugging her back, the fact that the terrifying, empty void in his dark eyes had been replaced by genuine, human vulnerability, made her heart soar.

The real Klaus was back.

"It’s okay," Mirela smiled, a beautiful watery smile that reached all the way to her goat ears and horns. "You are awake now. That is all that matters."

She gently pushed herself off his chest, sitting up on the edge of the dusty mattress.

"You have been unconscious for over twelve hours," Mirela noted, wiping the last of her tears away. "You need to eat... Your body needs to recover... I am going to go out to the Caravan and get the food we brought. I’ll make us some hot soup."

Klaus nodded slowly, releasing his grip on her waist. "Thank you, Mirela."

She stood up, smoothing down the wrinkles in her maid uniform.

She took a step toward the massive dark iron doors leading outside, but then she paused. She turned her head, looking back over her shoulder with a soft, knowing expression.

"Master," Mirela whispered, pointing discreetly toward the other side of the bed. "Despite what she might tell you when she wakes up... she was deeply worried too. She didn’t leave your side the entire night."

Mirela offered him one last, encouraging smile before turning and walking quietly across the vast obsidian floor, slipping out into the dead silence of the sanctuary.

Klaus slowly turned his head to look at his left side.

Sitting on a small, rickety wooden chair that had been salvaged from the Mage’s carriage was Anya.

The six-year-old Shinigami was fast asleep.

She was bundled tightly in the oversized blue tunic Mirela had made for her, her silver hair spilling like a waterfall over the dark fabric.

She had leaned forward, resting her small, pale face directly on the edge of Klaus’s mattress. Her tiny hands were gripping the wool blanket near his hip.

Klaus stared at her. The sight of the child... his child, born from the core of his Soul Mana stirred a protective warmth in his chest.

Klaus carefully reached his hand out from under the blanket. He extended his index finger, intending to gently tap her shoulder to wake her up but before his finger could even brush against the fabric of her tunic, the little girl moved.

With blinding, supernatural speed, Anya’s small hand shot up from the mattress. She intercepted his hand mid-air, her tiny fingers wrapping securely around his wrist.

Her eyelids fluttered, and those striking, luminescent amethyst eyes snapped open, locking directly onto his face with piercing clarity.

"You lost your life force, Father," Anya stated.. "Twenty-five percent of it."