When Brakhtar Gorat saw it, the scale that had remained perfectly still until now began to move, a small change with a large meaning, and his suspicions sharpened until they clicked.

"What the hell? The scale is moving." Loudbark and the other mixed-race Practitioners cried out in shock, never expecting that a single Spark skill could provoke such a reaction, never imagining that the Tower would answer light with weight.

Under every gaze, the arm began to drop rapidly on Adyr’s side, as if it had suddenly taken on mass far beyond bone, while the colossal stone planet on the other side looked as insubstantial as hollow resin by comparison, an ornament pretending to be a world.

The reaction surpassed what they had witnessed during Brakhtar’s own bloodline revelation, and the crowd fell past speech into the kind of quiet that feels like a height.

"There is no way." Doubt rose at last in Thalira, clear in her eyes as she tried to read the radiance that had already climbed into the sky and gone beyond what sight can resolve.

"Lady Thalira, do you know what’s happening?" This time, the question didn’t come from her aides or the Lunari. It came from Maruun of the mixed-race group, his face shocked, the gills on both sides of his neck flaring open and closed as if he were struggling to breathe.

Thalira did not answer. She did not need to, because the Tower answered for them.

It began with a tremor. The golden sand beneath their feet shivered, and in the stands the spectators froze as if time itself had seized them by the spine, then each one turned to golden sand, bodies breaking into a glittering drift that fell through the light and joined the arena’s floor in a slow, mournful rain.

A grim weight settled in the Practitioners’ hearts. For a moment, they thought the Tower was collapsing from age and began to consider escape.

Then they saw something that held them where they stood.

The towering stone statue’s calm was fractured. Lids lifted, eyes widened, and pale arena light caught on polished stone; dust fell as its mouth ground open into a breathless O. In a heartbeat, it looked less like a monument and more like a man who had just seen a ghost.

A system message followed, not silent as before, but spoken in a deep, ancient voice that seemed to vibrate inside the stone and body alike, as if the enormous, astonished sculpture had grown a throat.

[What is greatness, when no soul remains to witness?]

[What is power, when Fate bends it down to weakness?]

[Silent and alone in eternity’s deep darkness,]

[Who is the Judge that weighs our dust and worthlessness?]

[The scales awoke and shook, despairing for forgiveness.]

Tower of Worth → Found Unworthy.

With the decree, all trembling stopped at once, and the arena sank back into a deep, airless silence that pressed against the ear and made the heart seem too loud.

"This..." Brakhtar Gorat finally broke the hush, a single bead of sweat sliding from his bald crown down along his cheek.

Thalira stood the same, eyes fixed on the stone colossus, the voice still ringing in her ears as she struggled to fit what she had witnessed inside the borders of reason.

It was not only the Tower’s strange convulsions, the rippling sand, and the statue’s face taking on life, but the words themselves that unsettled her.

"They are as if..." She began to give the thought a shape, and Brakhtar finished it, because the line had already resolved in him.

"The Tower has judged its own worth."

Realization spread through the ranks like cold water spilled across a floor, and every gaze returned to Adyr’s silhouette upon the scale.

The pan beneath him had driven all the way down, while on the opposite side, the carved stone planet hung as if weightless in his presence, an emptied moon over a well without a bottom.

Adyr stood luminous and unshaken, his presence fixed like a star at zenith, the light gathering at his edges as if gravity had chosen him as its center and was content at last to rest there, and that image held a quiet that words could not touch.

Yet even as he looked dazzling to the eye, another current moved within him, a line of thought that did not flare so much as burn evenly.

Another piece for the puzzle, huh? And fate again? Who or what is this fate that keeps crossing my path?

For reasons he couldn’t voice, anger sharpened his features.

He first encountered the term "Fate" through the words of the Mad Scientist, heard indirectly from the mouth of the 12th City Manager.

And now it surfaced here in the Tower, a treasure inside the Beyond.

Not knowing where to place this piece within the puzzle in his mind, he was struck once more by a blinding light that swallowed his vision entirely.

It was not only Adyr; every Practitioner’s sight went stark white, hearts lurching at the sudden loss, but when the brightness receded and the world returned to them, they looked around with a wash of relief.

"We’re outside?" Maruun and the mixed-race group realized they were back on the floating island, their feet on barren ground rather than golden sand, and a quiet cheer moved through them.

But that relief did not last long, because another tremor began to build around.

"No, no, not again, I’m out," Loudbark said, seeing the massive Tower of Worth still before them and trembling; he felt another trial was coming and tried to run.

Fortunately, this tremor wasn’t for them; the Tower’s vast body shrank at speed, collapsing inward until it resolved into a single staff, which floated in the air before darting away.

Every eye followed its path, curious where it was going, until it came to rest before Adyr, hanging in the air as if waiting to be claimed.

"So I’m the winner." Adyr chuckled and reached out, closing his hand around the staff’s stone shaft.

The stone was cold at first in his palm, then warmth bloomed from within and spread through him.

A system message followed soon, finally explaining what it truly was.

[Name] Tower of Worth

[Rank] 2

Description:

At the heart of the Deep, a vast crown of stone once rose where gods idled and eternity loosened its grip. Not a hall for amusement, but a bastion built to bear the weight of time and what lies beyond.

Now it sleeps as a forgotten monument, waking once each Cycle to drink power, weigh the daring, and leave a single reward in their path.

[Next Weighing: 400 days]

Hey, isn’t this just worthless? Adyr frowned as he read the description, especially when he saw the timer reading 400.

It was listed as Rank 2, even higher than the Mother Tree, yet the latter at least gave him 5 stat points each day.

But when he remembered why the Mother Tree granted 5 per day, his expectation returned. If this, too, could grow by absorbing his Genesis energy, then he was very curious to see what its true worth would be.

***

A/N: Thanks for all your support; it means a lot for the novel. Since it’s the first day of the month, golden tickets would help me a lot :]