Ashveil breathed like a sleeping beast—quiet, still, and heavy with things that should've long decayed.
The air was cold, but dry, heavy with ash. Buildings leaned like drunks, roofs half-eaten by time. And in the center, towering above the ruin, The Ashen Great Tower pierced the sky like a rusted needle.
It stretched—floor after floor—through the ceiling of the world. Thirty-two floors, each one a sealed crucible of nightmare and memory. The monsters inside were not born; they were left behind. Revenants, guards, traps, and rituals that still looped centuries after the kingdom fell. And somewhere near the top—Floor 30, it was said—the Ashborn Prince remained.
No one climbed past Floor 26.
And now, Elias woke up on a bed.
Not a cell, not a dungeon—just a room. A random house. Cracked stone walls, a broken window with sunlight filtering in through ash-veiled glass. A quilt half-eaten by mold. His heart beat slow. He sat up, and the system opened on its own.
> [SYSTEM INTERFACE – REVENANT TOWER REGION]
Location: Ashveil, Ruins of Ashvar
Tower Proximity: 512 meters
Current Floor Access: [0]
Danger Index: 83%
Estimated Survival Time (Unaided): 3 Days
Wager Binding: "Kingdom of Ash – Last Trial"
[STATUS: Observation Mode – Awaiting Trigger Event]
[NOTE: You are a foreign element. Divine interference restricted. You are being watched.]
Elias exhaled slowly. He didn't panic. Just processing. His fingers flexed; his limbs were intact.
Then he heard the steps. Slow and deliberate.
A figure turned the corner and stepped into the doorway. She wore white metal, dented and dull, her robe stitched from banners of forgotten wars. Her face was lined, but wrong—cracked like old porcelain. Her eyes glinted pale blue, like frost under moonlight.
She did not smile. She only looked at him like someone watching their final gamble breathe again.
"You're not the first," she rasped. "But maybe you'll be the last."
Elias didn't speak.
The wind pressed through the gaps in the ruined walls, dragging ash like whispers across the stone floor. The woman stood still as death, yet something in her presence felt older than the tower looming above them.
Elias cleared his throat. "...Who are you?"
The response came like the crack of frost.
"Varvara," she said. "A contender of this wager in the Ashen Trial. Been here for seven-thousand, three-hundred and one days. Or maybe not."
He blinked. "You kept count?"
"You count what you can," she said with a shrug. "Time's the last thing they can't take from you."
Elias sat up straighter. The interface beside him flickered back to life—still hovering, still watching.
"So… I'm in a new wager?"
She nodded once, the motion stiff. "That's right. You've been fed into it. Same as the rest of us."
"Fed into it?"
Varvara pulled a rusted chair from the corner with a loud scrape and sat across from him. Her robe, once white, now carried stains of dust, time, and worse. The lines on her face ran deeper than age.
"They don't tell you, of course. Why would they?" she said. "The wager you think you're part of—that's not the real one. It's just bait. You're not here to win some clean contest. You're here to survive the collapse of a kingdom cursed by divine debt."
She raised a hand before he could interrupt.
"Let me make it plain."
"The Kingdom of Ashvar placed a Wager after its fall. Not a single person—not a king, not a priest. The land itself. A collective prayer answered by five gods who wanted a game.
"They watched the Ashborn Prince lose every war he started, until finally, with his father dead and his people in ruins, he cried out to them. 'Give me power. Let me win.'
They answered: 'Sit your ass on that throne, and never rise again.
"Wait for the one who can kill you.'That was the price. He took it. And the gods smiled. Now Ashvar is a pit of memory, war-rot, and wandering dead. The Prince still waits on Floor Thirty. Everything beneath him is his purgatory."
Elias let the words settle. "And the others here?"
"Contenders, wanderers, some chosen, or most that are just unlucky. Every few seasons the gods throw fresh meat into the trial. They dress it up with false wagers—'recover this,' 'slay that,' 'restore balance'—but it's all feeding the Ashborn's Trial. A real wager nested inside a false one."
"And you've been here twenty years?"
Varvara gave a dry laugh. "Long enough to forget my original wager. Long enough to know that surviving is a form of rebellion."
Elias leaned forward, the system pulsing faintly at his side. "What happens if someone actually wins? Reaches the Prince?"
"No one does. One made it to the thirtieth floor, years back. His name burned out of the records. System just wiped him clean. Maybe he won. Maybe he broke. Maybe the gods started over."
"And if I kill him?"
"Then they'll just shift the wager again. That's what they do. You think this world has end conditions? There's no end, Elias. Just stakes, and losses, and gods reshuffling the board."
> [SYSTEM INTERFACE – DOMAIN ALIGNMENT COMPLETE]
Map Access: Ashveil District
NPC Trust Level: [Varvara: 8%]
Directive Unlocked: Earn trust from a veteran contender
Observation Status: [ACTIVE]
Npc? He didn't react to the system. "What about the Revenants?"
Varvara's tone turned sharp. "Don't let the name fool you. They're not just dead men walking. They're echoes. Fragments of contenders who offered themselves to the Tower. Some did it for power, and others just wanted to forget."
"You mean they remember things?"
"They remember too much. And if you lock eyes with one long enough, you'll start remembering things you never lived. Not dreams, not illusions, and lives. Whole lifetimes, dragged out of you like thread through a needle."
She stood again. A little slower this time.
"Eat something. Keep your boots tied. Don't trust the floors past Fifteen, and if a door opens on its own—don't go through it. You're not special, Elias. You're just another story waiting to be erased."
He didn't argue.
The window behind her opened into a sky thick with ash. In the far distance, the Ashen Great Tower split the heavens like a sword stabbed into the world.
The window's rusted latch groaned as Elias pushed it open, letting in a wind laced with cinders. From their vantage, the Ashveil District sprawled outward—choked streets, leaning towers, and courtyards drowned in soot. But it was what moved through the ash that caught his breath.
Revenants, dozens of then. Some clawed across rooftops like charred insects, others stalked the avenues in fractured armor, fighting each other with the fury of forgotten wars. A few stood still, unmoving sentries gazing skyward, mouths agape as if waiting for orders that never came.
"...This is still the first floor?" Elias muttered.
Varvara stepped beside him, arms folded. "You're lucky. Most drop-ins appear out there. If they're lucky, they last half a minute."
He stared, eyes following the carnage. "They're fighting each other."
"They always do. Doesn't mean they're weak." Her voice lost its edge. "Some remember what they were. Kings, tacticians, lovers. The tower twists those memories, feeds them back as rage."
Elias closed the window slowly, sealing the screams behind warped glass.
"I need to understand what I'm in," he said, turning back to her. "Not just the rules. The why. You said this wager's been going on for centuries. What do you know about it?"
Varvara hesitated. Then moved toward the corner of the room, where an old satchel sat beneath a tarp of torn leather. She pulled it open and retrieved something wrapped in cloth—a black gemstone, jagged and still warm to the touch.
"This is a Wager Gemstone," she said. "You get them for completing floors, bosses, and sometimes for surviving divine events. Every one holds a sliver of truth—memories the gods tried to bury. You don't just win power. You win knowledge. That's what they hate."
Elias eyed it. "You used that one?"
She nodded. "Long ago. First time I made it to the Tenth Floor."
She sat again, this time slower. "I saw a memory that wasn't mine. A vision. A god—pale, faceless—stood at a war table above this very kingdom, arguing with four others. They weren't just betting on contenders. They were rewriting history, undoing defeats, choosing which memories survived. The Ashborn Prince… he wasn't meant to be king. He stole that throne in a moment none of us remember."
Elias's brow furrowed. "So the kingdom fell... because the gods wanted it to?"
"No. Because one god cheated. And the others wanted to see if anyone else could fix it." She let out a sharp breath. "The wager is a punishment. For the prince. For the kingdom. For us. A thousand versions of this story are buried in ash. The Gemstones are the only way to piece it back together."
He sank into the edge of the bed, gears turning behind his tired eyes. "And if someone uncovers the whole truth?"
"Then maybe," she said, voice low, "the wager ends for good."
A silence stretched between them, heavy with ash and centuries. Then, the system pulsed again.
> [NOTIFICATION: WAGER GEM DETECTED – UNCLAIMED PATH AVAILABLE]
Gemstone Path: The Memory of the Stolen Throne
Unlock Condition: Defeat a Revenant that served under the True King.
Elias didn't speak. But this time, he didn't look lost either.
Elias took the Gemstone from Varvara's palm. It was faintly pulsing now, like a heart preserved in stone. He turned it slowly, watching how the light refracted into glimmers too faint to be reflected by fire.
"This thing contains a memory," he murmured. "But not just a recording. It's a narrative the gods tried to erase."
Varvara nodded. "Exactly. I've only found one in twenty years. It's always random who gets what."
Elias held it up to the faint light seeping in through the cracked wall. "No. It's not random. It's filtered. The system isn't just giving knowledge—it's controlling the order it's revealed. Like a breadcrumb trail, but with traps between the steps."
He turned to her. "You said you saw the war table. The gods. The moment the prince stole the throne. But that's all you got?"
She hesitated, clearly uncomfortable. "Yes. And nothing else for years."
He frowned. "Then here's the thing: if that's the first memory they let slip… it's not the beginning. It's the first step of a reframed history."
Elias stood and began pacing.
"If the Prince wasn't supposed to be king, that means there was a rightful one. A True King. Someone the gods erased or replaced. And if the Revenants remember fragments of who they were... then some of them might've served under that real king. Which means—" he stopped, pointing at the notification still hovering midair.
"Defeat a Revenant that served under the True King."
"That means those Revenants aren't just corrupted bodies—they're corrupted witnesses and living testaments. The gods couldn't erase everything, so they buried it in the ones most likely to die."
Varvara stared. "You think they're hiding the truth inside the monsters?"
"I think they're forced to," Elias replied. "The system needs rules, even if they're twisted. They can lie, but they can't fully erase. That's why the Gemstones exist at all—because someone, somewhere, insisted on a record."
He tapped the edge of the floating UI with two fingers. "And this? This is a trail. Not a game. Not a punishment. It's a reconstruction. The gods are watching, but so is something else. Something that wants the story told."
Varvara looked shaken. "You talk like a watcher."
"I'm just good at noticing what's missing."
A long pause followed.
Then Elias spoke again, this time quietly. "There's something else that doesn't fit. If the Prince is bound to the throne forever… then how does he move?"
Varvara blinked. "He doesn't. The records say he never leaves Floor Thirty."
"No," Elias said, eyes narrowing. "That's what they want us to believe. But what if the throne isn't a place? What if it's a title? A bond? What if he is still moving—through the system, through the wagers, influencing the rules from within?"
The Gemstone pulsed once in his hand. Not warmly. But like a warning on both of them.
> [NEW SYSTEM FLAG: INFERENCE DEVIATION DETECTED]
Further analysis of the Ashborn Throne may incur Divine Observation.
Varvara stood, alarmed. "That… that never happened before."
Elias tucked the Gemstone away. "Then we're close to something real."
He walked to the window once more, staring out at the ash-choked streets. Revenants still fought. But now he saw them differently—not enemies, not monsters. Just corrupted remnants of forgotten truths.
And he knew what to do next.
Varvara watched him with a look halfway between suspicion and awe.
"You weren't like this when you woke up," she said slowly. "You were disoriented."
Elias didn't answer right away. He was pulling on the half-charred jacket she'd given him earlier, cinching it tighter around his shoulders. When he finally looked up, his eyes had lost their haze.
"You said you've survived twenty years," he replied. "But how many of those were spent moving?"
"…What do you mean?"
"I mean actual progress. Peeling back the system and testing its limits. Not just surviving, but pressuring the rules until something gave."
Varvara hesitated. "Not many."
"Exactly."
He wasn't accusing. Just stating facts. Calmly, like someone who'd already accepted them.
She folded her arms. "Alright then, genius. What's the plan?"
"I need to go somewhere the wager doesn't touch."
Her brow furrowed. "That's… not possible. The wager spans almost every layer of this kingdom. The Tower's roots reach everywhere."
"You said almost everywhere," he corrected gently.
She grimaced. "Yeah. I know of three. Maybe four. They're dangerous in a different way."
"Name them."
"…Why?"
"Because I'm choosing one."
Varvara sighed, then turned toward a warped map pinned to the crumbling wall. She ran her finger over it, stopping at faded, salt-scoured regions near the edge of the parchment.
"There's the Frostmaw Bivouac, but the cold will kill you before the system does. There's the Kettledowns, a shantytown that went dark ten years ago. And then…"
She tapped once, near the southern cliffs.
"The City of Salt. Out on the Deadshore. It's not part of the wager anymore. It was… rejected."
Elias's eyes narrowed. "Why?"
"No one knows. The system won't generate a map past the ash dunes. People say the salt corrupted something deeper than the wager. The gods won't touch it. Neither will the Revenants."
He nodded once. "That's the one."
Varvara stared. "Why? What's there?"
Elias turned away, already packing the few supplies they'd managed to salvage. His hands moved quickly, but his voice was quiet.
"Something unrecorded."
Varvara's eyes narrowed. "You think the truth's outside the wager?"
He didn't answer.
Instead, he opened the cracked door to the stairwell and looked down into the swirling gray outside, where ash fell like snow and the city beyond the tower rotted beneath its own silence.
"The gods built a prison with rules. But no one checks the places they abandoned."
He glanced back once, eyes sharp.
"That's where secrets live."