There is a fall separating Adrian and the Tower. A deep darkness that flows into nothing, and above it all is a bridge connecting the two sides–the end and the Tower. Adrian gauges the bridge to be around 100m long; he doesn’t remember the exact number right now. At the centre of the bridge is a circular platform, where his best friend is being sacrificed right now.

  It is early morning, such that even the sun isn’t out yet, only the pale blue sheen in the sky before its arrival. His clan is here too, enjoying this festive occasion of sacrificial offerings to the Tower before a new batch of adventurers are allowed inside.

  People chat around him happily. There are stalls of food, morning tea, booze–if you know where to look. Youngsters rub their eyes in sleepiness, teenagers are eager to get it over with, and adults look on with a satisfied expression as they fly sky lanterns.

  On the other side is a macabre of stillness and rust. Degrading chains hang around the necks of the five sacrifices–The Unfaithful–as they are tied facing the fall on the edge of the platform. Adrian’s best friend, Martin, is one of them, although he couldn’t see his face.

  Priests are slowly making their way towards the platform now, their forms fitted with sparse clothes–only a red cloth around their groin and neck.

  In between both of these groups, stands Adrian. With nary an idea what to feel, nor the wisdom for it.

  Many times he wishes he could simply stop the ritual. To stop this whole festival. But it has always been like this. Traditions travelling through so many years and more. In front of this long stretch of time, Adrian feels too small and weak. Too nothing.

  He looks at the Tower of Blood. It is so huge, that one couldn’t even see the full length of it, merely an end before the clouds take over. It is so huge, that even with their clan being so populous and strong, they can only hold a very small portion of the land around the Tower.

  They say that even a High Ranker with a mobility focused class would take a few days to make a trip around the Tower. Unless of course, they use teleportation powers.

  It’s so strong, and yet Adrian can only feel contempt for it. He has always felt the same, ever since he came to understand the world around him. All it ever does is take more and more and more blood out of them, and all it leaves in return is more and more death.

  They say that the Tower is God’s grace to us. Adrian does not give a damn about the God. All he could wish is to become strong enough someday, and destroy the traditions. To destroy the Tower.

  And all of it will start tomorrow. Tomorrow with the Trials, Adrian thinks.

  The drums start beating then, their beats of boldness and drama quieten the festival at once as everyone looks at the Head Priest making his way down the bridge.

  He dresses very much the same as the other priests, except the chalk on his face which dramatises the redness of his lips, and a headgear on his head.

  The headgear is the clan’s legacy. Made from the pieces of the skull of a Spirit Wyrm, it is one of the strongest yet more fragile artefacts in their clan. And it is broken right now.

  Adrian is sure no one else can even notice it as it is just a very very small piece of bone that he has stolen. It had taken so long and so much preparation, so many fortunes had aligned for him, and only then had his plan come to fruition.

  He is sure no one can notice it right now, except the Head Priest who must have felt the slight decrease in the strength of the headgear and read its description. But he hasn’t made a commotion over it. Pride has afterall come in the way, and with no High Rankers to mobilise in secret like he usually could, and with the festival coming so soon, he is forced to keep it under cover until he could secretly investigate it.

  Adrian smiles. It will be too late after tomorrow.

  Thankfully the High Rankers are not here right now. The High Rankers are all in the Tower. Adrian has heard rumours that something big is happening inside, and he only wishes that it wouldn’t splash onto the lower floors when it is finally his turn to enter.

  As the High Priest comes to the platform, the other priests start preparing for the ritual. He first bows at the Tower, then looks at Adrian and his clan. Then in his booming voice, yells, “Blood shall rise, and Blood shall fall!” He thumps his chest twice, and everyone else follows. A thundering thumping of flesh resounds.

  “Tomorrow, our young heroes will walk into the Tower and face their Trials. They are merely 16 years of age, and yet the world shall be on their shoulders. It is in no way an easy feat that anyone can accomplish. We as adults, who have gone through this, know it better than others.

  “So let’s come together to sacrifice the Unfaithful–the ones corrupted by the devils to oppose our God–to the Tower and bless our young heroes on their future journey. Come join me,” Then he starts to sing. Despite his high level and the stats he must have put into Body and Mind his voice still hurts. How bad could one be?

  The priests join him slowly, their hands holding plates of fire sway smoothly in the air.

  The others join in, swaying lightly with the fire. Adrian joins in too, just to make the process a bit more bearable.

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  And as the song enters the chorus, the ritual starts. The High Priest dances an almost erratic dance, the priests behind him too dancing with the fire. There is an almost visible thrum of power from the High Priest at his every step.

  His Spirit seemed to come alive.

  As the magic in the air reaches a turning point, Adrian turns to look at his best friend for one last time. He is crying. His body shaking and trembling, the cry is almost mixed in the song in a weird way.

  Once again Adrian finds himself wondering the nature of it all and why he isn’t there yet. He has never liked their God either.

  The song ends yet it remains hanging in the air as the ritual comes to a close. The ritual anchored under the High Priest’s Spirit comes to life, and the chains break.

  The sacrifices, as if held by an invisible hand, float in the air. Small drops of red liquid float out of them, before turning into a gushing fountain. All of the blood is suspended in the air, reflecting the light of the day. And then it happens.

  For a moment they look into the other side. Into the past, present, future. Into life and death. Into the beginning and the end. Into the Spirit Realm where the bloodthirsty God takes all his blood, and just like a mirage, all of it is gone.

  The sun rises over the horizon, and the corpses are dumped into the fall.

  The festival comes to an end.

  #

  Adrian walks to his home with his parents and his little sister who is asleep in his mother’s arms. Their house is a little bit away from the fall–the prime spot for the higher ups of the clan–as they aren’t rich enough to buy closer places.

  He doesn’t understand why they can’t just take a carriage home, but what can he say except silently walk through winding roads. At least the weather is nice.

  “What did you think about the ritual, Ad?” His mother, Shuyang says.

  “Nothing in particular,” Adrian replies.

  “Good. You should make better friends next time. Like Mat! Yes, he’s such a good boy. If not for him telling us about the boy, we would have let you be teamed up with an Unfaithful! Wouldn’t that be a tragedy, dear?” Shuyang looks at his father.

  “Yes,” His father, Jaten replies curtly.

  “When you come back, we’ll have a team prepared for you. Of course, we’ll also invite Mat! You two will be such a great team!” Shuyang exclaims happily.

  “Sounds perfect,” Adrian says deadpan.

  “Don’t be such a bore, Ad. We are not trying to restrict you. It’s for your own benefit!”

  Adrian holds back the retort and simply says, “I’m sorry mom,”

  The next few minutes of travel are spared to Adrian as his parents find some people they know and engage in some light conversation. Like this, they reach their home.

  It’s on the second floor of a two-storey building.

  Adrian walks in, and beelines his way towards his room but is stopped by his father.

  “Ad, what were your Sacrifices?” His father often forgets things, or even pretends to forget just to try and catch him lacking. He won’t give him that opportunity this time.

  “I have a Fire Bovine, for some offensive power. A Khalkotauroi for some defense, and an Alicorn for mobility. I’ll be fine,” Adrian says.

  “Hmm. Where did you get them from?”

  “From June’s.”

  “You should rest now.”

  “Thank you. I’m gonna sleep for a while. Wake me up for lunch,” Adrian says and walks into his room.

  He lays on his bed for a long time, thinking and questioning everything that has happened today and in the few days leading up to it.

  They had been planning, anticipating their classes and the ways they would use it to rule the Tower. Next thing they knew, guards come breaking in and take Martin away.

  “This is such a mess,” Adrian mutters. He closes his eyes and tries to fall asleep. He wakes up a few hours later, tired and weary from the restless dreams.

  #

  The day passes by in a blur of preparing and then doing it once more. Checking everything, and making sure he has everything he would need. Food, clothes, medicine and bandages, bug spray, vials of blood of his Sacrifice. The glass is in itself made of enchanted hard glass, so it shouldn’t break too easily.

  He wishes he could bring some passive Artifacts too, but that is obviously a no-no for the Trial.

  His parents, who have failed their Trial and had to cut their limbs to get out–although they regenerated it later–help him as much as they can, but even they are forbidden from speaking too much. Adrian doesn’t really like their explanations much either.

  Finally the next day comes. Adrian and his parents, just like yesterday, walk out before the break of dawn. People trickle into the road along with them, but the crowd is still thinner than it was yesterday.

  Some people question him, encourage him, speak words like ‘take care of my daughter if you end up on the same train’ and all that nonsense. He only nods politely and responds to the best he could under the scrutinising gaze of his mother.

  Once again they reach the clearing before the fall, where people are gathering. The candidates like him stand on a side, separate from the adults. Adrian looks at his parents for one last time and then moves to join them there.

  He makes some friendly talk with others, discusses strategies, hopes that they are not pitted against each other–the chances are very low, but it is always there–and some. All the while, Adrian continues to gauge the strength of others around him.

  There are boys who are a foot taller than him, girls with bigger muscles than his own, and some who bring all kinds of exotic weapons and poisons for the fight. In front of them, he feels a sense of normalcy.

  Adrian is 180 cm in height, 70 kgs weight with a lean build, an above average face, and only carries a single sharp blade on his person, tied to his waist. In front of them he appears very normal, but that is fine. Because Adrian has something that they don’t. They never could.

  A vial of Spirit Wyrm’s blood. A 15th floor monster.

  He can be a little normal. Being normal looking is good. It helps people to underestimate you, until they are facing the blade piercing their chest.

  The High Priest ‘graces’ them with a final visit to bless them before they depart towards the bridge in two row lines. Priests and adventurers stand among them to keep the panic and hurried steps in check.

  Adrian walks into the bridge and looks down. Martin must be somewhere there, looking up at him. Adrian wonders for a precious second what he must be thinking, before he moves ahead.

  Martin is dead, just a corpse. Adrian is not, and as long as he isn’t, he’ll show them what the consequence of paying with life gets you.

  #