The crooked tower was exactly where Miles rembered it, nestled between two buildings that had no right accommodating it.
The alley leading there seed longer today, stretched out like it was resisting their approach, but Mara walked beside him without a word, her eyes tracing the thin fractures in the stone around them.
The sky overhead was dark and oppressive, the kind of storm-wrought gray that hinted at sothing more than weather.
"This place makes my teeth itch." Mara muttered. "You sure it’s safe?"
"That just ans we’re close." Miles gave her a lopsided, wry smile. "Don’t worry about it."
The tower’s door opened before they even reached it.
Inside, the Professor’s study was unchanged.
Tall shelves sagged under the weight of books that hadn’t been written yet. chanical orreries spun in orbits that defied basic physics, a single lamp on the desk bathed the room in amber light, casting long shadows that seed to lean in, listening to every word said in there.
The Professor stood at the desk, reading, waiting. He hadn’t aged a day since the last ti Miles saw him, and yet he looked impossibly older.
Like he had lived a thousand years in the monts between etings.
"Miles... And Mara." His smile was soft, but it didn’t reach his eyes. "I was wondering when you’d return."
"I figured it was ti to stop running in circles." Miles said, stepping inside. "We need answers. No riddles, no taphors. Just truth."
"Ah..." The Professor said, letting out a tired sigh. "But truth is the most difficult riddle of them all."
"He’s serious, and so am I." Mara crossed her arms. "The [Dungeon War] is about to start, and we don’t even know what we’re fighting anymore. Just shadows, masks, corrupted systems, gods we can’t see but who keep pulling strings. I say enough of this charade..."
The Professor’s eyes lingered on her, then moved to Miles.
"You’ve both changed in such a short period of ti..."
"Everyone has." Miles replied.
There was a pause. The Professor walked to the wall, pressing his hand against a panel that slid open to reveal a hidden chamber, a circular room, lined with rotating rings etched with golden scripts. At its center was a single chair and a long obsidian table, empty save for a slate and a pen.
"Co. If we’re to speak of gods and Systems, we must speak where their eyes can’t find us."
They followed him inside.
As the door shut behind them, a subtle hum filled the air, like the tower was breathing. Or, perhaps, bracing itself.
"This room," the Professor began, "was built before the System had form. Before the Architects encoded purpose into every particle of this and other worlds. It is a place outside their knowing."
"So, you’re one of them..." Miles furrowed his brow, and Dee turned on his shoulder, opening its eyes.
The Professor smiled at Dee, but didn’t answer.
"What are those?" Mara glanced at the rotating rings.
"The remnants of failed fraworks." the Professor said. "Each ring is a version of the System that never made it past the dreaming stage. We are standing in a graveyard of discarded realities, and now, perhaps, a cradle for new ones."
He turned to them, but before he could say anything, Miles asked.
"What is the source, and how do we get there?"
"One thing at a ti, my impatient boy." The Professor chuckled. "What do you know of the gods?"
"Just fragnts." Miles said, pursing his lips. "The Crawling Chaos, the god of war and progress, whatever it was that brought Dee back from the dead. So nas, so symbols. And a lot of death."
"What do you know of the Crawling Chaos, boy?" It was the Professor’s ti to furrow his brows. "It’s not a na that should be spoken carelessly."
"I know that a player made a pact with it. Or I at least assu that it was the [Demon] Shinji made a pact with, and I know that the thing is infecting our world as we speak."
"Then let tell you what the System was ant to be, and then, maybe, you’ll understand a bit more of the gods." The Professor nodded gravely.
He moved to the slate and began to draw with the pen. Lines of glowing script unfurled into a diagram of a great lattice, nodes interlinked, pulsating with color.
"Once, there were many," he said. "Many gods, each representing a fundantal Story. Not elents, not emotions, but narrative truths. Growth, Sacrifice, Rebirth, Trickery, Catastrophe, War, Death, Knowledge, and so on. These were not just ideas, they were the source code of the worlds. And the System was ant to be their harmony."
"So, what happened?" Mara stepped forward, her brow furrowing.
"One of them rejected the harmony. It wanted to rewrite the Story entirely, to tear out the balance and impose a new one. One that fed on entropy, on recursion, on devouring potential before it could ever beco real, turning it into an undoing. Into madness in and of itself."
"The Crawling Chaos..." Miles said.
"No. It was another, known as The Blind Drear. It rewrote parts of the mother-code, and created an entire reality just for itself. And it was there, where it gave birth to the Endless Dream, a place where its sons and daughters could be born and prepare."
"For what?" Mara asked, her brows deeply furrowed. But Miles answered before the Professor.
"For war..."
"The System you know now is a ruin built atop the bones of that dream." The Professor nodded. "The gods are either dead, missing, or hiding. The Architects sealed themselves away trying to prevent our reality from ever being found by the Blind Drear’s sons and daughters, and the remaining deities have been... Fragnted, ever since."
"And the players?" Miles felt his throat tighten.
"In the beginning, the gods only needed faith to sustain themselves, and so, the players were never ant to exist. Only humans, thinking people that believed that a god could cause thunder and lightning, that another god could lead their souls to the afterlife... But after the Blind Drear fell into his eternal slumber, and may it never wake, they beca the Architects’ last attempt to reboot the cycle. To insert new Stories, new catalysts. But the corruption had already taken root. Probably when this fellow player of yours made the pact with The Crawling Chaos."
"So, we’ve been pawns since the beginning." Mara shook her head.
"Not pawns." The Professor said gently. "Prototypes, keys. To fight and grow, so that they can beco able to fight the war that we failed to win. You, Miles, especially. You carry echoes of one of the last true gods that fell. And that... Makes you dangerous. Both for the Old Ones, and for-"
Before the Professor could finish, lightning cracked.
A blue-white flash lit the entire chamber, and the slate exploded, scattering light and shards of power through the air.
Mara raised her arms instinctively, shielding Miles as a new presence flooded the room.
At the far end of the chamber, where monts ago there had been only blank stone, a rift tore open. From within it stepped a hooded figure, cloak scorched and dripping with static. Their boots cracked against the floor with each step, arcs of electricity running up their legs and into the air.
They raised their head, and under the hood, their eyes blazed with pure blue lightning, burning with hatred and recognition.
"So..." The figure said, voice low and resonant. "I finally et the boy who ruined everything..."
Miles didn’t move, and neither did Mara.
The air crackled, and the room, for all its tiless protection, suddenly felt very, very mortal.
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