Eleanor had no ti to think before she was plunged into darkness. The next mont, her consciousness returned. She found her wrist tied to a pillar. The cold air against her bare skin sent shivers of fear through her already trembling fra.
Her breathing ca in ragged bursts. She tugged at her arms, but the resistance bit into her wrists. Rope! The rough fibres scraped her skin as she twisted. Her legs were also bound, rendering her completely vulnerable.
A cold chill ran down her spine. Panic set in. The scent of blood hung in the air, tallic and sickening. A throbbing pain radiated from every inch of her body, as if she had been trampled by a heavy roller. She swallowed hard, tasting the salt of blood on her tongue.
She struggled desperately to free herself, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm. Blood trickled from where the bindings cut into her. She strained until her muscles scread, but it was futile. The sound of distant footsteps grew closer with each passing second, and her panic rose to a crescendo.
If I can’t get out of here, I’ll be raped again. The thought sliced through her, driving her to struggle harder. The skin of her wrists was already torn to shreds; through the blood and flesh, she could see the white gleam of bone.
She didn’t know how much ti had passed. She had fought for what felt like an eternity. Finally, exhaustion overwheld her, and she lost consciousness.
Eleanor found herself beside the staircase in her house. Jas’s faint voice drifted from her father’s study. A smile touched her lips, and she started towards it.
Then, after a single step, she froze at the sound of her stepmother’s voice.
"You did well, Jas," she said. "She believes you’re still abroad while you’re actively helping us. As expected of my nephew. Now, we just have to kill her, and you can marry Jennifer without any obstacles."
Eleanor’s heart seed to stop. A suffocating sadness pressed down on her.
"Don’t be hasty," her father said. "So far, everything has gone according to plan. We can’t make a mistake at this final stage. We have to make it look like a suicide. Kidnapped, raped, and now pregnant... the perfect reason to take her own life."
Jennifer laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. "I wanted to kill that bitch long ago. Do you know how exhausting it was to pretend to be a sweet sister?"
Eleanor clamped a hand over her mouth, her breath hitching.
"You think it was easy for ?" her father continued. "Her mother left everything to her. If she had died before twenty, her inheritance would have gone to the church. I had to wait. But once she turned twenty, I tricked her into signing everything over. She thought she was just filling out company paperwork. Now, if she dies, as her mother’s legal husband, I inherit it all."
"Dad, enough history," Jennifer said sharply. "We need to discuss how to kill her."
"I plan to serve her fish tomorrow," Jeanne said. "She already can’t stomach it. If she weakens further and Jas ignores her calls, she’ll lock herself in her room again. Tomorrow night, we’ll enter, bind her with soft cloth to avoid bruises, and cut her wrists. It will look like a suicide."
Eleanor’s entire body trembled.
Jas scoffed. "There are too many loopholes. What about the maids..."
Eleanor couldn’t wait to hear the rest. Drenched in a cold sweat, she turned and rushed back to her room, locking the door behind her. Her heart pounded so violently she was terrified they would hear it.
She sank down, her back against the solid wood of the door. And there, she wept... great, silent sobs of sadness, betrayal, helplessness, and pure, undiluted fear.
She didn’t know how long she had been crying. The tears ca soundlessly, falling into the emptiness... until a calm, familiar voice broke through the fog in her mind.
"Master, you have been standing still for over five minutes. You must cross this room within ten."
"Nora!" Eleanor gasped, the na escaping her before she could stop it. The darkness dissolved like mist, revealing a pure white chamber around her.
It took a few monts for clarity to return. She was in the Tower of Legends, still in the midst of the trial. Her cheeks were damp, her robe clung to her, and her heart beat wildly, the echoes of grief and fear still trembling in her chest.
Damn it, she thought. This trial is really tearing at my mind. If Nora hadn’t spoken up, I would have wasted the ti just... standing here.
"Thanks, Nora. I owe you one," she murmured aloud as she forced herself to move forward.
But as she walked, sothing unseen pressed down on her consciousness. It wasn’t a physical weight—it was colder, more insidious. A presence that slipped into the gaps between her thoughts and whispered things she didn’t want to hear.
The pressure deepened. Her steps faltered. An awful sense of dread coiled around her heart. The silence of the white room no longer felt peaceful; it felt watchful—predatory.
She pushed forward, though each stride grew heavier, as if her own mind were trying to drag her down. The thoughts ca unbidden, cruel and familiar. You’ve failed at everything. No one ever truly loved you. You have no father, no mother, no family. You were only ever useful to others... until you weren’t.
Her pace slowed. The despair was cold and convincing, the kind that didn’t shout—it simply was. And it felt true.
"That’s not true," she whispered fiercely. "My mother loved . She gave her life for . I have Freya... yes, I have Freya. I have good friends. I have family. I have Ethan. My life is not a failure. I am not worthless."
She tried to argue with the voice in her head, to drown it out with truth. The mory of Freya kindled a faint, golden ember within her... a fragile warmth in the suffocating cold. It was a tether, proof that not every bond in her life had been built on use or betrayal. Sowhere, her daughter was missing her mother, just as she once missed her own.
But her childhood mories of sorrow began to surface again, creeping into her thoughts like cracks in ice. She bit her tongue hard, cutting them off before they could take shape.
Anger flared... sharp and pure. It burned away so of the cold despair, slicing through the fog that tried to drown her. This room wasn’t a trial of endurance; it was an invasion. It was reaching into her soul, dragging out her deepest wounds, turning them into blades.
"My past is not my prison," she growled through clenched teeth, the sound raw and defiant in the hollow silence.
Tears gathered, not of weakness but of rage and exhaustion. She let them fall freely, unhidden. The pain didn’t vanish, but she stopped fighting it. She understood now... the argunt itself was the snare. The more she resisted the pain, the stronger it beca.
So she stopped arguing. She accepted.
Her breath beca her anchor. Inhale. Exhale. The one rhythm that still obeyed her will. She fixed her eyes on the exit door... the simplest she had seen so far, yet the hardest to reach.
Each step forward was tornt. Not physical pain, but the crushing gravity of despair trying to root her in place. Every movent felt like dragging her soul through mud. She was a storm-battered ship limping through a hurricane, her sails torn, her mast cracked... but still moving toward that single, steady star: the door.
Step by step, she forced herself onward.
When she finally reached to the other side, there was no triumph, no relief. Only the lingering echo of pain... the ghosts of betrayal, failure, and helplessness still whispering in the corners of her mind.
She took one slow, steadying breath... and decided to open the door to the next level. When her trembling hand finally made contact with the cool, solid stone of the exit, her whole self was filled with the profound, exhausted relief of a soul that has reached the shore after being lost at sea.
Eleanor paused to gather her thoughts. Though the previous level had left a bitter aftertaste in her mind, she forced herself to steady her focus. There was no room for emotional residue here... only precision and clarity.
She recalled what little she knew about the next challenge. Only one of her predecessors had managed to docunt this level.
This was the Level of Spatial Reasoning.
The chamber, according to the records, was filled with a vast, three-dinsional web of slow-moving, luminous energy strands. They drifted and twisted in intricate patterns, creating an ever-shifting lattice of light. The spaces between them were the only safe passages forward. No two openings were the sa: so ford sharp triangles, others narrow slits or distorted polygons, each demanding a unique contortion of the body to slip through.
Touching a single strand would not harm her, but it would reset the entire formation, forcing her to begin again from the start. The web’s motion was deliberate, almost hypnotic, but its complexity lay in its rhythm. To cross it, one had to think in three dinsions, predicting the shifting patterns several steps ahead... seeing not where the path was, but where it would be.
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