There are buildings in this world that make you feel seen.
Not in the comforting, cozy, cup-of-tea kind of way. No. I mean the kind of "seen" that makes your skin itch. The kind that makes your ancestors shift in their graves and mutter, "Don't go in there, darling, that place smells like regret."
The Tower of Sin was that kind of building.
It loomed at the end of the road like a broken god's middle finger, round, jagged, and crumbling, yet somehow still standing through sheer malevolence and structural spite. Stone cracked like sunburnt skin. Windows wept black condensation. Vines choked the lower levels like the place had tried to strangle itself.
And yet, despite the rot, despite the air that felt like it was tasting you, there was an undeniable… pull.
"Looks like it could collapse any second," Miko said, adjusting his crimson shirt and flicking a stray bit of ash from his sleeve. "Charming. I love when architecture flirts with death."
"Looks like a haunted phallus," Willow said cheerfully.
Leo said nothing. His eyes were on the tower. Wide. Quiet. Alert. Like an animal approaching something very, very wrong.
As for me? I was busy feeling watched.
Dozens of eyes. Maybe more. Hidden in cracks, behind illusory walls, above in shattered spires. They pressed against my skin like cold fingertips, skimming under my collar and coiling around my spine.
"Mmm," I hummed, adjusting my gloves. "We're being observed."
"Obviously," Willow purred, stretching with a yawning groan. "I mean, have you seen me?"
"You're also naked," I said, as the third nobleman in ten minutes walked straight into a lamppost, ogling her.
"Makes it easier for the eyes," she replied, as if that explained everything.
We stepped through the gates. No guards. No lines. No questions.
The stone doors creaked open on their own, sighing like an old beast too tired to resist.
And then—
Oh.
Oh.
Inside, the Tower was…
Indulgence incarnate.
Gold. Everywhere. Not painted—real gold. Walls inlaid with it, pillars carved from it, chandeliers dripping molten sun. The air smelled of cinnamon, cardamom, and pure-blooded arrogance. Every surface shimmered.
Nobles in silks and sequins lounged like cats in a jewel box, sipping wine that probably cost more than a castle and laughing in that strained, brittle way that said they hadn't felt real joy since puberty.
Leo blinked.
Miko blinked.
Willow said, "Nice. I feel underdressed."
A man sat at a draped desk near the far wall. His suit was so black it looked like it might suck the light out of the room. His mask—porcelain white—was carved in the likeness of a comedy mask. Eyes hidden. Mouth fixed in a painted grin.
"Invitation?" he said, voice smooth as sand-polished glass.
I approached and handed him the scroll. His gloved hands took it like a relic. Then—without a word—he produced a desk's worth of gadgets.
Magnifying glass. Heat sensor. Dust brush. A vial of something that hissed when uncorked. A compass. A sextant. A wind chime.
He examined the scroll with the obsessive devotion of a man trying to make love to bureaucracy.
Finally, after swabbing the ribbon for poison, he unrolled it. The grin under his mask did not change, but his voice softened a fraction. "Confirmed."
He tapped the bell on his desk once. A soft chime echoed like the start of a funeral.
"This way."
We followed.
The waiting room was absurd.
Gilded sofas. Perfumed cushions. A string quartet in the corner playing music so rich it might have graduated from the Academy of Pretentious Sound.
And the stares.
Oh, the stares.
The nobles looked at us like we'd pissed in their champagne. They eyed Leo's beastman ears. Miko's wine-stained charm. My priestly coat with suspicion. And Willow—
They didn't know where to look.
One man fainted.
The masked concierge turned slowly to Willow. "Clothing is required," he said.
Willow pouted, cupping her breasts like she was protecting her children. "But—"
The air shifted.
Suddenly the room felt like it was drowning.
An aura rolled off the man like pressure from the deep sea—silent, deadly, ancient. I felt my lungs compress. Miko flinched. Leo staggered back. Even Willow's smug expression twitched.
"Please," the man said softly, voice laced with steel. "Cover yourself."
Willow huffed. "Whatever," she groaned, and waltzed into a side room with a flap of gold-draped curtains.
The pressure vanished.
Everyone exhaled.
"She's going to wear something worse, isn't she?" Miko asked.
"Yes," I replied.
Correctly.
Willow emerged a minute later in what I can only describe as a scandal stitched into dress form. A black strip of silk hugged her torso like a sin wrapped in ribbon. Most of her thighs, back, and sides were scandalously bare. The entire outfit screamed, "Arrest me, but gently, and then beg for mercy."
The masked man nodded once.
"Acceptable."
Willow twirled.
Leo averted his eyes. Miko clapped. I pinched the bridge of my nose.
The concierge returned to his post, and with a theatrical flick of his wrist, summoned a tall scroll beside him. It shimmered. A map of the tower appeared in glowing crimson.
"Seven sins," he began, tone professional and haunting. "Each level, a crucible. Lust. Gluttony. Greed. Sloth. Wrath. Envy. Pride. Each one harder than the last. Each one built to destroy."
His fingers glided over the map.
"You are to complete one floor before ascending to the next. You may rest between. You may retreat at any time… if the Tower allows it."
"The Tower…allows?" Leo echoed quietly.
"Oh yes," the man said, almost fondly. "The Tower knows. It decides who ascends. Who lives. Who breaks."
A pause.
Then his voice dipped low, serious. "This is no performance. No carnival of simple temptations. The Tower of Sin is a gauntlet of the soul. Few reach the summit. Fewer survive unchanged. Most do not survive at all."
Willow made a finger gun gesture. "Sounds fun."
And then—
The elevator dinged.
A single, crystalline chime that sliced through the air like a guillotine. Conversations died mid-laugh. Wine glasses hovered, frozen. A violinist in the corner hit a wrong note and muttered a curse under their breath.
All eyes turned.
The elevator descended with funereal grace—an ornate cage of blackened iron and violet glass, etched with infernal runes that shimmered faintly, like they remembered pain. Vines of silver roses wrapped the frame, their petals carved with such precision they looked wet with dew. Beneath them, twisted cherubs clung to the bars with hollow eyes and smiles too wide to be holy.
It moved slowly, cruelly, as if savoring the descent. With each floor it passed, the temperature in the waiting room seemed to drop by a degree. Even the chandelier lights dimmed, as if the tower itself were holding its breath.
It came from the third floor: Greed.
The doors slid open—not with a mechanical hiss, but with a wet, perfumed exhale, as if the tower had been sweating and finally let go. The scent was...sweet rot. Gold and decay. Like fruit left too long on a silk cushion.
And then he stumbled out.
Or rather, he spilled out—like a bottle someone had smashed against the floor and forgotten to clean.
A man.
Maybe once a merchant. Or a noble. Or someone who thought his wit was sharper than teeth.
Now? He looked like a story whispered by beggars to scare rich children.
Half of his left arm was gone. Torn away, not sliced—jagged edges and shattered bone visible beneath a blood-soaked wrap. His robes—once fine—were ragged. His eyes were empty. Crimson blood spattered his boots.
"I lost…" he whispered, staggering forward one limp step. "I lost everything…"
Then he crumpled.
There was no grace in it. No poetic final pose. Just limbs folding like a marionette with its strings cut. His face smacked the marble. Hard. A tooth rolled out and clicked against the tile like a punctuation mark.
The silence that followed wasn't reverent.
It was bored.
Two masked attendants appeared from nowhere, gliding across the floor in identical suits and porcelain masks.
With all the urgency of men sweeping dust, they hauled his twitching body up by the shoulders and dragged him out of sight—his legs trailing behind like afterthoughts. A thin red smear followed them across the pristine white floor.
Someone coughed.
The room exhaled.
A nearby noblewoman sighed and delicately adjusted her shawl.
"Ghastly," she murmured, "but it does keep the riffraff out."
Another chuckled and took a sip of blue wine. "Think I placed a wager on that one. Poor bastard. I had him pegged for five floors."
I turned to Miko. "Well."
"Nice place," he said. "Love the ambiance."
We waited.
And waited.
Time, in the Tower of Sin, did not pass. It luxuriated.
We sat beneath golden arches while veiled servers poured drinks we didn't trust and nobles made quiet bets on who would live long enough to be interesting.
Willow sprawled across a chaise lounge like a sex goddess with nowhere better to be, teasing her tail around the stem of a champagne glass.
Miko flirted with a merchant's bodyguard and won three truffles, a pocket watch, and the promise of a very fun evening if we survived the next floor.
Leo paced.
I sat.
And I listened.
To the whispering of the walls.
To the elevator's low mechanical hum like a beast digesting its last meal.
To the clink of cutlery and careless laughter.
And beneath it all…
The heartbeat of the Tower.
At long last—the bell tolled.
"Cecil Valen," the concierge called. "And party."
We rose.
The crowd quieted.
All eyes turned to us as we approached the elevator. It awaited us—open, glowing, ready.
Leo swallowed hard. "First floor is Lust, right?"
"Yes," I said.
Miko smirked. "Bet Willow's gonna ace it."
Willow licked her lips. "Oh, I intend to break that floor."
We stepped inside.
The doors closed and we began to rise.
The elevator groaned around us, an elegant beast lifting us toward the unknown, its walls humming with ancient machinery and something darker—like it remembered every scream etched into its cables.
I took a slow breath and pressed a hand to the dagger at my hip. Not because I needed the comfort—though gods, it helped—but because I had to anchor myself in something real.
Vincent Lacona.
Somewhere, above us, behind those gilded floors and layers of sin, he was waiting. Or hiding. Or hunting.
And not alone.
The Red Mistress was hidden among these walls as well.
I didn't know which floor they'd be on. I didn't know what they'd done or if they were even working together in the first place. But I knew—with the kind of bone-deep certainty that twisted in my gut like prophecy—I would find them.
And when I did?
They would see what kind of god they'd created.