The doors opened without a sound.
No creak, no hiss—just a quiet, indulgent release, as if the Tower itself had been holding its breath and finally let it go. The silence that followed wrapped around us like snakes, hushed and intimate, whispering: "Go ahead, my sweet little sinners. See what I've made for you."
We stepped through—and for a moment, it was beautiful.
The corridor stretched endlessly ahead, high-vaulted like the nave of a perverse cathedral, carved from black-veined marble that gleamed beneath a soft sheen.
Light bent subtly across the walls, caught in gold chandeliers that dangled like ornate arachnids, their many limbs dripping violet candle flame across the vast, plush carpet of crimson.
Our footsteps sank into that softness, vanishing beneath us like echoes swallowed by a dream. It was silent. Too silent. Even Willow's voice came hesitant, a low murmur brushing the edges of disbelief.
"Looks harmless enough," she said, eyes scanning the walls which were now devoid of art.
We walked, slow and cautious, the air pressing in like it had opinions. And then—I saw the ripple.
At first it was a shimmer in the corner of my eye, a glint beneath the stone like a heat mirage on sun-baked pavement. Then it pulsed outward. The wall began to bulge, pushing from within like something wet and alive trying to be born through stone.
A hand slid out.
Delicate, pale, fingers tipped in glassy lacquered nails, pressing forward as though emerging from the marble itself. The skin was doll-like in its perfection, cold, dead, and far too flawless.
Leo startled beside me. "Did anyone else—?"
Another hand pushed through. Then another. Then too many.
Miko gasped, stumbling backward as a flood of limbs pressed from the walls, like alabaster vines groping desperately for warmth. Hundreds of fingers curled, reaching, trembling with hunger, skin stretching as if the marble were flesh being peeled back.
And then—the walls screamed.
It wasn't just sound—it was pressure in the mind, a ripping of silk inside the skull. I shouted one word—"Run!"—and we did.
The hallway seemed to shrink behind us, narrowing as the nightmare multiplied. The hands were no longer isolated appendages—they grew forearms, elbows, shoulders, full bodies pressing and pushing through the marble like wax melting over flame. Faces emerged, twisted in want and desperation, mouths open wide and hungry.
One lunged for Willow.
She reacted fast, delivering a sharp kick straight into its face.
"Rude!" she shouted triumphantly—before being yanked backward by another set of limbs bursting out from the ceiling, their grip cold and merciless.
"Willow!"
Miko spun to help, only to be swallowed by a mass of grasping arms. One hand squeezed his throat, another clutched his ankle, a third slid beneath his shirt like a lover who had no intention of asking permission.
Leo screamed.
I turned just in time to see him vanish beneath a tidal wave of flesh and desperate need.
Gone.
One by one.
I ran alone, sprinting through the corridor of flesh and lust, every surface pulsing and quivering like some obscene invitation. Whispered voices began curling around me.
Cecil.
The name echoed through the walls like a fragile thread of silk, weaving through the air with a haunting persistence.
Cecil.
Come.
The voices beckoned, soft as a lover's sigh yet laced with irresistible promise.
You're so close.
You deserve this.
My legs burned fiercely beneath me, muscles tightening and trembling as if wreathed in fire. Every step felt like grinding against stone, every breath a raw, ragged scream clawing its way out of my lungs. The desperate gasps rattled in my chest like a cage struggling to hold a wild, broken beast.
And just when I thought I couldn't push another inch farther—
I stumbled.
The world tilted violently and I fell to the floor.
They seized me all at once—cold, slick, inhuman limbs bursting out from around me. Fingers wrapped around my throat, wrists, ankles—pulling, clutching, digging into my skin with manic hunger. I twisted, thrashed, but they only dragged me deeper.
Slick palms slid beneath my clothes, yanked at my hair, crushed the air from my lungs. A hand filled my mouth before I could scream. Another clamped over my heart and squeezed.
My body locked in place—arms splayed, spine bent, mouth frozen in a silent cry. I wasn't breathing. I wasn't moving. I was being posed.
A voice, female and echoing, rose from the haze.
"You don't have to run anymore."
I clenched my eyes shut, heart pounding in paralyzed terror.
And when I dared to open them again—
There was only white.
Blinding, sourceless, endless white.
When my senses recalibrated, I realized I was kneeling in the center of a vast, seamless cube. It had no floor nor ceiling I could trust, no shadows to hide in—just pale, sterile light reflecting off itself with no discernible origin.
The silence was so complete it made my ears ring, as if sound had been vacuumed from existence and left nothing but the echo of my own heartbeat.
I couldn't move at all. I was frozen by some unseen force. My gaze shifted, half-afraid of what I might see. Only out of the corner of my eye could I see the architecture which had bled into something impossible.
Staircases spiraled upward into dead space and ended in midair like half-finished thoughts. Hallways stretched at wrong angles, folding in on themselves like origami designed by madness, like the Tower had grown bored of spatial logic and started freehanding its own domain.
It was reminiscent of the gallery from before, only much worse because this time...there were bodies.
living bodies.
Dozens of them, motionless and nude, posed as if caught mid-performance, as though they had been sculpted by something that understood form but not life. A woman arched backward in an impossible curve, her spine a bowstring drawn to breaking. An old man stood reaching up toward the white expanse of nothing, face slack with yearning. A younger man, no older than me, floated in a fetal curl, suspended by threads I couldn't see.
They were stunning. They were grotesque.
But in their eyes. Oh Gods. Those still, statuesque figures wept. Their tears slid silently down motionless cheeks, pooling on the white floor without a sound. Mouths hung open and yet no air moved past their lips.
Their bodies were arrested in time, but their pain was fresh. Whatever this place was, it had taken their will, preserved their suffering, and displayed it like art.
It was then that I saw my companions.
Willow stood at the far end of the cube, nude and gleaming, arms raised to the sides of her in mock crucifixion. Her head was tilted back, eyes wide, tears streaking silently down her cheeks.
Miko was pinned to a wall, arms reaching forward like he was trying to climb free. His mouth was open mid-laugh, but it wasn't joy—it was frozen. A mask.
Leo knelt, spine curved in reverence, hands clasped like in prayer. His face was slack, but his eyes met mine—and behind them, fear pulsed like a trapped heartbeat.
They were part of the art now.
We all were.
"You've already proven yourself," the voice whispered—not sweet now, but hollow. It reverberated across the sterile white space like wind in a mausoleum. "Let me give you what you want."
She emerged from the void.
Not from a doorway, not through shadow or light—just appeared, unfurling from the blank air like a hallucination too bold to disbelieve.
It was a figure, more so a creature, woman-shaped only in the broadest sense. Limbs—too many—unfolded with a hideous elegance, jointed where they shouldn't be. Her flesh was impossibly smooth in some places, raw and pulsing in others, like meat beneath sheer fabric.
Her body shifted constantly—features rising, merging, melting. A glimpse of a perfect smile here, a soft breast there, a slender throat, a clawed hand, a parted mouth—but none of it stayed.
She was beauty torn apart and reassembled by something that only understood lust through instinct and hunger.
She was horrifying.
And yet she was also captivating.
Pure desire without an anchor.
Her eyes—molten red—didn't blink. They glowed like twin furnaces, luminous and liquid, reflecting back the deepest hungers of anyone who dared look too long.
She stepped forward, limbs folding and unfolding like something insectile wearing a human shape. Every movement was a seduction and a warning.
"You don't need to pretend anymore. Not here. Be worshiped. Be loved. Be yours," she said with a voice like candle wax dripping into water.
Her fingers—some long and delicate, others thick and veined, some barely formed—reached for me as if she might pull me into some eternal embrace.
But then—her hands froze.
Trembled.
Jerked back as if they'd been scorched by fire.
Her limbs spasmed slightly, rippling beneath her skin like worms trying to flee.
The room around us faltered—sputtering like a dying candle. The void thickened, then thinned, flickering like a curtain caught in a storm.
The creature's eternal smile cracked.
Her voice faltered, static tearing through silk.
"W-What…What are you?"
Suddenly, I could feel my limbs beginning to free themselves from the invisible pressure surrounding me. Slowly, steadily, I stood, meeting her gaze without fear.
Her eyes widened. Her body shifted faster, melting between forms at an uneven rhythm.
"You're…unnatural," she breathed, almost reverent, almost afraid. "A monster. You hold a relic twisted with lust. But it's more than lust. It's boundless. Impossible. Forbidden."
I reached into my coat and held up my feathered pen.
"This?"
"You should be consumed by it."
I looked her in the eyes—this witch born of the Tower's lust, this shadow of desire made flesh—and I smiled.
"Ah, I see now." A long pause ensured between us. "You're one of those people who confuse appetite with authority," I said, my voice low and deliberate, each word weighed with quiet conviction. "You see, what I've come to find is that lust, in its purest form, is neither master nor god—it is a tool, a spell cast in shadows, a double-edged blade. Potent, yes. Perilous, certainly. But never sacred."
She trembled, a flicker of doubt flashing behind her molten gaze.
"You have the power to reshape reality itself. Such magic has been deemed impossible for centuries," she hissed, her voice a trembling thread of both awe and accusation. "You warp the very fabric of desire, bending it to your will. And yet...you resist surrender, restricting yourself from abusing its power. Why?"
"Because I hold a truth you've probably never grasped."
Her eyes narrowed, curiosity igniting through the fear. "What truth?"
"That existence is not found in the consuming flame of want," I said, stepping closer, the air around us thickening. "Lust is the bait, a siren's call drawing us toward the abyss. But the feast—the true life—awaits beyond the hunger. It is the space after desire, the calm beneath the storm, where meaning and self truly dwell. I wield lust, yes, but I do not drown within its tides."
The hall shuddered.
The very air screamed—soundless, but cracking, as if the foundations of the room itself had been forced to understand something it was never meant to.
She staggered.
The creature's many limbs trembled, her form flickering, struggling to remain coherent. Her molten eyes—those radiant wells of temptation and power—went wide.
And for the first time, they filled with tears.
Not dramatic. Not manipulative. Just quiet, shimmering grief.
Not for me.
But for herself.
As if my words had dragged her up from some endless abyss and shown her the sky she could never reach. A truth she'd been built to deny. A reality she could only touch for a moment before it dissolved in her hands.
Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Just a breath.
A soft, voiceless breath.
She broke apart—slowly, reverently cradling herself with her own limbs and folding back into the void.
And then—
Silence.
The walls slowly smoothed back into cold, unyielding stone, the marble surface regaining its hard, polished perfection as if the room I was just in had never been there at all.
The grotesque limbs that had writhed and pressed through the walls vanished, dissolving into nothingness like mist evaporating in morning light.
The air itself seemed to clear, the suffocating heat of living flesh retreating into a distant, haunting memory. The witch was gone now but I could feel her presence hanging in the air ever so slightly.
Behind me, one by one, my companions reappeared.
Willow. Miko. Leo.
Each of them stood stunned, their bodies, now restored to how they had once been, trembling as if caught between waking and dreaming. Their eyes were wide, glazed with disbelief. Sweat beaded at their temples, trailing down their flushed cheeks and soaking into their clothes. Their breathing was heavy and ragged—dazed and shaken, but whole.
The hall ahead shimmered with a new, fragile light.
Just then, a golden door materialized at the far end of the hall, its surface gleaming softly like freshly poured metal—the elevator.
We walked toward it, the crimson carpet beneath our feet now silent and still.
Willow blinked blearily, her voice thick with exhaustion and something like disbelief. "I feel like I need a cigarette and some therapy."
"Same," Miko muttered, rubbing the back of his neck as if trying to knead away the tension still coiling in his muscles.
Leo's eyes locked onto mine, wide and searching. "What...did you do?"
I shrugged, a dry smirk playing on my lips. "Convinced her I wasn't worth the risk."
Without another word, they stepped inside the elevator's gilded frame.
I lingered behind, my heart still pounding from the encounter.
I turned back toward the fading presence that lingered in the air.
"Wait," I called out, my voice steady but carrying the weight of questions yet unanswered.
The voice returned—quieter now, more distant, like smoke drifting lazily in a cool, still room. It curled softly around me, deliberate and slow. "Yes?" it murmured, each syllable stretched out, as if savoring the pause.
I took a breath, letting the silence hang before speaking again. "Vincent Lacona...tall. Dark hair, flowing like shadow over shoulders. Eyes cold. Like winter." I let the words settle, each one measured, waiting for a sign. "Have you seen him?"
There was a long pause. No immediate answer. Just the faintest rustle, like the breath of the Tower itself.
Then, finally, the voice replied—soft, resigned. "Yes. He passed through here not long ago. I suspect he resides on the next floor."
There was a pause. A breath that didn't come from lungs.
"But be warned," the voice added, quieter now, like a whisper behind a closed door. "Lust is indulgent. It wants to keep you. But what comes next does not crave your desire—it thrives on your desperation. From now on do not expect a merciful witch such as I to grant you passage. Above us you'll find yourselves not only facing the pre-spun trials of the tower, but each other as well in a bloody battle for survival. Other guests, just like you, climbing, clawing, vying—and there are only so many seats at the top."
I swallowed, then pressed gently, my tone dropping into urgency but still slow, careful. "What about the Red Mistress...do you know her name? Have you seen her face?"
Silence stretched out, thin and fragile, as if the words were too heavy to speak aloud.
Then, at last, the voice came again—quiet, almost reluctant. "No. Only those who reside within the upper floors are authorized to know of her features."
I nodded, slow and deliberate, the weight of the mystery sinking deep into my bones.
"Of course," I said softly, accepting what could not yet be uncovered.
The elevator groaned, ancient mechanisms stirring to life with a shuddering hum. The heavy golden doors slid shut with a soft finality.
We rose.
And rose.
Until the doors slid open—
To a feast.
The cacophony crashed over me like a tidal wave—dissonant and raw.
Not joy.
Not celebration.
But pure, primal need.
I drew in a slow, steady breath.
The heavy scent of roasted meat, slick sweat, and sticky sweetness filled my lungs.
"Gluttony," I whispered.
We stepped forward.
The Tower of Sin was beginning to awaken—and hunger was its next taste.