Tower Of Penance: The Seventh Chord of Sin
Justice was finally served.
Or so everyone believes.
A decade after the coup, the Tower rules as a god.
And humanity remains oblivious to their true place in the new world order.
To maintain this fragile balance, each year, a handful of the "lucky" are chosen from the Pits to ascend the Tower. They were told it was a chance for penance, for ascension, to become Judges. But the Tower is not the paradise they painted it to be.
Everything they taught Karim and his brothers in the Pits was a lie.
Humans are not guilty. They are pawns in a larger game. The Tower is nothing but a gilded cage, and the prisoners are lambs led to slaughter, playthings for the Executioners to amuse themselves with in their cruel games.
This year, Karim was among the chosen, to everyone’s shock. For a forgotten soldier buried alive in Pit Zero on a charge of treason he never committed, this was a golden ticket to revenge... or so he was told.
To make matters worse, Karim has drawn the attention of the most dangerous players in this game, the Four Floor-Lords: The Bone Warden, the Scribe of Eyes, the Shackled Witness, and the Lord of Squad Zero. Each one more dangerous, more twisted, and more powerful than the last. Yet even among them, the Lords are divided, each with his own deadly ambition.
Still, all of them have their eyes on him.
They expect Karim to play their game, to line up like the others who bow at their feet, to break under their games. But Karim is not like the others. He refuses to bow. He will defy them all.
Not because he is a hero. But because he killed the Reaper on the Second Floor — the entity the Tower forged from a former prisoner after they ripped out his mercy.
The price: 18% of Karim’s mind. The reward: Fear is dead.
And he climbs because his daughter is a hostage on the Fourth Floor, and the Minister who betrayed him waits there.
Some sins are not forgiven.
They are judged.
And he is the next Judge.
LUNARIS_CADE · Fantasy
A good story that strikes a chord with humanity.