It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t a gentle vibration like an item responding to proximity. It was a violent, insistent rattle, like a trapped animal trying to bite its way out. Ludwig stopped mid-step. His shoulders stiffened. The portal’s light flickered once, a faint hiccup like it had been interrupted.

He pulled it out, it was the cube he obtained from killing the Duke of the house Drak and the Seer.

The Dimensional Cube sat in his palm like a mistake that had survived judgment. Smooth edges, impossible angles, surface catching light in ways that made the eyes want to slide off. Even now, even after all the killing it had taken to claim it, it didn’t feel like an object so much as a rule made solid.

Just then, the portal that was leading outside morphed and changed shape, no longer did it reveal the long walls, but instead a golden domed palace that rose above a high mountain.

The shift was immediate, one heartbeat, you saw city stone and straight battlements, the next you saw gold that hurt to look at. A palace that didn’t sit on the mountain so much as dominate it, perched like it had been placed there to remind the world what it meant to be beneath something.

It felt like it was piercing the skies, arrogant and high, above all existence.

Even the light spilling from it looked different, warmer, richer, almost smug. Ludwig felt his stomach tighten, not from fear, but from instinct. Pride wasn’t always loud. Sometimes it was architecture.

"Dimensional Cube...you really were the key."

He said it like a curse and a compliment at once. His fingers tightened around the cube, feeling it hum faintly, like it approved of being understood.

Just then, Ludwig walked inside the portal.

He expected a clean transition. A step, a blink, a new location. That was how portals worked when they wanted you alive.

Where he expected to immediately find himself at the place, he found himself along a dark staircase of a spiraling tower.

The air hit him first, stale, cold, with a faint smell of old stone and older dust. The light behind him shrank as the portal sealed, leaving only a dim, sour glow bleeding down the stairwell like an afterimage.

He frowned.

’This isn’t the same spot...’

He was at the base of said tower; there was only one staircase going up, and behind him and to his left was a large wall.

The wall wasn’t just "a wall," either. It felt like a boundary. Smooth, unadorned stone that swallowed sound. A surface that didn’t invite touch. The kind of thing that existed to say no.

But to his right was something different.

A large mirror.

It stood taller than him, framed in dark metal that looked too clean for a place this old. The mirror’s surface was pristine, uncracked, yet it didn’t catch the faint light the way it should have. It waited, empty and patient.

Ludwig approached it, but it didn’t reflect him.

He saw only the staircase behind him, the curve of stone, the dimness. The place existed in the mirror. He did not.

Even though it reflected what was behind him.

That wrongness dug under his skin. He shifted slightly left, then right. The mirror obeyed the world perfectly, just not him. Like it refused to acknowledge the thing he was.

He inspected it, but the system didn’t answer nor show up.

No prompt. No identification. Nothing. Not even a useless "Unknown object." The tower wasn’t playing fair here. Or worse, it was playing very fair, and Ludwig didn’t like the rules.

For a brief moment, he thought that it was simply a decoration, useless.

Until something strange occurred. A young man showed up.

Not gradually. Not like a reflection forming. One second, the mirror held only stone and emptiness, the next, there was a figure standing in a different world, close enough that it felt like you could reach through and grab him by the collar.

Well, young was a slight understatement; he looked to be in his early thirties. Had four day old beard, not full, just patchy. His muscles were incredibly large, though, and he looked interested in the city in front of him.

The man stood in a ready posture without looking like he was posing. A fighter’s stillness. The kind that said violence was normal. His hands, those hands, looked like they’d been used for more than work. They looked like a choice.

’Is that pride?’ Ludwig thought for a second.

He didn’t feel the usual rot or arrogance from the figure. No sneer. No theatrical cruelty. If this were Pride, it wore its mask differently.

Didn’t feel like it, though. This young man didn’t look too... vile.

Next to him was a woman. The two of them were bleeding, but they had expressions of...bravery? Maybe something like that.

’So, not pride... Maybe different climbers, a different floor like me. I guess we’re separated...’

The problem wasn’t the two people, but the city that spread beyond the mirror.

A black city, with two moons above it, and a large palace at the center, very similar to the golden-domed one Ludwig just saw.

The city looked dead without being empty, dark buildings stacked like teeth, streets that didn’t invite footsteps, and that palace in the center like an accusation. The two moons hung overhead like watchers that didn’t blink.

’Maybe that’s where I should go,’

Ludwig touched the mirror, and the man snapped to see him.

As if someone had caught another sneaking up on him.

The moment the man looked at Ludwig, his eyes hardened, as if he had just seen a monster. He said something, but Ludwig couldn’t make out the details.

For a second, the man raised his fists, and the woman pulled out two massive swords, a comical sight for how small she was compared to the young man. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Something about the man’s entire being changed. Like his body began giving off a strange kind of energy, something potent, yet foreign. Not vile, but not good either. And that energy began shaping around his eyes, and his legs, then his arms.

Just as something began manifesting around his fists, a spell, maybe? The mirror decided that it was enough.

The change was abrupt and violent, like someone had thrown a cloth over a lantern. The color drained. The scene collapsed. The mirror went from window to dead glass in an instant, leaving Ludwig’s hand pressed against cold nothing.

He held it there a moment longer than he should’ve, as if stubbornness could force the world to explain itself.

The mirror stayed mute.

He frowned for a second, but a sound of something tearing echoed from the top of the spiraling staircase, and a light emerged.

The sound wasn’t metal. It wasn’t stone. It was space itself being ripped open, the kind of noise that made the skin tighten, and the teeth want to clench. Light poured down from above, cleaner than the portal behind him had been, sharper, almost hungry.

A new portal.

Brighter than before.

It pulsed at the top of the spiral like a beacon calling him upward, and the stairwell suddenly felt narrower, more oppressive, as if the tower disliked his lingering.

He had bigger fish to fry instead of caring about another climber’s rise.

He pressed hard on the mirror, but it never did anything else, so he ignored it, walked up the staircase, and went toward the new light.

Each step up felt heavier than it should, not physically, mentally.

The kind of weight you got when you knew the tower had just shown you something you weren’t ready to understand. Ludwig kept his breathing steady anyway.

If the tower wanted him uneasy, it didn’t get the satisfaction.

A new portal awaited.