Chapter 122: Acrophobia

’Interesting rune, thinking about this, wouldn’t it make the cost of mana from Heft drop? I’ll need to try this later,’ Kael thought as he pocketed the rune.

He didn’t even have the luxury of properly admiring it. The moment his fingers closed around the stone, he felt that familiar urge to pause, to sit somewhere safe and pry the thing apart with pure curiosity.

That urge was how people died. So he did the only thing he could do. He shoved it into his pocket like it was just another piece of scrap and forced his brain to tag it for later. Later was a dangerous word in the Tower, but it was still better than “never.”

He now had four physical runes and a consumable one that was grafted onto his body. Though he has yet to understand how that came to be, he wasn’t about to start theorizing now.

His chest still carried the faint tug of that stigma, an itch he couldn’t scratch from the inside. It didn’t hurt anymore, not like when it first branded him, but it was always there like a reminder that the Tower had rewritten him without asking.

He had learned quickly that understanding came second to surviving, even if it annoyed him to admit it. The Tower wasn’t a classroom. It didn’t care if you learned.

It cared if you adapted.

After all, he wasn’t out of the woods yet.

The building around them felt like it had shifted from a hunting ground into a cage. The open edges where the walls were missing weren’t exits; they were death drops. The stairwell they had climbed was now a throat full of skittering metal feet.

The air carried the sharp chemical stink of spider innards and rotten bodies. Even the wind coming through the gaps felt wrong, cold and thin, like it wanted to peel sweat off skin and leave you exposed.

“What now, you got your shiny?” Peter said as he looked at the stairs they came from, worried that more spiders would spill out. “We gotta fight our way down…”

Peter’s eyes kept flicking in the same direction, as if staring hard enough would stop the spiders from moving. His knuckles were still white around the axe handle, and his breathing had that uneven, too-fast pattern of someone trying to convince himself he wasn’t panicking. He looked like a man ready to sprint, but trapped in place by the idea of what waited below.

“I told you I have a way to leave this place before,” Kael said as he approached the ledge of the building

He didn’t sound heroic. He sounded tired of explaining. Kael walked like the ledge was just another step, not a cliff.

He angled his body so he could see down the open side of the building, ignoring how the city yawned beneath them in broken streets and rubble piles. The height wasn’t impressive in the way towers were impressive. It was impressive in the way the fall was final.

“I’m sorry, but I like living, though I’m dead, I like being less dead…” Peter said as he saw Kael being far too close to the ledge than he was comfortable with seeing.

He stopped a few steps, like there was an invisible line he didn’t want to cross. He glanced down once and immediately regretted it, face tightening, throat working as if his stomach had tried to climb into his chest. The wind slapped him in the face and made the drop feel even more real.

“Come here.”

Kael didn’t turn when he said it. He didn’t have to. The tone did the turning for him. It was the same tone he used when he needed something done and didn’t care about excuses.

“Nope.”

Peter didn’t even bother dressing it up. Just pure refusal, simple and honest, like he was talking to a man asking him to stick his head in a furnace.

“You’ll be food for spiders,” Kael said.

The words were calm, almost conversational, which somehow made them worse. Kael didn’t threaten. He stated outcomes.

“Better die fighting than be a splat on the asphalt below…” Peter said.

He tried to sound brave. It came out thin. His eyes flicked back toward the stairwell and then toward the open air again, like he was weighing which death would hurt less. The fact that he even had to choose made him swallow hard.

Kael sighed.

It wasn’t theatrical. It was the exhausted sigh of a man dealing with someone who insisted on being difficult in the middle of a very time-sensitive apocalypse.

“Come over, or I’ll make you come over. This is uncomfortable for me too, so don’t make it difficult.” Kael finally turned his head just enough to let Peter see his expression. It wasn’t anger. It was annoyance, the kind that promised Peter would lose the argument no matter what.

The ledge was not Kael’s idea of comfort either. He just didn’t let comfort decide.

“Fuck man…” Peter said as he got closer to Kael.

His feet moved like they didn’t want to. He approached in short steps, shoulders hunched, axe lowered, eyes refusing to look down again. The closer he got to the edge, the more he breathed through his mouth as if his lungs had decided the air was too sharp.

“What’s the plan?” Peter asked as he reached with his neck over the ledge. The sudden breeze made him take half a step back.

The gust caught his hair and tugged at his clothes, cold against sweat. He saw the drop, and his knees threatened to betray him. It was too far. Too clean a fall. No second chances on concrete.

“See those,” Kael said as he pointed at the side of the ledge. There were hundreds, if not more, silk threads, spider silk threads that were hanging down from the top floors all the way to the bottom of the street. Crisscrossing like a nightmare’s scaffolding. Thick strands anchored to beams and broken concrete, some twisted together like ropes, others spread thin in sheets where spiders had moved in groups. They shimmered faintly where sunlight hit, and they looked strong enough to tow a wagon.

“Yeah, the lines the spiders made when they came down for us… what are you thinking? Please tell me you’re not thinking what I’m thinking.”

Peter’s voice rose at the end despite his trying to keep it down.

He stared at the silk as if it were a trap that wanted him personally. His imagination filled in the rest.

“It’s good that you’re thinking what I’m thinking; it makes it less annoying to explain.”

Kael’s mouth twitched in the faintest hint of humor, but it didn’t soften the situation. If anything, it made Peter’s fear worse, because Kael was acting like this was obvious.

Just as Peter was about to take a step back, Kael grabbed him with his left hand.

The grip was immediate and final. Peter’s collar tightened under Kael’s fist, and Peter’s feet shuffled involuntarily as Kael dragged him closer to the edge.

“Please, man, this isn’t some cartoon or anime. We’ll die,”

Peter’s voice cracked. The words came out fast, pleading and furious at the same time, like begging Kael and insulting him were the same breath.

“You never wanted to feel like Spider-Man?”

Kael said it with just enough casualness to be infuriating. It wasn’t even a real joke. It was Kael coping the only way he knew how, by making the stupidity sound normal.

“Feel like him, yes, do it in reality, hell no.”

Peter’s hands grabbed at Kael’s arm like he could peel himself loose. He couldn’t. Kael didn’t even look strained.

“You won’t get a second chance,” Kael said as he dragged Peter over the ledge. “I’m strong enough to hold you with one arm.”

Peter’s boots left the floor for a heartbeat, and that heartbeat stretched into eternity.

The empty air under him made his stomach drop so hard it felt like his organs tried to follow. Kael’s arm held him out like a bag of tools.

“FUUUUCK PLEASE LET ME GO!” Peter said.

Peter screamed the worst possible sentence in the worst possible moment, and Kael couldn’t help but glance at him with that deadpan look of someone witnessing natural selection try to work in real time.

“What a poor choice of words.”

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