It was always the first. Not birdsong, not the rising voices of street vendors outside. Just the soft, mechanical whine of a cooling fan spinning over hard drives warmed by endless calculations. The tower was older now, patched together with parts bought second hand from forums, each component carefully chosen to balance cost with performance. It purred like an aging cat, comfortable in its nest of tangled cords and dusty floor tiles.
Mujin blinked into the ceiling. The apartment’s overhead bulb had burned out weeks ago, leaving only the dull glow of a nearby monitor to cast blue shadows on the peeling wallpaper. The sun filtered in through the gap in the blackout curtains, but not enough to matter. Just enough to make the floating dust visible — motes dancing through stale air, lit like drifting embers.
He didn’t reach for his phone. He never did anymore. He didn’t get messages. No notifications. Not even scam calls.
Instead, he lay there for several minutes, unmoving, the way a dead man might rest after forgetting he’d already passed on.
Eventually, habit took over. He rolled onto his side and groaned as his joints popped from disuse. His spine gave an aching twist as he sat up and shuffled across the floor, barefoot, to the corner kitchenette.
The space was cramped and lived-in. The kind of place you stayed in not because it was comfortable, but because moving required money and effort Mujin didn’t have. Game tournament money barely covered rent, utilities, and instant food. The fridge was half-filled with canned coffee, sliced ham, and hard-boiled eggs sealed in a plastic box. The cupboard held instant noodles stacked like ammo clips.
He microwaved yesterday’s rice with practiced apathy, eating directly from the container as he stared through the dusty window.
Outside, Seoul was waking up. Cars moved in steady streams. A jogger passed by with earbuds in, not noticing him. The world felt real, but it didn’t feel present. Mujin watched it like he watched a loading screen. Something to observe before the real game began.
The calendar beside the fridge had dog-eared corners and faded ink. Most dates were blank except tournament times or gaming releases. One red circle stood out, faint now, bled from condensation.
May 9 – 1:00 PM – “T.G.O.T.”
Mujin glanced at it. The acronym stirred nothing in his memory. Probably some note he’d written to himself half-asleep. It didn’t matter.
The rice was tasteless. His taste buds were dulled from weeks of eating the same rotation of salt, starch, and caffeine. But he ate mechanically. Chew. Swallow. Wipe face. Discard.
He brushed his teeth after, mostly out of principle. He wasn't a slob. Just... selectively meticulous. There were no mouldy plates lying around. No bugs. His hygiene wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t disaster-tier. He even clipped his nails regularly.
By 8:13 AM, he was seated in front of his rig.
Chair reclined. Fingers flexed. Eyes focused.
The world — the real one — was now officially over for the day.
Tower Civilisation launched like a slow dream unravelling. The start-up sequence was unskippable: a panoramic, tilting view of a vast, vertical world stretching skyward into eternity. Floating structures. Distant battles flickering like lightning bugs on other towers. Ancient engines turning under cathedrals made of glass, bone, and steel. Everything scaled. Everything stacked.
Mujin never skipped it anyway.
The menu appeared with a soft chime, clean and minimalist. His player ID — Obelisk — pulsed gently beside his current rank.
#7 – GLOBAL TOWER LEADERS
He felt nothing. No pride. Just a vague, quiet satisfaction. The way a monk might feel after placing the final stone in a perfectly symmetrical garden.
When he entered his tower, the screen descended like a god’s eye from the clouds.
His civilization was a masterpiece of conquest. THE OBELISK OF FLAME — a brutalist skyscraper of firelight and steel. Platforms jutted from its flanks like broken wings, lined with cannons and mech nests. Its citizens were red-robed zealots, fanatically loyal AI he had shaped through hundreds of design choices, cultural modifiers, and war policies. Its economy thrived on conquest. It didn’t produce food. It harvested defeated enemies.
He admired it now, rotating the camera slowly, zooming in on the civilian districts where workers carved victory murals into obsidian walls.
He had logged over 16,000 hours into Tower Civ.
Six years. Maybe more.
Other players called it a glorified war-sim sandbox, but to Mujin, it was something closer to theology. It was where he proved himself. Where his mind translated into control. Power. Logic. Dominance.
And today — finally — he was on the cusp of a milestone.
A notification pulsed at the bottom of the screen.
"999 Civilisations Defeated."
He smiled — a rare thing.
He scanned the matchmaking window. A weaker opponent loaded: THE SHROUDED GROVE — Player Unknown.
A low-level tower covered in digital forest. A tribal-themed civilization that relied on guerrilla units and nature-based buffs.
He launched the assault immediately.
The battlefield rendered in layers — foliage rising, stone altars forming, mist spiralling through trees rendered leaf by leaf. Mujin zoomed out and ran a quick analysis.
The Shrouded Grove was primitive. Aesthetic over strategy. All bark, no bite.
Typical.
He reviewed the tower’s profile. No visible defensive automatons. No mega-constructs. A decentralized government pattern — likely relying on distributed leadership AI.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
He’d fought these builds before. They always collapsed the moment you struck their roots.
He deployed The Flame Heralds first — elite shock troops bred for urban incursion and biological disruption. Behind them came the Ash Crawlers, his mechanical siege units with heated mandibles and smoke-screening drones. Finally, the Inferno Choir — units that spread morale-breaking audio distortions, literal psychological warfare.
With one click, the Obelisk’s airships howled to life.
Fire fell in sheets across the treetops. Trees snapped, splintered. Jungle pathways lit like paper. Vine bridges burned mid-collapse. The enemy sent archers — crude, AI-guided militia who screamed and turned to digital ash on impact.
He watched from above, hands steepled under his chin. His eyes tracked numbers, morale charts, kill-feeds.
At 7 minutes, 41 seconds, the last command tower fell.
THE SHROUDED GROVE: DESTROYED.
1000 CIVILIZATIONS DEFEATED.
The screen froze mid-animation. No fireworks. No global message.
Just silence.
Then:
“You are Invited.”
"To the Gathering of Towers.”
“Time: May 9 – 1:00 PM.”
“Location: You already know.”
The text flickered across the center of the screen, black on white. It had no sound cue, no aesthetic flair — nothing like the normal achievement banners.
Mujin leaned back.
This wasn’t in any patch notes. He tabbed over to his browser, pulled up the community forums.
Nothing.
Even the high-tier Discord servers were silent. Not even #tower-announcements had a ping. No one else was posting about it.
He screenshotted it and saved it in a folder named Unconfirmed Events.
“T.G.O.T.,” he murmured.
It matched the calendar. He hadn’t made the connection before. He didn’t even remember writing it.
Odd.
Still, Mujin didn’t feel alarmed. If anything, it was interesting. Something new. Tower Civ rarely surprised him anymore. A hidden mechanic? A secret endgame? Maybe a legacy server? An elite tournament? His imagination flickered between theories, but none of them registered as serious.
Whatever it was, he’d find out in three days.
And he had nothing better to do.
The following days slipped by like oil through fingers.
The world around Mujin had stopped demanding anything from him a long time ago. His neighbour's never said hello. Delivery drivers left food outside without knocking. Even the digital world required less attention than it used to — he had automated much of his tower's operation by now, routines perfected through endless trial and error.
He didn’t notice that the Tower Civ servers stopped matching him with opponents. His client still loaded, but showed no war screen. No resource requests. No AI greetings. Just his tower, breathing softly in the clouded sky.
He wandered its levels like a forgotten god, looking over his temples, his data forges, his population reports.
Even Elarin — the masked AI steward he’d customized to advise on game strategy — stood silently beside him, watching, unmoving, as though someone had deactivated her responses.
The silence didn’t bother Mujin.
He was used to silence.
May 9 arrived without ceremony.
The morning was warm and overcast. His alarm never went off. The game client wouldn't launch. It blinked twice, then vanished into static. When he tried again, a message appeared:
"One Hour Remains."
No logos. No UI. Just that.
It was 12:00 PM.
He stared at the screen.
There was a hollow in his chest that hadn't been there before. Not fear. Not excitement. Something in between — like the air before an earthquake. Still. Stretched. Waiting to rupture.
He stood up, pushing his chair back. His knees cracked as he stretched.
Twelve-ten.
The apartment felt unusually still. The clock ticked louder. There was a faint smell of... copper? Or maybe ozone. Like the air before lightning.
He needed air.
He left the apartment without his phone.
The park was three blocks away — a quiet stretch of concrete paths, dry grass, and sparse trees tucked between convenience stores and apartment complexes. Mujin went there daily. A ten-minute walk, a quick loop, just enough to keep his legs functional. He never said hello to anyone. He never stayed longer than necessary.
But today, it was empty.
At first, he assumed it was just an off hour. Maybe school was in session. Maybe the old folks had stayed in. But as he walked further in, the absence thickened.
No wind.
No birds.
Not even insects.
He checked his watch.
12:50 PM.
Ten minutes.
He paced the usual loop. His shoes made no sound against the pavement. He turned his head slowly — scanning the benches, the trash cans, the swings. Everything stood perfectly still, like props on a frozen stage.
He looked up.
The clouds hadn’t moved. Not even slightly. It was like the sky had glitched.
Mujin exhaled slowly.
That’s when he realized he could no longer hear himself breathe.
At 12:59, the bell rang.
The bell rang once, and Mujin flinched.
It was low — a deep, resonant chime that didn’t echo so much as vibrate. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, like the city itself had been transformed into a hollow vessel. His bones hummed in response, the frequency unsettling. Teeth clacked together from the force of it.
The second toll came louder. Sharper.
It felt metallic now, jagged around the edges, as if someone had forged it from rusted steel and left it ringing inside his skull.
Mujin gripped the side of a bench, but it didn’t help. His balance was slipping. The air turned thick, syrupy. Each breath came slow and sluggish.
He checked his watch.
12:59.
The second hand was no longer moving.
Another toll — third — cracked like thunder.
His knees gave out. He hit the concrete with a dull thud, but felt nothing. No pain. Just pressure. Inside his ears, deep in the canal, something had begun to tear.
He opened his mouth to scream, but the air refused to leave. His lungs worked like bellows, but his throat locked shut.
The fourth toll.
Darkness edged in from his peripheral vision. A rush of blood surged behind his eyes, thick and hot. He felt it spill down his cheeks like sweat, but when he touched his face, his fingertips came away red.
His ears were bleeding.
His nose too.
The tolling didn’t stop.
The fifth rang out like a siren, longer than the others, a sustained metallic agony that seemed to drill through matter. Mujin’s vision warped. The trees stretched unnaturally tall. The buildings around the park bent backward, contorting in silent mockery of architecture.
When the sixth bell struck, the world fractured.
The sound no longer had direction. It had mass.
It was inside him — vibrating behind his sternum, around his brainstem, through every nerve ending like molten wire. He couldn’t tell if he was upright, lying down, or floating. The world was made of static. His own hands looked grainy, like corrupted video files.
And then came the message.
“You already know.”
It wasn’t spoken. Not written. It simply was. A presence in his consciousness. A truth that didn’t need explanation.
He blinked, but nothing changed.
Another toll. A seventh. Louder than existence.
His spine bent backward.
The scream finally came — digitized, fragmented. It wasn’t his voice. It sounded like white noise twisted into agony, echoing across data that no longer belonged to reality.
Then came the last sound.
A low hum. A resonance, deeper than human hearing, but felt inside the bones.
Mujin’s head began to swell.
His scalp split, blood fizzing through the gaps. His vision brightened to pure white as pressure built inside his skull like steam in a sealed pipe.
And then his head exploded.
Not like in a cartoon. Not with gore. No splatter. No bone.
It tore open from within, silently, as if reality itself had unravelled the code that held it together.
From the torn cavity of his head poured light, followed by numbers, strings of code, glyphs written in architectures no man had ever programmed.
His body collapsed in a silent twitch, spasming once, then laying still.
And then — even that was gone.
The body folded in on itself, compressed to a single frame of black, then blinked from existence. Not a teleport. Not a death. More like a deletion.
The park was still.
No wind. No witnesses. Not even birds.
The bench remained. The path. The sky.
All exactly where they’d been.
Only one thing was left behind.
On the ground, next to where Mujin had been standing, lay his phone — the screen shattered from the fall. It buzzed once, flickered, then turned on.
A single message glowed across the cracked glass:
"One has ascended. The Trial has begun."
The screen went black.
''Mujin died exactly on time''.