The Extra's Rise - Chapter 971
971: The Tower 971: The Tower The tower didn’t glow.
It didn’t hum.
It just kept growing until the clouds had to make room for it, a silent, impolite line of architecture drawn straight into the sky.
I let Grey rise.
A familiar cold slid along my nerves, and the world sharpened.
Space thinned, and my vision cut through the afternoon haze like a knife through silk.
The surface of the tower resolved into a dizzying braid of curves, a language of shapes that pretended not to be letters until you stared too long and felt them staring back.
‘Dammit.’ “This feels like the Infernal Armis,” I said, my voice low.
Six heads turned in the living room.
No one talked over the name.
The Infernal Armis had helped midwife the Second Calamity.
You don’t forget that kind of fire, or the silence it leaves behind.
“But it’s not a Mythical artifact,” I added, forcing my mind to stay analytical.
“It’s a film.
A coating.” Rachel caught up fast, her expression hardening.
“Is it her?” I nodded, the single motion feeling heavy.
“Lysantra.
The Demon Lord of Lust.
Her power is laid over the tower like a membrane.
And since she’s a goddess…” “Impenetrable,” Seraphina finished, her voice a quiet frost.
Even my Grey didn’t like that word.
Divine-rank wasn’t a door I could open.
Not yet.
“What is the tower supposed to be?” Rose asked, her voice steady.
She was already mapping the seams of the problem in her head, looking for a paradox to exploit.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“We’re going to find out.” Cecilia’s phone buzzed, a sharp, professional sound.
She glanced down, her jaw tightening.
“Imperial emergency conference.
Now.” I looked to my mother.
Alice stood by the window, watching the skyline like it was a poorly written sentence she was about to edit out of existence, if only someone would hand her a large enough pen.
“Mom, take care of Stella,” I said.
“Daddy, are you going there?” Stella asked from the couch, her small face serious, her eyes still fixed on the impossible thing that had invaded her sky.
“Yes.” I scooped her up.
Her arms locked around my neck with a fierce strength, as if she could keep all the important parts of me from falling off.
“I’ll be back from the palace.
You listen to Grandma.
Stay inside.
Okay?” “Okay, Daddy.” I set her down, and Alice took her hand.
“Be careful, Arthur,” she said.
The two words carried the weight of a thousand unspoken fears.
It was enough.
We rode the penthouse lift down to the garage in a shared, professional silence.
The hovercar doors lifted like sighs.
Reika took the pilot’s seat in front; she always drives when the road has teeth.
Luna sat beside me, a steady, warm presence that asked for nothing and offered everything.
Rachel was already checking a compact purifier kit, her movements precise and efficient.
Seraphina took the window, her gaze tracking both the sky and the street, as always.
Rose had her slate out, skimming news feeds, while Cecilia messaged district captains with quiet authority, ensuring the city’s third ring stayed boring and calm.
“Master,” Reika said over the low hum of the maglev fins, her eyes on the road, “do you think she came for you?” “Maybe,” I said, and the word felt insane to say out loud.
“Maybe.” Luna’s mouth set into a hard line.
From everything we knew, one of the Demon Lords had killed Julius Slatemark.
Some truths don’t soften with time.
‘Still too weak.’ The thought was a cold, familiar stone in my gut.
The Gates of Transcendence glimmered high above me in my mind’s eye, a mountain I still had to climb.
Divine-rank lived past that, in weather I couldn’t breathe yet.
I folded the anger and the helplessness and put them away.
There was work to do.
The Imperial Palace sits on stone that remembers old law, even in 2050.
Guards in charcoal coats, their faces impassive, waved us through the checkpoints.
Drones tracked our approach, then slid back into their silent patrol patterns.
We skimmed under the grand portico into cool, recycled air that smelled of clean ink and sealed marble.
Seventeen chairs ringed the oval table in the war room.
Some were occupied by flesh-and-blood people.
Most held full-height holos, grain-true projections fed by the palace’s private beam.
Adeline Slatemark, the Empress, stood at the head of the table in a tailored black coat, her expression unreadable.
Quinn, her son, was a half-step behind her right shoulder, a silent guardian with golden hair and red eyes, his Low Radiant power tucked away like a blade in a sleeve.
Charlotte Alaric, the Empire’s foremost magical engineer, had her sleeves rolled up, her red hair pinned, and her green eyes bright with a terrifying intellectual hunger.
Duke Everett Springshaper-Rose’s father-brought a warmth with him that felt like a good kitchen.
Eva Lopez, my old professor from Mythos Academy, took a seat near Charlotte, her teacher’s eyes sharp and kind.
The holos resolved into focus.
Alastor Creighton, his family’s old tree crest at his shoulder, calm and watchful.
The Windward brothers, Arden precise and Lucifer with a half-smile that hid a full calculation.
Marcus Viserion, his jaw like concrete.
Valen Ashbluff, ink on his fingers, his mind already three lines ahead of the conversation.
The room stood as one-in-person and holo together-and bowed their heads in a ripple of protocol that carried the weight of an empire.
“Second Hero,” Adeline said, and the title landed where it should.
Around the ring, the holos echoed the address, their voices a testament to a unified front.
It wasn’t for my ego.
It was for the work.
Adeline gestured to the table.
“Please begin.” I sat opposite her, my fiancées and Luna arrayed around me, and let my voice carry in the quiet, acoustically perfect room.
“We’re here to discuss the tower that rose outside Avalon an hour ago.
My initial observation, using The Grey, is that its surface is not stone.
It is script.
More importantly, a film of power coats the structure that is not ours.
It is the signature of Lysantra, the Demon Lord of Lust.
Divine-rank.
We do not cut it.
We don’t even try.” Charlotte stepped onto the floor array and pressed her palm to the brass rim.
A low hum ran through the floor and the reinforced glass of the windows.
“Anchored base,” she said, her pen already moving across a slate.
“It’s keyed into something older than the city.
Can you hear the layering?” We listened.
Far past the hills, the tower was singing a thin, high note that made my teeth itch.
“Nested frequencies,” Charlotte confirmed.
“The outer shell wants our attention.
The inner coil is counting.” “Counts what?” Rachel asked.
“Time,” Charlotte said.
“Or answers.
Or both.” “Containment ring?” Seraphina asked.
“Not yet,” I said.
“This is a language trap.
If I write ‘no harm passes this line,’ the tower will decide that harm is a kindness it’s doing us and redefine the word.” Eva leaned in, her finger tracing a curve on the projected image of the tower’s script.
“That loop inverts pronouns,” she said, her academic focus absolute.
“Any sentence starting with ‘I’ will be reflected back as ‘We want you to.’ Don’t start with ‘I.'” We were settling into lanes, Cecilia and Reika already building the scaffolding of an imperial response-cordons, evacuation routes, public notice language-when the palace net chimed.
It was a sharp, old-fashioned sound, a channel no one in this room used.
It bounced off a mirrored relay and stopped in front of Rachel’s slate.
She frowned.
“That’s not our channel.” “Source?” Cecilia asked, her eyes never leaving her own work.
Rachel mirrored the signal to the center of the table.
A crest resolved in the air-inkwork lines forming an old, gnarled tree, with no crown and no court stamps.
One word was written beneath it in plain, severe type: CREIGHTON.
Rachel’s mouth flattened into a thin, angry line.
“My family,” she said, her voice tight.
“They didn’t tell me.” “Open it here,” Adeline said, her tone calm but absolute.
“This is not a private matter.” Rachel swallowed once, her pride warring with her duty.
She tapped the slate.
A clean border appeared, with tight margins and ink that looked like it had been drawn with a ruler.
The first letters began to write themselves across the air.
No one breathed.
And then a timer blinked into existence in the bottom corner of the message.