Chapter 313: Sold
Kael woke to a faint vibration against his wrist.
For a moment, he did not know where he was.
His eyes opened to a low ceiling, pale with old paint and faint water stains near one corner. Weak sunlight spilled through the small window of his apartment, cutting a narrow rectangle across the floor and the pile of letters near the door. The mattress beneath him had sagged under his weight during the night, and one of its springs pressed rudely against his back, as if determined to remind him that returning to civilization did not mean returning to luxury.
The bracelet on his wrist vibrated again.
Kael stared at it.
Then he remembered.
Association communication device.
He sat up slowly, surprised to find the sun already up. Not dawn. Not the thin blue-gray light of early morning. Proper morning. The city outside was alive, its usual noise muffled by the old walls and thin glass. He had overslept.
That bothered him more than it should have.
Kael had never been the type to sleep long, and after the Tower, sleep had become less rest and more tactical failure prevention. In the Tower, comfort was rare. Terrain was hard. Danger was close. Even safe zones did not feel safe enough for deep sleep. Yet one night on an old mattress in a locked apartment had dragged him under harder than he expected.
Comfort dulled the senses.
That thought sat in him with an unpleasant weight.
Then again, a body could not run on tension forever.
The bracelet vibrated a third time.
Kael tapped it.
A small holographic panel opened above his wrist, showing an Association contact request. He accepted it after a second of fumbling through the unfamiliar interface.
"Mr. Ardent?" a voice asked.
"Yeah."
"This is Lloyd from the Association branch. We would like to request your presence at your earliest convenience."
Kael rubbed one hand over his face. "Something wrong?"
"Nothing urgent. It would be better discussed here."
"That sounds like something urgent."
"It is not a police matter, if that is what you are asking."
Kael lowered his hand. "Good. I’ll be there."
He ended the call and stood.
His apartment looked smaller in daylight.
Or maybe he had become larger in every way that mattered. The mattress, the old TV, the tiny kitchen counter, the cramped shower, the crooked closet, the bills near the door. It all looked less like a home and more like a place where survival had slept while waiting for permission to move elsewhere.
Soon.
He cleaned up quickly, dressed, checked the bracelet, checked his inventory, and made sure the remaining Elixir was still safe. Then he left the apartment and went back to the Association branch.
The building felt different the second time.
Yesterday, he had walked in broke, unregistered, and carrying a ring he hoped might earn enough to breathe for a while.
Today, the guards recognized him.
That was new.
Some gave him space. A few gave him nods. One glanced at his wrists, probably having heard about the floor dent at the CIU building already, because gossip among security moved faster than emergency alerts. Kael ignored most of it and entered the lobby.
Lloyd was waiting near the reception counters.
Kael recognized him after a moment. The chart guy from the testing hall. The man whose boredom had been punched out of him along with several pieces of paper and possibly his faith in equipment calibration.
"Lloyd," Kael said. "What’s up?"
Lloyd gestured for him to follow. "I didn’t want to tell you over the bracelet. Best done here."
"Is it about the police yesterday?"
"No, all that was cleared up. The CIU sent a notice to us this morning stating you are no longer under suspicion. Association legal is still annoyed, but that is their natural state."
"Good."
"It’s about the housing you requested."
Kael’s attention sharpened. "Oh. You already got something?"
"We got a range. A few you can pick from now."
Kael followed him through the building to a quiet office on one of the middle floors. A woman waited there with a tablet and a professional smile, the kind that suggested she had already prepared a catalogue and expected him to be reasonable with money. The room had a wide screen on one wall, a small table, and several comfortable chairs that looked expensive enough to make Kael suspicious.
"Mr. Ardent," she said. "Please, have a seat."
Kael sat.
Lloyd stood off to the side.
The woman activated the tablet, and the wall screen lit up with the first listing.
Kael grimaced immediately.
"That says eleven million dollars, man. I don’t got that."
Lloyd and the woman exchanged a brief look.
"Trust me," Lloyd said. "You do. And this is not even the most expensive property you can buy."
Kael slowly turned toward him. "Huh? Didn’t you say the ring could at most go up to two million? What do you mean, eleven?"
"We underestimated the value of percentage-based regeneration," Lloyd said. "The current bid on your ring is already at sixteen million dollars."
Kael stared at him.
The number did not immediately enter his head in a useful shape.
Sixteen million.
Yesterday, he had been counting rent money and buying basic clothes. His apartment was barely furnished. His mother had spent years unconscious while hospital bills chewed through everything he once had. Their family home had been used as collateral, foreclosed on, and torn down by the bank to build something larger and uglier in its place. Sixteen million dollars was not a number from his life. It belonged to guild contracts, news articles, rich climbers, and people who said investment portfolio without irony.
One item from the Tower of the Dead had already set him up for life.
If he were not forced to return, if the Tower did not have its hook in him, if Floor Ten and Vanitas and the month-long deadline did not exist, he could almost retire right there.
Sixteen million dollars.
For a ring he could not even use.
Kael exhaled slowly. "That’s insane."
"It may go higher," the woman said gently. "Let me keep showing you the rest of the properties."
She did.
Houses came first. Some were large enough to make Kael uncomfortable on principle. Then luxury apartments. Secured residential towers. Climber communities with private gyms, reinforced rooms, gate shelters, and Association-linked emergency response. Then penthouses. The prices made his old sense of money feel useless. Eight million. Eleven. Fourteen. Nineteen. Twenty-seven. One listing was so expensive Kael looked at it once and decided the building should come with its own dragon.
Eventually, he settled on a penthouse for fourteen million dollars.
It was not in the most prestigious part of New York. The woman made that clear, almost apologetically, explaining that true prime luxury properties in the city could cost ten times more, especially if they were climber-secured. But it was in Manhattan. Manhattan. For Kael, who had lived most of his life in the Bronx and recently slept in an apartment where the showerhead lost a height contest, that was absurd enough.
The screen showed wide windows, open space, polished floors, multiple bedrooms, an accessible bathroom, a proper kitchen, reinforced security, and a view that made his current apartment seem like a storage unit with legal paperwork.
"It is fully equipped," the woman said. "The building is in a good neighborhood with climber-grade security. It is also close to this branch, which may be useful for your Association access and your mother’s medical follow-ups."
"So all I need is the deed and I can move in?"
"We can finalize the procedures here if you agree. It has already been inspected and certified. It is elderly-accessible as well, so your mother could live there without difficulty once she recovers."
That decided it.
Money had value to Kael. Of course it did. Poverty had a way of teaching a man exactly how much value money had. But it did not have enough value to supersede his mother’s wellbeing. After all the years she had spent in a coma, after mana poisoning had eaten her life while he worked himself hollow, she deserved space. Sunlight. Comfort. A place where she could wake up and not feel like sickness had followed her home.
"Sounds like a deal then," Kael said.
The woman seemed slightly surprised by the lack of hesitation.
Lloyd did not.
Kael signed the purchase agreement.
One signature after another. Digital confirmations. Identity seals. Association-secured escrow. Transfer conditions based on auction payout. Property inspection acknowledgment. Medical accessibility confirmation. By the time the final page closed, Kael had bought a penthouse in Manhattan while wearing clothes he had purchased yesterday because nothing he owned fit him anymore.
Life was stupid.
Sometimes beautifully so.
"Good," the woman said. "The ring has not finished selling yet, and in case it goes even higher, we can still show you better options."
"No need," Kael said. "I have to keep some money for my mother in case something happens while I’m away."
The room went quiet for a small second.
He did not need to explain.
It was basically a will.
If one day Kael did not make it back, at least his mother would be taken care of. A house to live in. Money to spend. No hospital debt waiting like a dog at the door. No return to that tiny apartment he had rented because life had cornered him into accepting less and calling it enough.
He wished he could give her back their old family home.
He wished she could wake up somewhere familiar, somewhere that carried proof of the years before illness took over everything. But that home was gone. There was no undoing that.
This would have to do.
And this was more than he had ever thought he could give her.
Lloyd cleared his throat lightly. "Also, your purchased items have arrived at the branch."
He pulled out a box.
Kael’s mood shifted immediately.
He accepted it and opened the lid.
Inside were three torches.
Plain. Strange. Useless-looking to anyone who did not know better. Each one was carefully packed in protective foam, tagged by marketplace inventory numbers that had wildly underestimated their value. Kael stared at them for a long moment, then took a deep breath.
Three Torches of Vanitas.
Three chances not to be consumed by darkness.
"Oh, those torches," Lloyd said. "I saw them on the market. Do you know how to use them?"
"Something like that."
"If you share verified information on their use, you will be paid according to the value of what you provide. We offer that service as well."
Kael closed the box.
"Unfortunately, if I told you, we would both die."
Lloyd smiled, thinking it was a joke.
Kael did not smile back.
"All you need to know is that it’s nothing worth caring about for climbers or people outside the Tower."
Lloyd’s smile weakened slightly.
He did not know that Kael was speaking the plainest truth in the room. If Kael said even one sentence too clearly about the Tower of the Dead, he would not live long enough to make up an excuse. Neither would Lloyd. The secret was not dangerous because people wanted it hidden. It was dangerous because whatever governed it had already decided knowledge itself deserved execution.
Lloyd seemed to sense the refusal was not negotiable and nodded. "Understood."
Kael placed the box into his inventory.
Then he looked toward the building interior. "Since I’ve got time on my hands, can I hit the gym you guys have here?"
"Sure thing," Lloyd said. "You’ll make Jerome happy."
"He’s here?"
"It’s almost like he lives here at this rate. You’ll find him on the second floor. Go enjoy your time. Once the auction timer ends, we’ll call you."
"Alright. Good then."
Kael headed to the second floor.
The training area was already active when he arrived. Weights clanged. Machines hummed. Climbers sparred in reinforced rings. A woman with a spear practiced thrusts against a moving dummy that dodged badly and was punished for it. A pair of mages worked on controlled output near warded targets. The air smelled of sweat, metal, mana discharge, and ambition.
Jerome was impossible to miss.
He stood near the heavy-weight section, lifting a bar loaded with multiple tons of steel as if arguing with gravity and slowly winning. His tank top strained across his massive frame, and sweat already shone across his shoulders. When he saw Kael, he lowered the weight onto its rack with a clang that made the floor tremble.
"Yo," Jerome said, grinning. "Good seeing you back. What did the popo say?"
"Misunderstanding, basically," Kael said with a shrug. "Wrong place, wrong time."
Jerome gave a cynical snort. "Damn. If it was a brother, that misunderstanding would not be a misunderstanding, is all I can say."
Kael smiled faintly.
Jerome was being bitter.
He was also probably not entirely wrong.
"What now?" Jerome asked. "Came to do some weights? Want me to spot for you?"
"I’m always weight training, to be honest," Kael said, glancing at the rings on his wrists and ankles. "But yeah. Let me start with something light."
He did not go for the weights Jerome had been lifting.
Instead, he picked up a pair of hundred-pound dumbbells.
To him, they felt almost symbolic.
He began warming up.
Proper form. Nothing flashy. The purpose was not to prove strength, but to feel how his body moved in a normal environment again..
Jerome watched with surprising seriousness.
He nodded up and down. "Good form. Really good form. Once you’re done, we can do some real weights."
"Sure," Kael said.
They trained for hours.
Jerome pushed heavy weight with the passion of a man who considered iron a personal friend. He talked between sets, mostly about training, guilds, strong climbers, terrible Association food, and his opinion that most mana specialists skipped leg day because magic made them cowards. Kael answered when needed, lifted what Jerome handed him, corrected his footing occasionally, and avoided anything that would make him accidentally damage more Association property.
He did not use internal energy.
He did not use runes.
He did not even remove the rings.
This was just movement.
By the end, Jerome’s tank top was completely drenched. Sweat ran down his neck and arms. His breathing was heavy, though controlled, and he leaned on a rack with the satisfied misery of someone who had trained properly.
Then he looked at Kael.
Kael was placing weights back exactly where he found them.
Dry.
Not just less sweaty.
Dry.
Jerome stared. "I know you weren’t carrying as much weight as I did, but huff, huff..." He wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. "How are you still not even tired?"
Kael looked at him.
"Oh. Yeah, about that."
Jerome waited.
Kael smiled. "I’ll tell you next time."
"That is rude."
"Motivational."
"That is not what that means."
Kael returned the last weight to the rack just as Lloyd entered the training area.
Lloyd scanned the room, saw Jerome looking exhausted and Kael looking untouched, and wisely chose not to ask.
"The sale is completed," Lloyd said.
Kael turned. "Oh, nice. How much is it?"
Lloyd smiled.
"Twenty-one million dollars."
Jerome straightened so fast his back cracked.
"Damn, bro," he said. "The hell did you sell? An Elixir or something?"
Kael smiled.
"Nah."
Not an Elixir.
But something close enough, in the way all life-changing Tower items were close to miracles when placed in the hands of desperate people.
"Let’s cash it in then, shall we?"