The moment Ludwig stepped beyond the outer gates surrounding the Tower of Trials, the ground beneath Politia trembled.

It was subtle at first, just enough vibration beneath his boots to suggest either fatigue or the lingering effects of too many rewinds chewing through his nerves. After everything he had just done, Ludwig almost ignored it entirely. But then the city shook again, harder this time, and the sound that followed rolled through the streets like ancient stone groaning after centuries of restraint.

Ludwig stopped and turned.

The Tower of Trials still stood where it always had, its dark structure rising impossibly high over Politia like a black needle driven through the heart of the empire. It had dominated the city skyline for generations, an accepted impossibility so ancient that most people had stopped questioning its presence. Merchants built districts around it. Nobles used it as a landmark. Entire roads and districts had been designed with its looming silhouette in mind.

And now it was cracking.

Thin veins of pale light spread across the black stone from base to summit, crawling upward through the tower’s body like something buried within had finally decided it was done pretending to be dormant. These were not the fractures of damage, nor the wounds of battle. The tower was not being destroyed.

It was leaving.

Kaiser stared upward, the expression on his half-human face unusually serious. "That is no collapse."

"No," Ludwig muttered, narrowing his eyes. "It’s getting the hell out."

The words came easier than the realization itself. In hindsight, it made far too much sense. The tower had never belonged to this world. It appeared where it pleased, tested whom it pleased, and vanished when it had exhausted its curiosity. That was its nature.

Except here.

Here, something had gone wrong.

Something that could break down the mightiest of heroes.

Was bound down with just the will of one person.

Pride.

The bastard had shackled even this.

Ludwig exhaled slowly as the conclusion settled into place. Pride’s influence had not merely infected the tower’s upper floor or twisted its mechanics. He had forced the entire entity to remain anchored in Ikos against its will, reducing an impossible wandering construct into something half-functional, only capable of partially escaping by opening and closing every fifty years like a prisoner testing weak bars.

Ludwig couldn’t have known this if not for the fact that the Tower bargained with Necros for its own departure.

It wanted to leave and couldn’t, and only Necors’s champion was capable of allowing it to leave.

Now Pride was dead.

And the tower was finally free to leave this world behind.

A notification appeared in front of Ludwig.

[The Tower is departing from the world of Ikos.]

[By agreement, the tower has opened a portal in its first floor allowing the members of the different races living there to leave toward {Bastos March}. They will be waiting for you there.]

"At least it kept its promise." Ludwig looked up. Gale had already disappeared into his book, after all this event was too eye-catching. And a standing Death Knight was bound to cause issues.

The cracks widened.

A deep hum spread through Politia, vibrating windows, shaking rooftops, and causing decorative stonework to rattle loose from noble estates and merchant halls alike. Citizens poured into the streets in confusion.

Guards atop the surrounding walls shouted orders nobody was listening to. Adventurers near the tower perimeter looked upward with expressions ranging from reverence to pure existential horror.

The summit dissolved first.

Not shattered.

Dissolved.

The uppermost floors fragmented into countless black particles that drifted upward into the sky like reverse snowfall. The process spread downward rapidly, floor by floor unraveling into dark motes of dead stone and fading mana. Entire sections of architecture simply ceased to be, their matter decomposing into spiraling ash-like remnants before disappearing into nothingness.

It looked less like destruction and more like a being politely packing its belongings.

Kaiser folded his arms while observing the phenomenon with quiet interest. "I have never seen a structure express such obvious displeasure."

Ludwig barked out a tired laugh. "Can’t blame it. If I got stuck dealing with Pride for centuries, I’d leave too."

That earned the faintest hint of amusement from Kaiser, though his eyes remained fixed on the vanishing monument. "You realize what this means, yes?"

"Politia is about to collectively lose its mind?"

"No," Kaiser replied. "You just altered a permanent truth of this empire."

That was harder to laugh off.

He was right.

This was not merely some dungeon being cleared. The Tower of Trials had been a fixture of the world, a constant. Entire generations had lived and died with the assumption that it would always remain where it stood. Its disappearance was not just an event. It was a historical wound being carved directly into the empire’s memory.

Already, bells were ringing from deeper within the city.

Alarm bells.

Temple bells.

Watchtower bells.

A chaotic orchestra of panic.

The lower half of the tower unraveled faster now, black stone shedding itself layer by layer until only a hollow silhouette remained against the sky, like reality itself struggling to remember what had occupied that space moments prior.

Then even that vanished.

Gone.

Not hidden.

Not sealed.

Gone.

Where the Tower of Trials had stood for centuries was now simply empty air framed by the surrounding walls built specifically to contain something that no longer existed.

Silence spread outward like a wave.

The kind of silence born only from mass disbelief.

Thousands of people stared upward at absence, trying and failing to process what they had just witnessed.

A merchant dropped an entire crate of produce.

Some noblewoman screamed.

One elderly scholar collapsed onto his knees so dramatically Ludwig briefly wondered if the old man had just died on the spot.

And Ludwig, after nearly a year of recursive suffering compressed into a few miserable hours, pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

"I genuinely do not have time for this," Ludwig muttered as he began walking away while more people flooded the streets.