When I passed through the gate, I suddenly found myself in a profound silence and tranquility. Expecting a narrow and dimly lit corridor, I was surprised by the small room that lay ahead. This was... a living space. Wooden shelves, dusty books, and scattered papers filled the area. A narrow, simple bed in the corner clearly indicated that someone had lived here once.

  As I looked around, a mix of the smell of old books and mold filled my nose. The room was quite old, but it still bore traces of the life that had once existed here. In the center, there was a large desk. Scattered papers, a broken ink bottle, and a few dried-up pens caught my attention. The clutter and chaos made me feel that someone had either hastily abandoned this place or that something had gone terribly wrong here.

  I approached the desk. Something had caught my eye. Blood. Yes, it had splattered onto a document right in the center of the desk. There were red stains on it, clearly indicating some kind of struggle or tragedy. I picked up the paper and focused on the messy writings on it. Most of it had been erased, stained, or was too damaged to read. However, at the bottom of the paper, there was something written in large letters:

  "Raulo Alvis."

  This name... it almost seemed to be written in blood. My heart raced for a moment. What had happened here? Who was Raulo Alvis? Was this the person behind everything I had encountered in this tower? Or was he just another victim? I carefully placed the document into my bag. There had to be some meaning to this, but I wasn’t in a position to find the answers right now.

  I began to look around more carefully. I walked over to the bookshelves and picked up a few of the books. Most were worn or unusable. The pages were either torn or the text had been smudged beyond recognition. I glanced at a few research papers as well, but they were either completely ruined or the writings made no sense. It was as if everything here had surrendered to time, hiding its secrets.

  I looked around the other corners of the room to see if there was anything else I could find. But there was nothing of value or use left. Most of it had been broken, decayed, or ruined.

  Just as I was about to give up, my eye caught something. At the other end of the room, a golden-embellished door leaned against the wall.

  I walked toward the door. The details, the fine craftsmanship, and the shining golden patterns set it apart from everything else in the room. It seemed to defy time, as if, while everything else had aged and decayed, this door remained untouched. I lightly touched my fingers to it. It was cold, yet somehow, it felt alive.

  "Why is this door different from everything else?" I murmured. I ran my hands lightly across it, but the door didn’t give any clues about a mechanism. It seemed as though it couldn't be opened from the outside.

  A sense of curiosity mixed with growing unease filled me. What was behind this door? Should I open it? Or was it another trap?

  I stared at the door for a while, then, taking a deep breath, I pushed harder with my hand. Would the door open? Or did I need to find a solution? My heart began to pound like a drum in my chest.

  As I pushed the door with force, instead of the usual creaking of old hinges, I heard a deep, echoing silence. Then, the door slowly creaked open, and a beam of pure white light spilled out, flooding the entire room. For a moment, it felt like my eyes were blinded, the brightness overwhelming everything. Instinctively, I shut my eyes with my hand, but the intensity of the light was so strong that it continued to shine even through my eyelids.

  As my vision began to return, I made the decision to step into the darkness beyond the light. There was a hesitation within me, but there was no turning back now. One step, then another... As I completely passed through the door, the cold air I had felt vanished instantly. That familiar sensation had returned, settling upon me once again.

  As I looked around, I was stunned to realize I was back in the same area with the three doors. "Back here again," I murmured. After the chaotic atmosphere of blood, dust, and fear in the arena, the calmness here felt almost surreal. The second door with the golems was now closed behind me. Only one door remained.

  Taking a deep breath, I looked at my hands. When I passed through the first door, a golden orb had appeared in my hands. Now, however, there was something similar in my hands, but this was different. A bright red orb... Inside it, there were fine veins moving, almost as if it were alive. It glowed faintly and radiated warmth.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  At that moment, I felt the weight of my bag change. Furrowing my brows, I looked at the bag. It shouldn't have been this light. With a rising sense of unease, I whispered, "I hope it’s not what I think it is," and quickly opened the flap.

  My eyes scanned the contents, or rather... tried to scan. Because the bag was nearly empty. The tough, durable Karanit materials I had gathered from the golems... They were all gone. Even the bloody paper with "Raulo Alvis" written on it, which I had taken from the desk, had disappeared. All that was left were a few basic materials and a couple of vials of elixir.

  "What is this?!" I shouted, rummaging through the bag again and again. But no matter how much I searched, the result didn’t change. All the things I had painstakingly collected were somehow gone.

  I paused for a moment and took a deep breath. There was no point in getting angry or panicking. "Maybe these orbs carry a price as much as they are rewards," I thought. A disturbing unease filled me. The tower was giving me something at every step, but at the same time, it was taking things from me. This cycle... somehow pushed me to want more and move forward. It was as if the rules of this game were based on both reward and punishment.

  I tightly gripped the red orb in my hand. Taking careful steps, I approached the final door. There was still a sense of disappointment from the past, but at the same time, I was filled with curiosity and determination. I couldn’t turn back now. The only remaining option was to complete this game.

  Taking a deep breath, I sat down, leaning my back against the cold stone wall. The warmth and fatigue settled over me. The relentless battle from the second door still echoed in my body. My fingers were still trembling, but my mind had started to think more clearly. I looked around, taking in the silence of the environment. For a brief moment, this silence gave me peace.

  After resting for a while, I slowly stood up, my muscles still trying to recover from the battle. My eyes shifted to the third door. It had a much more threatening aura than the others. Constantly changing geometric patterns shimmered across it. I focused on the shapes. For a moment, circles came together to form a spiral, and the next instant, sharp-edged triangles converged to create intricate designs. No pattern stayed the same for long. The tower, with each step, seemed to be wrapped in one more mystery.

  “There was a lion protecting its cub at the first door,” I murmured to myself, watching the movement of the patterns. “At the second door, there were massive golems... What about here? What’s behind this door?” There was both curiosity and fear inside me. But no matter what, I had to move forward.

  I approached the second door and took the key from the lock. Gripping it tightly, I walked toward the final door with slow steps. When I placed my hand on the cold, metallic surface of the door, the geometric patterns momentarily stopped, and it felt as though they were inspecting me. I took a deep breath and inserted the key into the lock. At that moment, the patterns around the hole started moving rapidly and began to emit light.

  I slowly turned the key. The sound of everything locking echoed in my ears as the heavy doors began to tremble and open. From the gap, once again, that familiar beam of white light poured in. As my eyes tried to adjust to the intense light, I slowly took a step forward and passed through the door.

  This time, I was ready to discover what lay behind the white light. My heart was pounding rapidly, but I stepped into the unknown. I felt like I was nearing the end of this journey, but at the same time, I couldn’t even imagine what this final door might offer me.

  When the light faded, I found myself in a very simple room. A square floor, high ceilings, and when I checked around, I saw it was almost entirely surrounded by bare walls. But just then, I noticed movement at the far end of the room.

  I took a few steps back in shock. "What is this?!" I shouted. But my copy immediately stepped back with me. It was perfectly mimicking my movements. I raised my hands, and it raised its hands. I tilted my head, and it tilted its head.

  "A copy... Exactly like me," I murmured. "But how is this possible?"

  Just then, the floor trembled slightly, and the walls suddenly began to move. The room around me was shifting, the floor and walls rearranging into a new pattern. To maintain my balance, I crouched down. When the space finally stopped moving, my copy was no longer in the same room as me.

  My eyes immediately searched between the moving walls for my copy. It was still within my sight, in another room. But the path to that room had completely closed off. It became clear now that this space was constantly changing, and I was being separated from my copy. "I need to figure this out," I thought.

  I carefully examined the surroundings. The four walls, the floor, and the ceiling of the room were entirely covered in geometric shapes. One wall had triangles, another had circles, and another had squares. Each seemed to be arranged in a different pattern.

  When the space began moving again, I noticed that the shapes on the walls remained fixed after a while. The shapes might have been indicating how the mechanism was operating.

  "Could these patterns... be indicating the direction of movement?" I thought. As it moved again, I watched carefully. Rooms with triangular patterns on their walls were moving faster. Rooms with squares remained still, while rooms with circles were rotating slowly, in a curved motion.

  After a while, I realized that these patterns were not only determining the direction of movement, but also indicating how the room would reshape. The triangles sharply shifted the rooms, the circles caused rotations, while the squares only made a steady transition.