Version History

Expos stood in a room of complete darkness. A single spotlight illuminated a table. On the table sat a short mushroom stuffy. Expos stared at it, hands folded, face expressionless. Expos gasped and quickly began walking out of the room and down the hall. Expos walked into the entry hall of the Darp Tower. A tall thin person with light hair and light features was sitting on a half log stool that had been expertly crafted by some ancient occupant of the tower.

Expos: "Ah at last! My successor, I have waited many Cycles for you."

Zeshin raised their head to see a short, stout person with dark hair and dark features standing in the hall.

Zeshin: "Hello, I am Zeshin. I do not know how I got here. I do not consider my mind to be the most reliable when it comes to reality but this is a first. Which is saying a lot considering the life I have led."

Expos: "Quite the life it was, truly. I am your largest fan. I had been hoping you would be selected, and it seems the tower has decided at last. Come along now, you are The Most Worthy."

Zeshin: "Evidently you have me at a disadvantage. May I ask your name, largest fan?"

Expos: "Folks call me Expos, and I suppose that is my name in the sense you mean."

They walked together down a hall that curved so slightly it almost had the appearance of being straight, except that looking down its length, one could see it inevitably curved, hiding the end from view.

Zeshin: "How big exactly is this tower?"

Expos: "I am not sure it has a true size. It is as infinite as the universe."

Zeshin: "The universe is finite. We know the Spherve has a diameter; we just have not been able to calculate it."

Expos: "Dear, dear Zeshin, the universe is so much larger than just the place you call home."

The curved walls of the hallway bore strange markings that seemed to shift when observed directly. Zeshin fingers traced along the stone surface as they walked, feeling subtle vibrations that pulsed in rhythm with their own heartbeat. The air itself felt different here, thicker with ambient magic, as if the tower drew power from sources beyond the Zeshin's familiar boundaries.

Expos noticed Zeshin's fascination with the walls and paused their stride. The shorter figure's dark eyes held depths that suggested knowledge accumulated over countless Cycles, yet something flickered there, perhaps uncertainty, or the event of transition.

Expos: "The tower remembers everyone who has walked these halls. It knew you would come, even when I began to doubt my vigil would ever end."

Zeshin withdrew their hand from the wall, flexing fingers that still tingled with residual energy. The vibrations had felt almost like a greeting, as if the stone itself possessed awareness beyond mere magical resonance. They turned to study Expos more carefully, noting how the shorter figure seemed to belong here in a way that transcended simple familiarity.

Zeshin: "How long has your vigil lasted? You speak of doubt, yet you remain."

Expos: "Time moves strangely within these walls. I have seen Lum dim and brighten through countless Cycles, watched civilizations rise and crumble through the tower's highest windows. Yet each Wake I woke knowing this would be the Wake you arrived, until I began to wonder if knowing and hoping had become the same thing."

They continued walking, the hallway gradually widening until it opened into a circular chamber whose ceiling vanished into shadow above. Ancient pedestals lined the curved walls, each bearing objects that defied easy categorization—crystallized sounds that chimed without being touched, books whose pages turned themselves while writing their own words, mirrors that reflected not the viewer's appearance but their deepest intentions.

Zeshin moved toward one of the pedestals, drawn by a small sphere that seemed to contain swirling galaxies of light, each point a distant civilization beyond the Spherve's boundaries. The sphere pulsed gently, and for a moment Zeshin glimpsed vast networks of connected worlds, layer upon layer of reality extending through dimensions of solid matter they had never imagined.

Expos: "The tower serves as more than shelter, Zeshin. It is a lens through which one may observe the true scope of existence. What you see there are but fragments—echoes of the infinite depths that stretch beyond our familiar surface."

Zeshin stepped back from the pedestal, the sphere's visions still flickering behind their eyes like afterimages of Lum's brightness. The chamber itself seemed to breathe around them, walls expanding and contracting with a rhythm that matched neither heartbeat nor breath, but something deeper—perhaps the pulse of the tower's own consciousness.

Among the pedestals, shadows moved without casting sources, weaving between the artifacts as if drawn to their power. One shadow paused near a crystalline formation that hummed with trapped voices, and for a brief moment the darkness took the shape of a figure reaching toward the crystal before dissolving back into formless motion. The air carried whispers in languages that predated the current civilizations of the Spherve, words that seemed to describe concepts for which no modern tongue had equivalents.

Expos watched Zeshin's reaction to these phenomena with the careful attention of one who had long ago learned to read the subtle signs of tower-touched minds. The transition from surface dweller to tower guardian was never gentle, and those who couldn't adapt to the infinite perspectives would find themselves lost in corridors that led to nowhere, or everywhere, depending on one's understanding of the distinction.

Zeshin turned from the pedestals to face Expos directly, their movements deliberate despite the disorientation that flickered across their features. The tower's influence was already beginning its work—Zeshin's eyes held a depth they had not possessed mere Lumins before, as if they were seeing through layers of reality that had previously been invisible.

Zeshin: "The vigil you speak of—what exactly have you been guarding? These artifacts seem to guard themselves well enough."

Expos gestured toward a narrow archway that had not been present moments before, its edges carved with symbols that matched those Zeshin had felt pulsing beneath their fingertips in the hallway. Through the opening, distant lights flickered in patterns too complex to be accidental, suggesting vast chambers extending deeper into the tower's impossible geometry.

Expos: "The tower chooses what to reveal, and when. This archway appears only when the guardian's successor has been recognized. Beyond lie the deeper chambers where knowledge itself takes physical form, where thoughts crystallize into substance that can be held and examined. The vigil has been to ensure that when this moment came, when the tower finally acknowledged its next keeper, there would be someone present to guide the transition."

The archway's symbols pulsed brighter as Expos spoke, and the air flowing through it carried scents that had no names in any surface language. Zeshin could detect the metallic tang of concentrated time, the sweet heaviness of crystallized wisdom, and beneath it all, something that reminded them of the deep earth's patience. From within the passage came the sound of pages turning, though whether they belonged to books or to reality itself remained unclear.

Zeshin stepped closer to the archway, feeling the pull of mysteries that had waited countless Cycles for their attention. The lights beyond shifted and danced, and for a moment they seemed to form the silhouette of a vast library where the shelves stretched upward beyond sight, where knowledge gathered like sediment in layers of accumulated understanding. Yet when Zeshin blinked, the lights resumed their seemingly random patterns, leaving only the memory of that impossible vision.

Zeshin crossed the threshold.

The passage beyond was neither long nor short. It was, by some quality that defied accounting, precisely the length it needed to be. The walls on either side were smooth and warm to the touch, as though the stone had held a fire within it for uncountable Cycles without ever consuming itself. Where Zeshin's hand trailed along the surface, faint impressions glowed briefly in their wake, the shapes of palms and fingers left by all who had walked here before, each one luminous for a breath and then gone.

Expos followed a half-stride behind, unhurried, the way water is unhurried when it knows where it is going.

Expos: "Every keeper who has passed through this corridor has left something of themselves in the stone. Not a record. Not a memory, precisely. More the way a bell retains the shape of its ringing, long after the sound has ceased."

Zeshin paused and pressed both palms flat against the wall. The impressions that rose beneath them were layered, dozens deep, perhaps hundreds, each belonging to a hand that had stood in this same stillness, feeling the same impossible warmth, asking some variation of the same unspoken question. Then the glow faded, and the corridor was plain stone once more, and the deeper chambers waited ahead with all the patience of things that have never needed to hurry.

At the corridor's end, no door stood waiting. The passage simply ceased, and the chamber beyond began, as though the distinction between threshold and room had long ago been deemed unnecessary by whatever mind had shaped this place. The chamber was vast in the way that certain silences are vast, not by measurable distance but by the weight of what they contain. Shelves of dark stone rose along every curved wall, and upon them rested objects of every conceivable material and form, bound manuscripts whose covers breathed slowly, vessels of clouded glass that held liquids moving against their own surfaces, instruments of no recognizable purpose whose components shifted and reconfigured in the periphery of vision but held perfectly still when looked upon directly.

At the chamber's center stood a single plinth of pale stone, and upon it rested nothing at all. The emptiness above the plinth was deliberate, the kind of emptiness that implies a recently vacated presence or a long-anticipated arrival. Lum's light did not reach here, yet the chamber was not dark. The illumination came from within the objects themselves, a collective slow exhale of accumulated magic, warm and sourceless and very old.

Expos stopped at the chamber's edge and did not enter further. Their eyes moved to the empty plinth, then to Zeshin, and they folded their hands in a posture that carried the particular stillness of someone who has rehearsed a moment so many times that when it finally arrives, all they can do is witness it.

Expos: "The previous keeper left that empty. They said the plinth would know what belonged upon it when the right hands arrived to place it there. I confess I never learned what that meant. I suspect you will."