My Charity System made me too OP

Kael grinned. "NOW!"

They hit the last two towers together—charged seals and detonator glyphs.

Six towers destroyed.

Silence.

Then a deafening collapse of rhythm.

Not absence.

Release.

The sleepers dropped—safe, alive, but unconscious.

The red glow faded.

Daen Verrik, the Conductor, fell to one knee.

Breathing.

Bleeding rhythm.

Aris approached slowly.

"You could've helped us."

He looked up, smiling sadly. "I did. I showed you what control really is."

Then, his eyes flickered.

The Choir's pulse surged once more—

And Daen vanished into a flash of inverted rhythm, extracted remotely.

Gone.

Leon joined her. "Did we win?"

Aris exhaled. "No. We survived."

Kael's voice crackled in. "One last thing. The Choir left a signal trace. It's encrypted—but the destination is clear."

Roselia nodded.

"Floor 400."

Aris closed her eyes.

They were halfway to the top.

And the real Refrain… had only just begun.

Tower Level 312 – Vanguard Recovery Hub

It was quiet.

Not empty.

Just still.

A rare thing in a structure built on pulse, rhythm, and motion. The kind of quiet that made you think instead of move. A rare pause between one fight and the next.

Aris sat on the edge of a medical cot, fingers wrapped around a cooling mug of tea. Her knuckles were scraped. Her arms bore fresh memory bruises—faint glows left behind by rhythm feedback. But her eyes were clear.

Leon stood beside the window, watching the slow, coordinated movement of pulse elevators outside.

"You scared the hell out of us," he said, still not turning around.

"You say that after every mission," Aris replied.

"This time, I meant it."

A beat passed. Then she added, "I felt it too. He was pulling us in. If Roselia hadn't severed the last two towers…"

Leon turned now, finally facing her. "You wouldn't have stopped."

"No."

"You would've gone with him into that last pulse collapse."

Aris looked down at her hands.

"I don't think he was lying," she said. "Daen. I think... he believed everything he said."

Leon nodded slowly. "That's what made him dangerous."

Elsewhere

Kael sat cross-legged on the floor of the rhythm lab, data logs and pulse readouts floating around him in slow holographic rotation. His hands flicked through recordings, decrypting rhythm patterns, trying to understand what Daen Verrik had truly been.

What he found wasn't comforting.

"He wasn't being controlled, Roselia," he said, not looking up.

She leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "I know."

"He volunteered. But more than that—he succeeded. He became a signal hub. A living transmitter for Choir command structures. Not a puppet. A prototype."

Roselia stepped forward. "You think they'll build more?"

Kael hesitated.

"They already have."

He projected a string of readings from Floor 400's outer sectors.

Echo traces.

Six identical bursts—mirroring Daen's command cadence, but tuned differently. More refined.

They weren't just continuing the project.

They were scaling it.

Later That Night

Aris walked alone through the Garden Core—one of the only places in the Tower untouched by the Choir, a vertical forest carved through glass and silence.

There was no music here. Just breath. Wind. Water.

And memory.

She paused beside a tree that still bore the scars of an old explosion from Floor 308. The place where they'd almost lost Roselia. The place where Aris first learned how far she'd go to protect the people who fought beside her.

The bark was smooth now.

Healed.

But the crack still showed underneath.

Footsteps approached.

Kael.

"No readings tonight?" she asked, not turning.

"No."

They stood in silence.

Then he said, "Floor 400's different. It's not just a Choir base. It's a relay. Whatever they're doing there—it connects all the way up."

"To the origin of the Refrain?" Aris asked.

Kael nodded.

"And maybe further."

She finally turned to face him. "Then that's where we break it. Not the signal. The source."

A pause.

"Are we ready for that?" he asked.

Aris didn't smile.

But her voice was steady.

"We weren't ready for 353. Or 379. But we're still standing."

"And the Conductor?"

She looked up.

"He taught me something."

Kael raised an eyebrow.

"That rhythm without purpose is just noise. And the Choir's song?"

She stepped forward.

"We end it."

Tower Level 310 – East Wing Barracks – Shared Quarters

The room smelled like actual food for once.

Not rations. Not energy paste. Real, cooked food—thanks to Roselia, who'd hacked into the Tower's sealed culinary unit and found enough ingredients to make something that resembled a stew.

"I swear this used to be a garden sector," she said, stirring the pot. "Or maybe a greenhouse. Now it's just where the Tower hides all the good spices."

Leon leaned back in a chair, arms behind his head. "Doesn't matter. This beats pulse bars and synth water any day."

Kael sat at the table, poring over his datapad even as he chewed. "Technically, those pulse bars are designed to optimize body recovery."

"And technically," Roselia said, setting down a steaming bowl in front of him, "you can shut up and eat something with flavor."

Aris sat cross-legged by the wall, her armor half-unfastened, hair pulled back. She watched her team—really looked at them.

Leon, still cracking jokes even with burn tape around his ribs.

Roselia, focused but calm, her seals glowing faintly on her gloves from earlier fine-tuning.

Kael, muttering to himself about waveform degradation between bites of stew.

They were a mess.

A beautiful, defiant mess.

And they were hers.

"So," Leon said, glancing up, "Floor 400."

Everyone paused.

He stirred his spoon lazily.

"Anyone else think it's weird we've made it this far? Half the Tower's gone dark. Choir's adapting faster than ever. And we're still breathing."

Kael shrugged. "Statistically improbable. But not impossible."

Roselia leaned forward. "It's more than that. We're syncing. Each battle we survive—our rhythm tightens. We're becoming a single pulse."

Aris said nothing.

Leon caught her eye.

"You think we'll come back from this one?"

Aris didn't answer right away.

She stood, walked to the side rack, and picked up her baton. It was clean now. Recalibrated. Waiting.

"If we don't," she said quietly, "then the Choir writes the ending."

She turned, gaze sharp.

"But if we hold the line... we write the final note."