Miku pushes herself off of the floor, staring at those two solid doors firmly shut closed. Had her eyes been deceiving her? The Blooming Wave- the lustrous, first blessing they'd all been encouraging her to procure, and her friends having done nothing but give her that extra boost she needed- now taken by one she held dear.

Kaito, the boy who had swooped down to rescue her when they were small children. That kind, caring person who first comforted her when there was no one else. Where is that boy now?

She rises to her feet and sweeps the dust away from the central gap of the doors. She claws her hands, presses her fingertips into the slit, and does her best to force them to open. All Miku wants is one. One explanation, one word, one something, to understand the meaning of this. She doesn't expect to enter the room like it's sugar and rainbows and begin laughing with him, all she wants- all she needs is the confirmation that this is one big misunderstanding.

When the exertion almost sweeps her off her feet, she repeatedly bangs a fist against the entrance, and screams at the top of her lungs.

"Kaito! Kaito!" She pounds the doors instantaneously. Miku realizes her careless efforts, futile, and snivels. "How could you..." Striking one last weak punch to the door, she cries, "Kaito... please, you're not like this..."

She whimpers and slides herself down to floor.

No one is comforting her as the remaining eight stand their ground, listening to Miku's sobs. She doesn't hear them shedding tears like she is, nor are their faces covered in shock, but apathy.

"Th-the top of the tower," the tealette quivers. "The top of the tower! M-maybe going to the top will fix this. It'll open the doors a-and I'll get the blessing as I'm supposed to... That has to be it. It has to be!" Miku heaves her body up and wipes her tears with the back of her hand. "We g-got to get to the second floor."

She pushes past her friends. Head low and eyes averted, she has no means of facing the others. Whether they are watching her or not, the second floor is all that matters right now.

✧

The floor grumbles beneath Miku's feet that the flat bottoms of her shoes cause her to slip. She reaches a hand behind her to the cold stone walls. As soon as she does, an immediate blast of warm air hits her face from ahead and the goosebumps arise from her skin.

She sees the faint orange-red light pour from the doors, shimmer, and dissipate so that every inch of their floor is filled with a sudden warmth. The doors are open.

A bright orange circle spins atop the pedestal, enwrapped in lambent embers around its outer borders. The center of it depicts the small shape of a fire that, too, looks to be fervid.

(This is...)

The Fire Banquet. The second blessing confined within the tower that sealed away most of the world's fires. Natural fires, ones such as wildfires, were not to be started so casually because of its confinement. Man-made fires from rocks or an ignition from twigs fortunately weren't kept away, except they would never burn long enough until the flame went out with the snap of someone's fingers.

Miku narrows her eyes at the second blessing. Right now she has every intent of sprinting forward to at least brush her fingertips against it and hope that would be enough to take it in because she's not going to back out of taking this one.

She strides over to the Fire Banquet, a look of uncertainty as she gulps. She wants to get this blessing as quick as possible, no hesitations regardless of what happens to her, all this just to reach the top...

'For Kaito...' she thinks.

She makes it a foot past the doors until she's stopped.

"You're weak."

A hand on Miku's shoulder aggressively shoves her back; her flats skid the floor. She blinks and a tangle of brown hair and its red-jeweled hairpin block her view of the Fire Banquet.

"You're not brave."

"Meiko, what are you doing- what are you saying?" Miku steps closer to shove Meiko away, but the brunette pulls out her sword that leaves Miku defenseless. The tealette flinches.

"You're just a coward." Meiko's eyes are now a passionate red Miku can even see the mercilessness behind. Meiko scoffs, slides the sword into her belt, and turns away to face the blessing. "Take this as a lesson and never let your guard down."

Slam!

Miku can still hear the chirping of crickets that one summer day in the field when Meiko was out practicing her swordsmanship. When after urging Meiko for approval, Miku was allowed to take a swing with the sword she was given. "Be careful," she remembers Meiko telling that six-year-old tealette, who nodded ferociously as she scrunched up her face and swung the blade for the trunk of the tree. The thud of the sword wedging into the bark was one of her prized memories. That loud thud she'll never forget because she'd accomplished something after the incident...

"Meiko, wait-"

And here she can compare that same noise to the slamming of the doors before her face.

Miku pants as she runs a hand through her hairline. "Guys, don't you think there's another way to reverse all of this?" she says out of panic, turning around to look at her friends.

Yet out of all the same emotionless figures as they were the floor below, she notices Mayu appearing solicitous as she worryingly tosses her head to Ia. Ia doesn't acknowledge her younger sister and once five seconds of silence pass, out of nowhere she bolts toward the next set of stairs to the third floor, holding Mayu's hand and dragging her along.

"Ia, Mayu!?" Miku chases them to the following floor.

Ia waits for the rumbling to come to a halt while Mayu hesitantly watches her do so. (She looks afraid, like she wants to cower in fear. She gulps.) The doors bellow and impatiently, the elder sister runs forth to the room of which the doors have not yet opened, and let's go of her sibling's hand.

"Ia!" Mayu hollers. She moves herself toward the room, however a blinding light spills from the blessing behind the door and she blocks her arms over her eyes.

Grace of Sunlight envelops the group in complete brightness much like the sun, and Mayu lowers her arms to see Ia approaching it confidently. Ia had been the most optimistic of the ten, to find the silver lining to shed light onto a problem... maybe here she's become part of the problem. Mayu furrows her brow.

She clenches her fists and barks, "Huh!? So after all these years of being with you, this is how you leave me!?"

Ia is silent.

She remains silent for ten more seconds that Mayu's already fed up and is ready to stomp her way over to her. But Ia, with her back to them, looks over her shoulder and smiles complacently.

"... If you were given the choice, wouldn't you choose power over a sibling as well?"

Mayu widens her eyes and opens her mouth to yell back. And despite the doors closing, she stamps a foot and hollers to Ia as if she could still hear her.

"F-fine! If that's how you're going to be, th-then... you won't be the only one with a blessing!"

The younger sister spins on her heels and runs past Miku to the next set of stairs. The tealette is overwhelmed with disbelief. She can't seem to put it all together. Everything's jumbled up in her mind and her surroundings keep moving- all happening too fast- it's incomprehensible.

Then there's a rumble upstairs echoing throughout the tower. Miku pants, tears up the steps, and reaches the fifth floor. Immediately the all-too-familiar slamming of doors rings in her ears before she could peek at the shadowy blessing Mayu stole, Peaceful Darkness.

Miku blinks when she begins to feel tears form in the corners of her eyes. She stares agape at the two doors, heart pounding from her chest.

"You're weak," Meiko's voice repeats in the back of her mind. "You're not brave. You're just a coward." (She's never heard Meiko sound so harsh...)

"... wouldn't you choose power over a sibling as well?" Ia's question resounds. (When was she ever that cruel to her sister?)

"...th-then... you won't be the only one with a blessing!" There was Mayu. (She has not once been as frustrated by her sibling...)

"I'm the chosen one... I am the Messiah..." Miku swipes her hand over her eyes full of tears. She shouts, "I thought you all knew that! You all encouraged me to come to this tower, s-so... was everything you all said lies!?"

She bellows and no one replies. Wavering, she looks to the stairs where she sees Gakupo walking up step by step, ignoring her like everything that came out of her mouth was frivolous. He clenches his fists and places a foot on the last stair until he is yanked back by a tug on his purple garments.

"Gakupo..." Miku croaks, "... everything I believed from you guys... it was all a hoax, wasn't it?"

He doesn't turn his head. She watches his back and sees him move his hands, clasp them together, then hears him mumble something under his breath that she couldn't make out.

"Wasn't it!?" the tealette repeats.

Finally he lowers his arms. Without any regard towards Miku, Gakupo walks up the last steps as she fumbles for balance. She scurries up after him and the rumbling of the doors follow, but this time the rumble sounded different. Like a tremor erupting from the ground. Although it seemed impossible to be one considering they were on the sixth floor, it sounded exactly like it.

The doors open and the blessing is caramel-colored, brown and displaying hexagonal shapes within the circle. The Trembling Ground is what it is, possessing the soil of the Earth and every bit of its terrain. And Miku, on her knees, pants as her eyes are attached to Gakupo who doesn't hesitate to receive the blessing with his arms spread and a crooked... crooked smile upon his face.

Soon that smile disappears behind the solid stone doors.

"Why..." Miku huffs.

She notices the legs of someone in front of her- someone who stops in front of her spilt bag on the floor a short distance away from her. From the bag, the scroll, a coil of rope, and two books scatter. The individual bends down and picks up one of the books.

"Gumi...?"

Gumi ignores Miku's uttering and carries the book with her to the stairs.

Miku's been shunned too many times; each floor was just another way for them to turn against her one by one. Each blessing that was stolen was one more detriment to the prophecy on the scroll that Miku cannot have. Despite her current state, she pushes herself off the floor and scurries over to the greenette. Gumi is unfazed when Miku jumps on the steps in front of her to block off the entrance.

"I'm not letting you get past me!" Miku shuts her eyes and screams. "I won't... I won't let you take the next blessing!"

"Miku, move out of the way," Gumi demands.

"I'm not going to let you leave me. You know how much I need these blessings; the prophecy tells me I need these blessings!"

"Miku, this is for your own good-"

"I won't allow you to leave me... never. This is how it has to be!"

"Miku, I said: move out of the way!"

Gumi runs up the stairs toward Miku and pushes the tealette out of her way. Miku is thrown against the wall, pain jolting every part of her body awake, but her muscles tense. She starts to hear the rumbling from this floor, much like how Gakupo's differed, this one did, too. A roar of thunder before a lightning strike, loud enough that it shakes everyone alert and filling them with fear.

The blessing itself was very much the same. Rumble of Thunder for the thunderclaps and high voltage lightning in the wake of deadly storms. It depicts itself as two intertwined zigzags for lighting bolts in the center of a yellow-green circle among the pedestal.

Gumi throws herself into the room of the blessing, stands in front of the Rumble of Thunder, and reads a line from a page in the book as she smiles maliciously. (She expresses no sign of remorse towards Miku...)

"'He who considers thyself a hero shall expect the unexpected,'" she hums. "Miku..." Miku meets eye to eye with Gumi across the room. Gumi lowers her eyebrows; an impudent expression. "...expect that this is for your own good."

The tealette shuts her eyes closed to the sound of the doors and, too, flinches after she feels someone wrap an arm around hers. She's surprised to see Luka to her left, oddly enough with a smile on her lips while trying to help Miku balance herself on her feet.

"Luka? You're..."

Luka interrupts her with the scroll in her free hand, extending it to Miku, smiling. "Take the scroll."

Miku swiftly nods and takes it as Luka wanted.

Why is it now that- after all that's happened- one of them decides to be nice? Luka even looks unaffected by the incidents these past few floors.

"... Why are you being nice to me?" Miku says aloud suddenly.

Luka continues up the stairs with the tealette following in her steps and the shepherd twins behind her. Luka almost stops for a second as if briefly contemplating the question, then presses onward.

The dancer whispers, "Don't you trust me?"

Miku is quiet.

Luka takes the first step on the eighth floor for the rumbling. The ground shakes and soon a blast of wind sweeps the room as the Rondo of Whirlwind shows itself through the doors. It's a swirl of green encased in a circle for the blessing beyond the room.

Hum...

Hum...

She can't but hear it. Luka can hear the blessing resound a small melody, the tiny noises from the rushing of wind encircling the Rondo of Whirlwind create a tune that attracts her to it. Ultimately, she sways her body to the dulcet notes. She feels one with the blessing.

"Luka..."

A voice leads Luka's swaying to come to a halt. She turns around to Miku. The tealette has her fists clenched and a firm grip on the scroll.

"I trust you." Miku's expression, desperate for her attention, grows into a frown as a couple tears stream her cheeks. "If I were to say I trust you... that wouldn't change a thing, would it?" Miku laughs facetiously, teardrops dripping from her chin.

Luka stares at her long and hard, nearly wide-eyed as if tears would fall from her eyes as well. But they don't. No matter how much it looked like she was going to, she was restraining herself... Instead the dancer gulps, removes the thick, yellow, silk fabric wrapped around her arms, and clenches them tight in her hands, shaking her head as she leaps toward the Rondo of Whirlwind.

"Not one bit," Luka smirks.

('Her conceited smile looked weak just about now... Is she...')

Slam!

"Rin... Len..." Miku whispers while wiping tears from her cherry-red face. Only one of the twins turn her way... Rin avoids the looks of them both. "Please... don't..."

Miku hiccups, wiping away the last of her tears. She rubs her eyes with her palms and looks over to where she thought they'd be standing. None of them moved. Len's gaze remains fixed on her, steady and unwilling. This makes Miku crack the tiniest of a smile.

One last time she swipes the back of her hand over her eyes and lightly nods. She clutches the scroll to her chest, likely crumpling the parchment as she leisurely goes up the stairs. The twins follow in her pursuit, both quiet. Miku doesn't mind this; perhaps they were getting emotional like she was, only keeping their feelings locked away. Miku presses a foot to the floor and the cycle loops: one step, a rumble, open doors, a blessing. The same cycle she's followed for eight floors.

She realizes that upon being the first on the ninth floor, Rin and Len have entered and walked further into the room- halfway before the doors. Halfway before the blessing, Garden of Silver Snow. Ice, snow, frozen cold- Garden of Silver Snow, the coldest of the blessings as implied from its name.

Miku catches Rin eyeing the blessing, eagerly grasping the shepherd's crook in her hands. The tealette pauses and thinks to herself: Could it be that Rin wants it, too?

"No," a voice- Len's voice- commands. He remains stiff in his position with a tight grip on his own staff. "Rin, no matter how much you're thinking about it- the Garden of Silver Snow- the answer is no!"

Rin first lowers her head and states lowly, ignoring his previous statements, "Ia was right... I would."

"Rin, wh-"

"I would choose power over some stupid sibling."

She turns her gaze to the walls, puts a hand on Len's arm, and thrusts him backward that he almost collides with Miku. Rin pushes herself off to the doors and the blessing the room stored.

Len extends a hand to Rin as if reaching for her. "Rin! Stop-!"

She steps into the room that inhabits the Garden of Silver Snow. Len, with his pleas unanswered and Rin refusing to give him a response, finally watches her turn back. Her eyes a staggering crystal blue like solid ice glistening under the sun as tears of joy flee from them.

Her drops of tears don't last too long; forced to freeze just as they flew from her milk-white cheeks. The blessing's doing, Len supposes. She smiles at them without a trace of regret on her expression but her frozen tears falling from her eyes.

The doors slam before her.

"Rin..." Len utters softly.

He stares at the solid stone right there that he could just reach out and touch as if Rin was there to grab his hand, but she's on the other side that separated him from her and her from him. All's quiet and he watches the dust clouds settle from the closing. He grips his shepherd's crook.

Miku starts, "Len, I'm... I-"

"... Let's go to the tenth floor," he replies hesitantly.

She doesn't refuse because she doesn't want to add another burden to him on top of what just happened with his sister. She complies and follows him... however, halfway up the stairs Miku trembles at the thought of something she pauses in the middle of the steps for.

"Len..." He looks over to her. "You're going to leave me, aren't you? Just like everyone else... just like Kaito and Meiko and Ia and Mayu a- ... and everybody else who left me for a blessing! Isn't that right? ... Aren't I right?"

Len pauses, fumbling for words. "Miku, I... I w-"

"Will?"

"Won't... I... I won't."

Miku doesn't smile. She can see the burning fire in his eyes.

'Lies.'

Without question, he faces forward and continues up. Miku silently follows.

'He's not telling the truth, he's resisting. He's not telling the truth, he's resisting. He's not telling the truth. Lies lies lies. He's going to betray you. Betray betray betray.'

The light in between the doors fills with a bright orange, every crevice engulfed in its shining luminescence. The light looks as if it'll overflow- a bright liquid similar to the looks of lava. It pours out, its lava-like appearance causing Miku to flinch, but it bursts into dazzling little harmless sparks just like all the other rooms.

She knows Len is tempted to take the blessing, Fetal Movement of Magma, if not he must've already planned to take it floors prior, and yet he says nothing. Nor does Miku pass a glance to him or the blessing itself, but stares at the floor.

"Len... with these last moments before I go to the top of this tower... don't lie to me, please. I know you're going to turn your back on me, I know it even if you say you won't or you say nothing at all, but all I beg of you before you do..." she attempts a halfhearted smile, "is walk with me to the bottom of the next stairs. You can betray me afterwards and take the blessing I know you want... all I want is for you to come with me before the top. Then you can leave me."

She feels him staring at her bemusedly, and so she answers, "I want to feel that someone would be there for me when I get to the top. Even if they won't be with me when I'm there, knowing they at least cared enough to walk with me before then... I pray that that isn't too much to ask for."

Miku slowly walks across the room with her eyes to the stairs leading up. She's silent but her own heartbeat and not too long after, she hears footsteps behind her. One, one, two, two, she follows the sounds of his steps and hers out of sync with one another.

One, one, two, two, one, one, two, two, one, two.

She stops. Her foot had kicked a metal object sliding across the floor with a clang. Miku looks down at the object glinting from the light emitted from the Fetal Movement of Magma. A golden colored torch heavily adorned with miniscule designs around its body held up many claws meant to surround a flame at its top. She bends down and picks up the unlit torch, grasping both it and the scroll in her right hand. It must be for the top floor.

Miku stands and takes a couple more steps, stopping abruptly as she narrows her eyes. A tear falls.

"You can leave me now," she says, her voice hoarse. He doesn't move a muscle. "... L-leave me, Len!" Miku resorts her shouting to a low whisper, "take the  blessing and leave me... just like you want." She drops to her knees on the cold floor exactly as Len turns for the room.

Miku wipes her eyes, wanting to recover from this horrible mess she had flung herself into. She whimpers, tears nearly ceasing to flow, but impatiently she looks to her left where Len is- like she feared he'd leave her without one last glance. He's there extending an arm Miku's direction, clenching his shepherd's crook in his hand, gaze affixed to the crackling embers dancing the Fetal Movement of Magma.

Len turns back at her, smiling proudly. "Goodbye, Miku."

She stuffs her face in her hands and grits her teeth. Slam! When the doors close, the entire floor turns dark, dimming down to a blue light being casted across the walls.

They're all gone. Everyone's gone. Those she had trusted from start to finish, since she grabbed that boy's hand the day of the fire, the children are all lost now. After a continuous slam of doors- one after another after another- and a rumble from each floor, a blessing among a pedestal, and not even a proper farewell from any of her friends. They would all choose power over people who had cared for them fifteen years of their lifetime, with not a single minute wasted without them?

Miku didn't even claim a blessing. Not one of the nine. She fears what that would cause... would not taking any of the blessings prevent her from saving the world? Would it bring punishment upon her and the world would end, knowing its Messiah wasn't worthy enough to be a hero?

She waits for all her tears to dry, her eyes red from crying and her cheeks soaked. She blinks away the last of her teardrops and props a leg up, pushing herself to rise up. Miku shakes her head and looks down at the torch in her hand. The torch reflects the blue hue against its shining metal. She lifts her head to where the light was coming from and that had been the very top of the stairs.

The exit to the top floor was framed with pillars attached to either side of the wall, forming an arch overhead. However, the exit itself was gleaming brightly that seeing what was past it was near impossible. With nowhere else to go but up, Miku marches up each step one by one, clutching the golden torch to her chest, and reaches the entrance to the top of the tower...

✧

Miku opens her eyes from the blinding light as she walked through it like she was stepping into the unknown. She sees that the top of the tower is not but a flat stone floor, at least six columns protruding from the floor to curve up into the sky and form a dome shape high above her head, and a gigantic pattern beneath her feet resembling that of a circular maze.

She immediately notices that each line of the pattern on the floor leads to one of nine statues facing an altar in the dead center. Those statues, she realizes, are all holding one red candle in two of their stone hands. And the heads of those statues... no, they're skulls! Stone statues of what must be skeletons in long garments each holding a candle in their bony hands.

Suddenly, one of the candles light up and so does the next after and on and on it goes until they're all lit up.

Miku's can barely process what's going on right now and so she counts the statues slowly. 'Nine statues... nine skeletons...' she then recalls everything that had happened each of the ten floors. 'Nine blessings...'

Her eyes widen.

"Nine blessings, nine people, nine skeletons, no no no no..." She unravels the scroll in her hand. Quickly, she skims over the paragraphs until she locates a section she has yet to read. "'Once you step into the room of the blessing, the doors close with no way to reopen them. The person who obtains the blessing shall not receive power, but a punishment correlating with the blessing as they turn into a sacrifice for the good of the tower. The tower must have nine sacrifices, thus nine individuals to take the blessings, to allow the Messiah to save the world.'"

Miku's face is overrun with tears.

"My friends... they weren't betraying me, they were helping me!"

A/N:

Original recipe for Chapter 6:
- 5 cups of angst
- 10 teaspoons of salt
- 2 cups of sugar

My recipe for Chapter 6:
- 3 cups of angst
- 11 teaspoons of salt
- 40 cups of Miku's salty tears

I'm bad at following recipes.

I hope this chapter suffices! 4.4K+ words of attempted angst. Also congrats on "Blessed Messiah and the Tower of AI" finally reaching the 1 million views it deserves on Youtube! Also for being Yamashizuku's third popular Youtube video as of November 16/2016. I remember the day it released when it had 60,000 views *sheds a single tear*.

I hope you all understand how much more angsty it gets when 1.) in Ch 2, Len was described as "unpredictable" and here Miku was able to correctly predict he'd betray her, and 2.) also in Ch 2, Miku told Len that she wouldn't look back after agreeing to being the Messiah. While walking with Len to the stairs, she doesn't look back at him until he says his goodbye. :')

Lastly, I am so sorry this chapter took a month and a half to write, I was busy in October because of Inktober and school assignments. But I do update you guys on this fic's status on my account feed, (e.g. how far I've written the next chapter or how much longer it'll take), so check that out every once in a while if you wanna know my progress for future chapters. Well, a couple more chapters to go and this fic will be completed. ^^