And it was staring right at him.
Instead of taking the left lift, he launched himself off a crumbling edge, catching a weird physics bounce off a stray bullet meant for a different obstacle. He flew sideways, then up, clipping through the corner of a "solid" wall. The screen flickered. The word flashed in green text, a secret backdoor only the WTF glitch-hunters ever found.
Leo had died 847 times. He knew this because the counter in the top-left corner of his screen never lied. It was his curse, and his resume.
The golden light exploded. The Tower screamed, then shattered into a billion shimmering shards. Leo's screen went white. And in that silence, a single line of text appeared:
With a final, reckless leap, he didn't land on the Tiny Square.