The girl's name was Ravenna, and he learned this three hours after saving her when she finally worked up the courage to speak. Her voice came out small and cracked, like she didn't use it for anything except screaming in a long time.
"Why did you save me?"
They were moving through a section of forest that he knew was relatively safe, no major predator territories for at least two kilometers in any direction. He kept his pace slow enough that she could follow without exhausting herself, which meant slow enough to drive him insane.
"Does it matter?" he asked without looking back, eyes scanning the tree line for threats that weren't there.
"Yes." She stumbled over a root and caught herself, her tail unwrapping from her leg long enough to help with balance before curling back into its hiding position. "Nobody helps Infernals, so why did you?"
He could have lied and made up some noble reason about justice or fairness or believing in second chances, but he was tired of lying and she would probably see through it anyway since her blood came with built-in emotional sensing.
"Because I didn't want to watch you die."
"That's not a reason." She picked her way over a fallen log, using her tail for balance again.
"It's the only one I have."
She went quiet after that, following him through the forest with the careful silence of someone who expected betrayal around every corner. He couldn't blame her because half-demons had it rough even in the Tower where power was supposed to matter more than blood, and she probably spent her whole life being hunted by people who saw her horns before they saw her face.
They made camp as the light started to fade, stopping in a sheltered hollow between two massive tree roots. He set up a basic perimeter of tripwires while she watched with wide eyes, clearly not understanding why he was bothering to protect someone he just met.
"You can sleep," he said when the perimeter was finished, coiling the last of the wire around his palm. "I'll keep watch."
"All night?" She was already sinking down against one of the roots, exhaustion winning over suspicion.
"I don't need much sleep."
That was a lie because his body desperately needed sleep, the same as any eighteen-year-old's would after four days in the Tower. But his mind was twenty-six years old and spent years learning to function on two-hour naps between floor clears, and the habit was stronger than the exhaustion.
She curled up against the tree root, her tail wrapped around herself like a security blanket, and watched him with those mismatched eyes until exhaustion won and her lids finally slid closed.
'She's terrified of me, and I can't blame her.'
He killed four people in front of her without hesitation, without mercy, without even a flicker of emotion on his face. In her position he would be terrified too.
---
She woke up screaming, and he was across the camp before he consciously decided to move with his knife in hand and body positioned between her and the nonexistent threat. She stared at him with wild eyes, her breathing ragged and her hands clutching the leaves beneath her like she was trying to hold onto something solid.
"Nightmare," she gasped out while pulling her knees to her chest. "Just a nightmare, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."
"You're fine." He lowered the knife and stepped back, giving her space. "It happens."
'You used to wake up screaming too, after Floor 23, after Vex died the first time.'
She wrapped her arms around her knees and made herself as small as possible. In the dim light of the pre-dawn forest she looked younger than before, small and fragile in a way that made his jaw tighten.
"My name is Ravenna," she said quietly while picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. "Ravenna Cinderheart. I should have said that earlier because you saved my life and I didn't even introduce myself."
"Dante Graves." He crouched down so he wasn't looming over her, resting his forearms on his knees.
"Thank you, Dante." Her voice cracked on his name. "For everything, for not looking at me like I'm a monster."
'You're not a monster because the people who tried to kill you are monsters, and the difference isn't that hard to see.'
"Get some more sleep," he said instead while standing back up. "We're moving again at sunrise."
"Why are you helping me?" she asked, and there was something raw in the question that went beyond curiosity into genuine confusion. "You could have left me there or walked away. Everyone else does."
He looked at her, at the fear and the hope and the desperate need to understand, and made a decision he knew he would probably regret.
"I knew someone once." He sat down across from her with his back against the opposite root, putting the dead fire pit between them. "Half-demon with infernal blood, like you. He spent three years trying to prove he wasn't a monster and in the end he died saving people who never trusted him. His last words were asking me to tell them he was good."
She leaned forward slightly, her tail uncurling from her leg. "Did you? Tell them?"
"I never got the chance." He picked up a dead leaf and started tearing it into strips, giving his hands something to do. "Someone should have saved him and seen him for what he was before it was too late. That didn't happen."
He looked up and met her eyes. "So I saved you instead."
She started crying then, silent tears that rolled down her lavender cheeks without sound, and he had no idea what to do about it so he just sat there and let her cry until the sobs turned into hiccups and the hiccups faded into quiet breathing.
"I'm going to help you," she said finally while wiping her face with her sleeve, her voice stronger than it was since he met her. "I don't know how yet, but I'm going to find a way to pay you back."
'You don't have to because that's not why I did it.'
But he didn't say that because the determination in her eyes was the first real emotion he saw from her that wasn't fear, and he wasn't going to take it away.
"Get some sleep," he said again. "We have a long way to go."
---
The next few days fell into a rhythm as he led and she followed, learning his pace and his patterns with the quick adaptability of someone who spent their whole life reading people to survive. She fumbled at first, making noise when they needed to be quiet and freezing when they needed to move, but she learned faster than he expected.
By day seven she could set up a basic camp without instruction, and by day eight she could identify which plants were safe to eat, and by day nine she managed to kill a small rabbit with a rock, though the look on her face suggested she would have preferred not to.
"You're getting better," he told her while cleaning his knife on some leaves, and she lit up like he gave her a gift.
'This is dangerous because she's attaching and you're letting her attach.'
He knew he should push her away and be cold and distant and make it clear that this was temporary, that once they cleared Floor 1 she would have to find her own path because he had mountains to climb and demons to hunt and no room in his life for a scared girl who looked at him like he hung the stars.
But every time he tried to say the words, he saw the half-demon on Floor 50 dying with "tell them I'm good" on his lips, and his jaw clenched shut around the rejection.
'One floor, you can protect her for one floor, and after that she'll be strong enough to make her own choices.'
It was a lie and he knew it was a lie, but it was a comfortable lie, and he learned a long time ago that comfortable lies were sometimes the only thing keeping you moving forward.
---
On day ten they found the others, a group of candidates eight strong who set up a semi-permanent camp near what they thought was a water source. He knew the water was contaminated with low-level parasite eggs that would start killing them in about a week, but that wasn't why he stopped at the edge of their camp.
Adrian Cross stood in the center of the group, blonde hair catching the light, easy smile making people feel like they knew him forever. He was doing that thing he always did, the helpful humble routine that made everyone trust him instantly, and watching him made fists curl at his sides before he could stop the reaction.
'There you are, you piece of shit.'
Ravenna noticed his tension immediately, her emotional sensing picking up on the spike of rage before he could mask it.
"Dante?" She touched his arm lightly. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing." He forced his hands to relax while keeping his eyes on Adrian. "Just someone I recognize."
Adrian looked up then, saw the two of them standing at the edge of camp, and his smile widened in a way that made fingers itch for a knife.
"Hey there! Survivors?" Adrian waved them over while setting down the pot he was holding. "Come join us, we've got plenty of room. I'm Adrian."
'I know who you are and I know exactly what you're going to become.'
He made himself walk forward, made himself shake Adrian's hand, made himself accept the water and the seat by the fire like he was just another scared candidate looking for safety in numbers.
"Nice to meet you," he said, and the words tasted like ash. "I'm Dante, and this is Ravenna."
"Welcome to the group." Adrian's eyes flickered to Ravenna's horns and skin, and something shifted in his expression that wasn't disgust or fear, just calculation. "We don't discriminate here. Everyone's welcome as long as they pull their weight."
'So perfect, so reasonable, so fucking fake.'
He sat by the fire and watched his future betrayer play the hero, already counting the days until he could put a knife in Adrian's empty heart.