Ravenna knew something was different the moment Dante opened his eyes.
She had been watching him sleep, or pretending to sleep, for the past hour. His breathing had been wrong, too shallow and irregular, and his body had been radiating heat like he was fighting off a fever. When his eyes finally opened, they weren't the pale green she remembered.
They were, for just a moment, shot through with threads of gold.
"Dante?" Her voice came out smaller than she intended. "What happened to you?"
He sat up slowly with every movement careful and deliberate, like he was testing the limits of a body he wasn't quite sure was his anymore. The gold faded from his eyes as she watched, but something remained, an intensity that hadn't been there before.
"Nothing happened."
"That's a lie." She moved closer and reached out to touch his forehead, then pulled back immediately with a hiss of surprise. "You're burning up, you feel like a furnace."
"Side effect." He stood, and she saw him sway slightly before catching himself. "It'll pass."
From across the camp, Astrid's voice cut through the morning air. "That's not a fever, that's a power surge. I've felt them before, when someone absorbs something their body isn't ready for."
She was already on her feet and approaching them with the constant alertness that seemed to be her default state. Her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared while she circled Dante like she was trying to figure out what had changed.
"What did you do, Ghost?"
"None of your business."
"You left last night." It wasn't a question. "I heard you go, didn't follow because I figured you needed to piss or something. But you were gone for hours, and now you're coming back with enough power leaking off you to make my teeth itch." She leaned closer and inhaled deeply. "You smell different, older, like stone and lightning and something I don't have a name for."
He met her eyes without flinching, his expression giving away nothing.
"I found something and I took it, that's all you need to know."
"Like hell it is." But Astrid backed off, her expression shifting from suspicion to something that looked almost like respect. "Whatever you found, it's strong. I've heard stories from veterans about what Floor 40 power feels like, and this might actually be close. How did you even know where to look?"
'Because I've spent eight years learning every secret this Tower has to offer, because I came back specifically to exploit advantages that most climbers don't even know exist.'
"Lucky guess."
Neither of them believed him, but neither of them pushed it either, and after a long moment of silent standoff the camp returned to something resembling normalcy.
---
The transition to Floor 6 was scheduled for midday.
The survivors of Floor 5, maybe a hundred climbers in all, gathered before the arena's exit gate while Tower officials processed them and verified their eligibility. Dante stood with Ravenna and Astrid near the back of the crowd, watching the proceedings with the detachment of someone who had seen it all before.
His new power was still settling, still integrating, and he could feel it pulsing beneath his skin like a second heartbeat. The Core had changed more than his abilities because it had changed his perception, his awareness, his very relationship with the space around him.
He could sense the ley lines that ran beneath the arena, channels of energy that fed into the Tower's structure. He could feel the other climbers around him, their life forces flickering like candles of varying brightness. And far away, on a floor he couldn't see, he could sense something watching him back.
The Administrators, who had been flagging him since the beginning, but now their attention felt different, more focused and more concerned.
'Good, let them worry, let them wonder what I'm becoming.'
"Something's wrong with you."
Ravenna's voice was quiet, pitched so Astrid couldn't overhear from her position a few feet away. She was looking at him with those mismatched eyes, reading him the way she always did, seeing things he couldn't hide.
"I feel fine."
"That's what's wrong." She stepped closer, her tail curling around her own leg in a gesture of anxiety. "You've always been careful, controlled, even when you fight there's precision and restraint. Right now you feel like you're barely holding something back."
'Because I am, the Core power wants to be used and it's flooding my system while looking for an outlet.'
"I got something new," he admitted while choosing his words carefully. "Something powerful, and I'm still learning to control it."
"Will you tell me what it is?"
"Eventually." He reached out and touched her shoulder, and saw her shiver at the contact because his skin was still radiating heat with the Core's energy manifesting as excess temperature. "Trust me, I know what I'm doing."
She didn't look convinced, but she nodded anyway because trusting him was what she did, and he felt something shift in his chest that he didn't want to examine too closely.
---
Floor 6 opened, and they stepped through the gate.
The transition was rougher than the previous ones with the Tower seeming to take extra notice of him as he passed through its barriers. He felt something probe at his consciousness, something vast and ancient and utterly inhuman, before letting him pass.
[Floor 6: The Verdant Maze]
[Format: Navigation challenge]
[Objective: Reach the center of the maze]
[Hazards: Environmental traps, monster encounters, competing climbers]
[Time limit: 14 days]
They emerged into a forest so thick that the sky was invisible through the canopy above. Trees rose hundreds of feet into the air with their trunks wider than houses, and between them grew vegetation so dense that visibility dropped to nearly zero beyond twenty meters.
"Well." Astrid's voice was flat. "This is annoying."
"Maze format," he said while already analyzing their surroundings. "The Tower creates a constantly shifting environment where paths open and close at random, and the only way through is to find the patterns and exploit them."
"And you know the patterns?"
'No, this changes every time, but I know the principles and that's almost as good.'
He started walking before she could ask more questions, cutting through undergrowth that seemed to actively resist his passage. Ravenna followed close behind with her fire providing light in the gloom, while Astrid brought up the rear with her axe clearing anything that got too aggressive.
They made it maybe a hundred meters before the first attack.
---
The creature that lunged from the shadows was unlike anything Floor 6 should have contained.
It was massive, easily twice Astrid's height, with a body that seemed to be made of the forest itself. Bark for skin, vines for muscles, and hollow pits where eyes should have been that glowed with a sickly green light.
[Monster detected: Corrupted Treant]
[Threat level: High]
[Note: Monster is above standard floor difficulty]
"What the hell is that?" Astrid was already moving, her axe coming up in an arc that would have bisected a normal enemy. The treant caught the blade on one massive arm with bark cracking but holding, and used its other arm to swat her away.
She hit a tree hard enough to shake loose a rain of leaves and didn't get back up immediately.
Ravenna's fire struck the treant's back, but the bark was too thick and too wet with sap, and the flames sputtered out almost immediately. The creature turned toward her with grinding deliberation, raising one massive fist.
He stepped between them.
The Core power surged at his call, faster and more responsive than any Path skill he remembered. Green-gold energy gathered in his palm, and he thrust it forward in the same motion.
[Primal Strike activated]
The attack hit the treant center mass, and the creature simply stopped.
For a long moment nothing happened, and then cracks appeared across its body spreading outward from the point of impact. Light leaked from the cracks, the same green-gold of his attack, eating away at the forest creature from the inside.
It fell apart without a death cry, just dissolved into a pile of dead wood and withered vines that collapsed in on itself.
[Enemy slain: Corrupted Treant]
[System points: +500]
[Note: Primal damage type extremely effective against nature-based entities]
The clearing went quiet.
Astrid was back on her feet with one hand pressed to her ribs, staring at the pile of debris that used to be their enemy. Ravenna was staring at his hand, where traces of green-gold light still flickered before fading.
"That," Astrid said slowly, "was not normal."
"New ability." He flexed his fingers while feeling the Core power settle back into dormancy. "Side effect of what I found last night."
"Side effect." She laughed, a slightly manic sound. "You found something that lets you one-shot Floor 6 elites and you're calling it a side effect. What the hell are you, Ghost?"
'A regressor with Path skills from Floor 75 and now a Core power that most climbers don't even know exists, a walking anomaly that the Tower is getting increasingly nervous about.'
"I'm just someone who got lucky," he said with the old lie feeling stale on his tongue. "Now let's keep moving, the maze isn't going to solve itself."
He walked forward without waiting for a response, leaving them to follow or not.
---
The next three hours passed in a blur of navigation and combat.
The maze shifted constantly with paths opening and closing with no apparent pattern, but he moved through it with a confidence that came from understanding the underlying logic. The Tower liked puzzles and it liked testing climbers not just through combat but through problem-solving, adaptation, and strategic thinking.
He had spent eight years learning to think like the Tower thought.
Ravenna stayed close with her emotional sensing picking up on his changing moods as the Core power fluctuated. Astrid ranged wider with her combat instincts finding threats before they could become problems, her competitive nature driving her to prove she was still useful despite his obvious advantage.
They worked together better than any of them wanted to admit.
By the time darkness started to fall, they had covered what he estimated was maybe a quarter of the maze. At this rate they would reach the center with time to spare.
"We should camp," Ravenna said with her voice tired but not exhausted. "I can feel other climbers nearby, and some of them are... not friendly."
"Adrian?" The name came out sharper than he intended.
"I don't know." She closed her eyes and concentrated. "I can sense emotions, not identities, but there's someone out there who feels... empty. Like there's a person-shaped hole where feelings should be."
'That's him, that's definitely him.'
"We camp here," he decided. "I'll take first watch, Astrid you've got second, and Ravenna rest as much as you can."
"What about you?" Ravenna's concern was evident even in the dim light. "You haven't slept since before you found that... whatever you found."
"I don't need much sleep."
"That's not true and we both know it."
He met her eyes and saw the worry there, the care that he still didn't know what to do with.
"I'll rest when I can," he said, and it was close enough to a lie that she probably saw through it.
But she didn't push, just curled up in the shelter they had created from fallen branches and closed her eyes.
Astrid moved to stand beside him at the perimeter, her presence a constant warmth at the edge of his awareness.
"She cares about you," Astrid said quietly. "A lot more than you seem to realize."
"I realize it."
"Then why are you keeping her at arm's length? Anyone can see she wants more than..." she gestured vaguely, "whatever this is."
He didn't answer for a long moment, his eyes fixed on the shifting maze around them.
"Everyone I've ever been close to has died," he said finally. "Everyone I've trusted has betrayed me or been killed or both. If I let her in, really let her in, and something happens to her..."
"You'll break." Astrid nodded like that confirmed something. "Yeah, I figured."
"Yeah."
She was quiet while processing that, and then she laughed softly.
"Well, that's stupid."
"Excuse me?"
"You're pushing her away because you're afraid of losing her, but you're already attached, Ghost. Anyone with eyes can see it. All you're doing is making everyone miserable in the present because you're scared of a future that might not even happen."
'Says the berserker who followed me across an entire floor because she couldn't handle losing a fight.'
But he didn't say that, just stood there watching the darkness and wondering when he had become so transparent.
Somewhere in the maze Adrian Cross was moving toward the center with whatever remained of his group. And somewhere far above the Administrators were watching and taking notes and preparing for a confrontation that he could feel approaching.
The Ancient Core pulsed in his chest, a reminder of power claimed and power yet to be taken.
Two more Cores to go, then the Archon, then finally an end to all of it. But first he had to survive the maze and the traitor hunting him through its depths, and maybe, possibly, figure out what to do about the half-demon girl who had somehow become the most important person in his life.
No pressure.