They reached the center of the maze on day seven.
The journey had been a grinding test of endurance: constant navigation through shifting paths, monster encounters that ranged from trivial to deadly, and the ever-present awareness that Adrian Cross was somewhere in the maze behind them.
Dante had used his Primal Strike sparingly after the first day, conserving the power for situations that demanded it. The Core energy regenerated slowly, and depleting it completely left him vulnerable in ways he couldn't afford.
But now, standing at the entrance to the maze's central chamber, he let the power build.
The center was marked by a ring of standing stones, ancient monuments carved with the same proto-Sylvani script he had seen beneath the arena. Within the ring, a pillar of light rose toward the invisible sky, pulsing with the slow rhythm of something alive.
[Maze center reached]
[Floor 6 completion imminent]
[Challenge: Defeat the guardian to proceed]
[Guardian spawning...]
"Another guardian?" Astrid rolled her shoulders, her transformation already beginning to touch her features. "Good, I've been wanting to hit something all week."
"Something's different." Ravenna moved closer to him, her emotional sensing reaching toward the pillar of light. "The energy here is... it's like what I felt from you after you found the Core, old and deep and not normal Tower magic."
'She's right, this isn't a standard floor boss, this is something else.'
The guardian emerged from the pillar of light.
It wasn't a creature, not in any conventional sense. It was geometry given form, angles and planes that shifted and reformed constantly, impossible shapes that made his eyes water and his brain ache. A face appeared in its center, or something that approximated a face, and when it spoke the words came from everywhere at once.
"YOU CARRY WHAT IS OURS."
The voice stopped him cold because he recognized it immediately, the same tone and resonance he had heard on Floor 75 before everyone he loved died. The Archon, or at least a piece of it, a fragment left behind to protect things that had been hidden in this place long before humans ever set foot inside the Tower.
[Guardian identified: Archon Fragment]
[Threat level: Catastrophic]
[Warning: Entity exceeds floor parameters]
[Recommendation: Flee]
"What the fuck is that?" Astrid's voice cracked, her transformation stuttering as primal fear fought against her berserker rage. "That's not... that shouldn't be here, that's not a Floor 6 boss."
"No." His hand closed around the hilt of his Champion's Blade, the Core power already surging in response to the fragment's presence. "It's something much worse."
"YOU CANNOT HIDE FROM US, ANOMALY." The fragment pulsed, its impossible geometry expanding to fill more of the chamber. "WE FELT YOU TAKE WHAT WAS OURS. WE FELT YOU CONSUME IT. DID YOU THINK WE WOULD NOT RESPOND?"
'The Core summoned this thing, and the moment I absorbed it I painted a target on my back.'
"Get back." He stepped forward, positioning himself between his companions and the fragment. "Both of you, this is mine."
"Are you insane?" Astrid grabbed his arm with a grip strong enough to bruise. "You saw what the Lurker did to us, that thing is ten times worse!"
"I know." He shook her off, his eyes never leaving the fragment. "But I'm the one it wants, and if you stay you die while if you run you might survive."
"We're not running." Ravenna's voice was quiet but firm, her fire already gathering in her palms. "Whatever happens, we face it together."
'Fine, then we do this together.'
---
The fight was chaos from the first moment.
The fragment didn't attack like a normal creature because it attacked like reality itself was its weapon, space folding and twisting around strikes that came from angles that shouldn't exist. He dodged what he could and took what he couldn't, his body accumulating damage faster than his enhanced regeneration could heal.
Astrid went in hard with her axe swinging at the fragment's center mass, but her blade passed through without resistance because you couldn't hurt geometry and you couldn't kill an angle.
Ravenna's fire splashed against its surface and was absorbed, feeding something inside the fragment that only grew stronger.
'Normal attacks won't work, need to find the weak point because there's always a weak point.'
He reached for his Authority ability, the strange power that had destroyed the Sylvani guardians, but the fragment sensed it coming. Reality twisted and suddenly he was on the other side of the chamber with his attack dispersing harmlessly into nothing.
"INTERESTING." The fragment's face shifted, something like curiosity passing across its impossible features. "YOU HAVE TOUCHED THE OUTER PATHS. RARE. INCOMPLETE. BUT ENOUGH TO BE... CONCERNING."
It extended a tendril of warped space toward him, and his Primal Strike met it halfway.
Green-gold light collided with geometric impossibility, and for a moment the fragment recoiled.
"THAT POWER." Its voice carried something new now, something that might have been recognition. "THAT IS OURS. STOLEN FROM THE VAULT BENEATH THE ARENA. YOU DARE TO USE OUR OWN GIFTS AGAINST US?"
'Not yours and never yours, the Cores existed before you came and I'm just taking back what was stolen.'
He pressed the attack, pouring more power into his Primal Strike than he had ever attempted. The green-gold light expanded into a beam, then into a torrent that burned against the fragment's surface and started to eat through.
The fragment screamed, not with a voice but with a distortion of reality that made the standing stones crack and the ground beneath their feet ripple like water. Astrid and Ravenna were thrown back, sliding across the chamber floor.
But he didn't stop.
He pushed harder, drawing on reserves he didn't know he had, the Core burning at the center of his being. The fragment's geometry began to collapse with its impossible angles folding inward and its face twisting into something that almost looked like fear.
"THIS IS NOT THE END." Its voice was fragmenting and scattering like its form. "WE ARE ETERNAL. WE WILL RETURN. AND WHEN WE DO—"
His Primal Strike punched through its center, and the fragment shattered.
Light exploded outward in a shockwave of released energy that knocked everyone off their feet and sent cracks racing up the standing stones. When the brilliance faded, there was nothing left in the center of the chamber but a scorched ring where the pillar of light used to be.
[Fragment destroyed]
[Floor 6 complete]
[System points: +5000]
[Administrator attention: Level 8]
He collapsed, not unconscious but with his body refusing to respond to his commands. The Core power was completely depleted with every reserve exhausted, and he could feel the backlash of using so much energy in so short a time tearing through his muscles.
Ravenna was there first, her hands already glowing with healing warmth as she pressed them against his chest.
"You idiot." Her voice was shaking. "You absolute idiot, you could have died."
"Didn't."
"That's not the point!" She was crying, he realized, with tears cutting tracks through the dirt on her lavender face. "What would I do if you died? What would any of us do?"
He didn't have an answer for that and didn't have the energy for one even if he did.
Astrid limped over with her transformation fading as the adrenaline left her system. One arm hung at an awkward angle, clearly dislocated, but she was grinning so wide it must have hurt.
"That was insane." She dropped to sit beside them and popped her shoulder back into place with a grunt. "That was the most insane thing I've ever seen, you just punched through an Archon fragment, an actual piece of whatever the fuck is running this Tower."
"Felt like it," he managed.
"Can you walk?"
"Give me... a minute."
Ravenna's healing helped, not much and not quickly, but the worst of the damage started to recede. After several minutes he managed to push himself to a sitting position.
The chamber was a ruin with the standing stones cracked and listing. The pillar of light was gone entirely, but in its place where the fragment had died something glinted in the dim light.
A crystal, small and dark, pulsing with energy that felt nothing like the green-gold of his Core.
[Item detected: Fragment Shard]
[Description: Crystallized remains of destroyed Archon Fragment]
[Properties: Unknown]
[Warning: Handle with caution]
He reached out and picked it up.
It was cold in his palm, cold in a way that went beyond temperature, but it didn't fight him or try to invade his mind or corrupt his power. It just sat there, inert, waiting.
"What is that?" Ravenna asked.
"I don't know." He tucked it into his pack. "But I'm going to find out."
He stood, swaying slightly before finding his balance, and looked toward the far end of the chamber where the exit gate waited.
"Floor 7 is next, we should move."
Astrid groaned. "Can we at least rest for five minutes?"
"We can rest in the staging area, but right now I want to be somewhere the Administrators can't ambush us."
That got her moving.
The three of them limped toward the exit gate, battered and bloody and exhausted but alive.
Level 8 Administrator attention, the highest he had ever seen. Whatever came next, the Tower wasn't going to make it easy.
But he had done what he came to do by claiming the Ancient Core, killing a piece of the Archon, and surviving to tell the story. Arc 1 was over and everything that came next would be harder, but for the first time since the regression he felt like he might actually have a chance.