The transition to Floor 7 felt like stepping through broken glass.
One moment they were standing in the staging area's artificial twilight with the gate humming with energy before them. The next, gravity twisted and the world inverted, and Dante's stomach lurched as they were expelled onto a landscape that shouldn't exist.
[Floor 7: The Shattered Plains]
[Format: Navigation challenge]
[Objective: Reach the exit gate]
[Hazards: Unstable gravity, flying predators, shifting terrain]
[Time limit: None]
The ground beneath their feet was wrong, not solid earth but fragments of it, chunks of stone and soil floating in an endless sky connected by bridges of rock that shifted and reformed without warning. Above them, below them, in every direction, more floating islands drifted in slow orbits around something that might have been a sun if suns were made of crystallized starlight.
"What the hell?" Astrid grabbed a nearby rock for stability while staring at the void below. "There's no ground. Where's the actual ground?"
"There isn't one." He scanned their immediate surroundings while cataloging landmarks from eight years of memory. "Floor 7 exists in a fractured dimensional space, and the islands are all that's left of whatever this place used to be."
"And we have to cross this?" Ravenna peered over the edge of their landing platform, her tail curling tight around her leg. "The exit gate could be anywhere."
"Northwest, about forty kilometers as the crow flies." He pointed toward a cluster of larger islands barely visible in the distance. "Problem is nothing flies in a straight line here because the gravity shifts every few hours and the paths change with it."
"How do you know which way to go?"
"I walked this floor twice in my original timeline. First time took me three weeks and cost me two toes to frostbite when I got trapped on a dead-end island. Second time took four days because I understood the pattern."
Astrid straightened and rolled her shoulders. "Four days, is that what we're aiming for?"
"Three, if we move fast and don't make mistakes."
She grinned, savage and bright. "Now we're talking."
---
The first day was all about learning the rhythm.
The islands moved in patterns that seemed random until you watched long enough to see the underlying logic. Larger masses attracted smaller ones while certain crystalline formations acted as anchors, keeping their associated platforms stable while others drifted freely. And the paths between islands, whether bridges of rock or empty gaps requiring careful jumps, shifted predictably if you knew what to look for.
He led them through the maze of floating stone with the confidence of someone following a map only he could see. Leftward around the blue-crystal formation, up onto the moss-covered platform that would connect to the next cluster in exactly seven minutes, wait for the gravity to shift, then leap across the suddenly-shortened gap.
"You're showing off," Astrid muttered as she landed beside him on yet another platform, her breathing only slightly heavier than normal.
"I'm keeping us alive."
"Same thing for you, isn't it?"
He didn't dignify that with a response.
Ravenna landed behind them, her movements more graceful than they had been on Floor 1. The Heartstone had given her physical improvements that went beyond raw stats, and weeks of climbing had trained her body to match her enhanced capabilities.
"There's something following us," she said quietly. "I've been sensing it for the last hour, hunger mostly and patience."
"Sky hunters." His hand moved to his sword. "Floor 7's primary predators that look like eagles crossed with sharks, and they hunt in packs of six to eight. The good news is they're ambush predators, so they won't attack while we're moving."
"And the bad news?"
"The moment we stop moving, they'll hit us from every angle at once."
Astrid's grin returned. "Then we keep moving."
---
They made camp on one of the anchor islands as the crystalline sun began to fade toward something resembling dusk. The platform was large enough that they could defend all approaches, and the gravity here was stable enough that they didn't have to worry about floating away in their sleep.
"They're still out there," Ravenna reported while her eyes scanned the darkening sky. "I can feel them circling, at least a dozen now."
"They won't attack a defended position at night because their eyes are adapted for daylight hunting." He was building a small fire from dried vegetation they had gathered. "We'll be safe until dawn."
"And at dawn?"
"We'll be ready for them."
They ate in relative silence, the kind of comfortable quiet that came from people who had faced death together and survived. Astrid tore into dried meat like she was killing it all over again while Ravenna ate more delicately, her fire-touched fingers warming her food before each bite. He ate mechanically with his attention split between the meal and the environment.
After a while Astrid broke the quiet.
"So, this regression thing. You remember everything from your original climb?"
"Most of it, and some details are fuzzy especially from the early floors, but the important stuff, the things that got people killed, that's all there."
"And Adrian Cross. Tell me more about what he does."
His jaw tightened. "Floor 52. We had just cleared a major dungeon and were resting in a safe zone. Adrian had been with us for years at that point, a trusted member of the core team, twelve of us total." He paused as the memory surfaced despite his attempts to suppress it. "He sold our location to the Archon's forces and opened a portal when we were sleeping. The first wave killed six before anyone could wake up, and the rest of us fought but they kept coming while Adrian just... watched. Smiled, even, like he was pleased with how it was going."
"Why?" Ravenna's voice was soft. "What did he get out of it?"
"I don't know, power probably. The Archon offers things to its servants, abilities that normal climbers can't access, and Adrian was always hungry for more even if he hid it behind that helpful smile."
"And in this timeline, he's still doing the helpful act."
"For now. He hasn't been recruited yet, or if he has he's playing a longer game than before." He looked toward the distant clusters of islands, somewhere out there in the dark. "Either way, I'm going to stop him, I just need proof first."
"Why not just kill him now?" Astrid's question was blunt and practical. "If you know what he's going to do, why wait?"
"Because killing someone based on crimes they haven't committed yet makes me the monster. And because I want him to know why he's dying, when the time comes."
The quiet returned, heavier this time.
Then Ravenna moved closer and sat beside him, her shoulder pressing against his with deliberate warmth.
"You're not a monster," she said quietly. "A monster wouldn't care about proof, a monster wouldn't carry this much pain over people they couldn't save."
He didn't know how to respond to that or what to do with the emotions her words stirred up.
So he just sat there letting her warmth anchor him, and watched the alien stars wheel overhead until it was time for his watch shift.
---
Dawn came with the screech of hunting calls.
The sky hunters descended as the crystalline sun broke over the island clusters, a formation of twelve predators that looked exactly as terrible as he remembered. Wings of membrane and bone, bodies built like torpedoes, and mouths filled with triple rows of teeth designed to shred through anything they caught.
"Formation!" His sword was already in his hand, the Champion's Blade humming with readiness. "Astrid, take the right flank. Ravenna, center support. I'll handle the first wave."
They moved without hesitation, trust born of shared survival.
The hunters hit like a grey wave, coordinated and vicious. Three came for him directly, recognizing him as the most dangerous target, while the others split to attack his companions.
He met them halfway.
Shadow Step activated and carried him through the space between heartbeats, and his blade found the first hunter's throat before it even saw him move. The second tried to bank away but wasn't fast enough, its wing separating from its body in a spray of dark blood. The third got close enough to snap at him with those terrible jaws before Primal Strike punched through its skull and out the other side.
[Enemy slain: Sky Hunter x3]
[System points: +150]
Astrid was laughing as she fought with her berserker transformation bleeding red light from her eyes. She caught one hunter mid-dive, her hands closing around its body with crushing strength, and slammed it into the stone hard enough to leave a crater. Another came at her back but she was already turning, her fist meeting its face with a crack that echoed across the platform.
Ravenna's Hellfire had grown more controlled since Floor 4. The black-edged flames she threw didn't just burn but consumed, eating through the hunters' flesh and bone with terrifying efficiency. Two predators that tried to flank her found themselves dissolving in mid-air with their screeches cut short as the fire ate their voices along with everything else.
The fight lasted maybe ninety seconds.
When it was over, twelve hunters lay dead or dying across the island, and the three climbers stood breathing hard but uninjured amidst the carnage.
"That was it?" Astrid sounded almost disappointed. "That was the big threat?"
"That was a scout pack." He cleaned his blade on a hunter's wing with dark blood smearing across the membrane. "The real swarms run thirty to fifty, but they won't attack after we've killed this many, not without regrouping."
"Then we should move before they regroup."
"Agreed."
They gathered their supplies and left the island within minutes with the bodies of their enemies already attracting smaller scavengers from nearby platforms. Floor 7 continued to shift and reform around them, but his knowledge guided them true step by step and island by island toward the exit gate and toward whatever came next.
---
Late on the second day, they encountered other climbers.
The group was larger than theirs, maybe eight people, clustered on a stable platform near the floor's midpoint. They looked tired and worn down by days of navigation and combat, and their eyes tracked his party with a mixture of hope and wariness.
"Hey!" One of them, a woman with a crossbow slung across her back, waved them over. "You're heading for the gate, right? We've been stuck here for two days because the path collapsed and we can't find another route."
He assessed the situation with a glance. The platform they occupied was indeed cut off with the natural bridging formations having shifted in a way that left no obvious exits. Without knowledge of the floor's patterns, they could wait here for weeks before a new path formed.
"There's a connector point northwest of here," he said while pointing toward a cluster of small islands barely visible in the distance. "Gravity will shift in about four hours, and when it does the gap to your twelve o'clock will shrink enough to jump."
The woman stared at him. "How do you know that?"
"Experience."
He turned to leave, but Ravenna touched his arm.
"Maybe we should stay, help them make the jump."
"We can't save everyone."
"We can try."
He looked at her, at the earnest concern in her mismatched eyes, and felt the familiar tension between efficiency and compassion that had defined his original climb.
'In the first timeline, I would have walked away, too focused on my own survival to worry about strangers.'
But this wasn't the first timeline, and Ravenna was watching him with an expression that asked a question without words.
"Four hours," he said to the stranded group. "We'll wait with you and make sure you make the jump, and after that you're on your own."
The relief on their faces was almost painful to witness.
Astrid moved to the platform's edge, positioning herself for the inevitable attack that always came when climbers grouped together. Ravenna began checking the stranded group for injuries with her healing abilities weak but present.
And he stood watch, counting the hours until the gravity shifted and wondering when he had started caring about strangers again. Maybe that was the point, because the regression hadn't just given him a second chance at the climb but a second chance at being human.