There were a few signs that something had happened last night. The first one was the fact that Rue woke up feeling well-rested after a good night’s sleep and that it was an hour before dawn. The fact that nobody had woken her for her watch was cause for alarm, and that was doubled by the sight of Od tipped over onto his side next to the log he’d been using as a seat all night. There was no way he’d fallen asleep upright and fell over like that.

  Then there were the footprints near the edge of the camp, just past her brother. Those weren’t human, except for a single set that belonged to Sorin. All together, it painted the picture of a camp that had been attacked in the middle of the night, except that nobody was hurt. That was cause for alarm, in and of itself.

  But the thing that really scared the hell out of Rue was Sorin himself. She’d never seen his aura in anything less than a state of absolute calm. Even in life-or-death fights like the Floor 1 portal guardian where so much had gone wrong, he’d been a block of frozen steel.

  He wasn’t frozen now. His aura rippled and seethed with agitation as he sat there, eyes glaring out at the trees and his good hand gripping the hilt of his sword so hard that his knuckles were white. He didn’t even react when Rue sat up, though he had to know she was awake. She’d been competing against his Blind Sense soulprint for over a week now, and she knew exactly how far its range was.

  Wordlessly, she started buckling on the leather armor Sorin had picked up for her. It didn’t do a lot to reassure her, but if a monster’s claws caught on it, even for a second, that could be the difference between a flesh wound and evisceration. The twin swords belted to her hips, on the other hand, did wonders for her confidence.

  Then she sat down next to Sorin, who still hadn’t moved an inch, and asked, “What happened last night?”

  “The witches attacked,” he said. “Three of them showed up, their entourage in tow. Some sort of sleep spell got Od. Got me, too. Just took a bit longer to stick.”

  “That’s not all, though, or we’d all be dead.”

  “Yeah,” Sorin agreed. “Something weird happened. I don’t know how to explain it. Never seen anything like it. It’s… It’s bad.”

  “Well, we’re all unharmed, so it can’t be that bad.”

  “Rue, I think the tower spoke to me using those witches as mouths. To the best of my knowledge, that has never, ever, ever happened. Belief that the tower’s alive and sapient is superstition. It’s not something you get handed proof of.”

  “Oh, yeah? What did it have to say?”

  “Bunch of shit I don’t understand,” Sorin said. “Something about spreading calamities and the void, corruption, oaths. I don’t know. Fuck. I wish I could remember what happened to me. This would all make so much more sense if I just wasn’t missing that one day.”

  If not for the physical proof that something had happened last night while she was sleeping, Rue would have thought Sorin was having a psychotic break. They called it Climber’s Strain, and it was common enough that everybody who was even considering the life knew the warning signs. The way he’d started muttering to himself there at the end was one of them, right up there with the whole insane story about the tower talking to him.

  Other than an agitated aura, which honestly barely counted as turbulence for anybody else, he seemed more or less fine. He was a bit on edge, sure, but she could hardly blame him. They’d been attacked in their sleep, apparently lost the fight, and then the monsters had just left them alone. No one would ever believe a story like that.

  I don’t know if I believe it, and I lived through it. Hard to think of any other possible explanation, though.

  “So, I get that you’re having some sort of existential crisis right now, or at least your version of one, but can we refocus this conversation on more practical matters?” Rue asked.

  Sorin took a deep breath and, just like that, his aura stilled again. Normal people didn’t do that. Not once had Rue ever met anybody with aura control. She could see the damn things, but even that wasn’t enough for her to exert her will over her own. And then Sorin just took a breath and iced over like it was nothing.

  “The witches were very clear that we’d be back to business as usual once the sun rose. We should wake the others so we can get moving.”

  Rue was surprised he’d waited that long, but then again, the whole situation was strange. Only loonies thought the tower talked to them, though Sorin’s story did have the benefit of strangely behaving monsters, assuming she believed him. The footprints and Od’s slumber were evidence of something, and she didn’t have a better explanation as to what.

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  Hopefully Od or Nemari will have a better idea what to do, because I’ve got nothing. Sorin going crazy was not in my plans.

  They got everyone up and moving, with Sorin giving short, terse answers to their questions while he outlined the threat. It took less than ten minutes to break the camp down completely. None of them were eager to fight half a dozen river trolls being supported by a handful of other monsters and three powerful witches.

  * * *

  Normally, Sorin made sure to hold back a little. If he went all out, the rest of his team would struggle to collect any anima of their own, and they were an investment in the future, at least for the next few floors. Today, he didn’t have time for that. Any monster that got within Blind Sense’s range was obliterated immediately and without mercy.

  “Damn,” Rue whispered the sixth time he put an ice blade through the eye of a hagris. That wasn’t enough to kill the monster on its own, but before anyone else could even make a move, two more blades cut through it.

  “Sorry. We can’t slow down,” he said.

  Slowing down would give them time to ask more questions, questions he didn’t have any good answers to. Even the parts he’d thought he’d figured out were suspect now, and he knew they were expecting a coherent story from him.

  They went south a bit, then swung east toward the edge of the Witch Wood. It wasn’t the straightest path out, but as long as they kept moving, he figured they’d keep in front of anything coming out of the heart of the woods. The shortest route out also took them away from their next destination, so no one complained when he steered them that way.

  They walked without breaks, something that didn’t particularly stress Sorin but quickly wore down the rest of the team. Nemari was the first to crack and ask that they stop, but a quick glance showed him that Rue and Odric weren’t far behind. Their healer was in the best shape out of the trio, probably from cheating with healing magic to refresh his tired muscles.

  Even though Sorin was sure Odric had extended that courtesy to the other two, all three of them looked ready to drop after a ten-hour forced march. It wasn’t even so much the walking through the brush—though that was draining enough on its own—but the tension of being constantly on-guard for monster ambushes. Knowing that a life-threatening attack could occur at any moment wore climbers down the same as it would anyone else, and Sorin’s team was no exception.

  “Ten minutes,” he said, doing his best to hide his turmoil.

  It’s fine. Just relax. We’re nowhere near any stream or river, and we’ve been moving all day. Chances are that any monster we run into now isn’t going to be controlled by a witch. They probably won’t even leave their home again without the tower prodding them.

  But another part of him abhorred the risk. Nothing could be taken at face value, including monster behavior. Until he was well and truly away from this place, he couldn’t relax—and maybe not even then.

  “So, you want to fill us in yet?” Nemari asked a few minutes later after she’d caught her breath.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Let’s start with the part where a bunch of monsters supposedly talked to you, claiming to represent the tower itself.”

  “They could have killed me. Hell, they could have killed all of us. They were far, far stronger than any Floor 2 monster had a right to be,” Sorin said. “And that feeling, when they spoke, it was overwhelming, a weight like nothing I’ve ever felt before.”

  “Okay, but you realize that makes you crazy, right? The tower doesn’t speak to people. Why should you be the exception?”

  “Would you believe me if I said I was special?” Sorin asked dryly.

  “I’d believe that you believe it, but this is getting old, Sorin. I’m not even sure what number of impossible things you’ve claimed happened to you this is now. You can’t lose ranks and shrink a soulspace. You can’t lose access to floors you’ve already cleared. You can’t survive having that many soulprints ripped out of you at once. And the tower doesn’t talk to you.”

  “A month ago, I would have agreed with you on all counts,” Sorin said. “And I don’t much care if you believe me. I’m just trying to figure out if we need to part ways. I’m not trying to get you all killed for something that has nothing to do with you.”

  “Except we’re all in this mess with the Black Hellions together,” Rue pointed out.

  “Except that,” Sorin agreed. “Which is why we’re not splitting up just yet.”

  “Speaking of that, you still haven’t shared why it is the Black Hellion himself is so interested in you.”

  “Liminal Gateway. I think he’s got something similar. He figured out I have it, too.”

  Nemari thought about that for a few seconds, then slowly said, “That would make you a threat to his operation. He’d pull out all the stops to kill you before you could spread his secret or start up a rival smuggling operation.”

  “Or he’d try to recruit me,” Sorin said, “which is what he actually wants. Ironically, that probably means I’m in less danger from his gang than the rest of you.”

  “I assume you told him no.”

  “But less politely.”

  Rue snorted out a laugh. “Good. Fucking prick.”

  “Floor 0 would be a better place if he was gone,” Nemari said. “But we’re not in a position to deal with him. He’s unbelievably strong. Nobody’s even sure how he got this strong without attracting the attention of other elite climbers.”

  Sorin bit his tongue over the use of the term ‘elite’ to describe climbers that hadn’t even crossed rank 30 and reminded himself that everything was relative. He was only a fake rank 3 now, so he didn’t have much room to talk.

  “None of this has anything to do with the thing from last night,” Odric said. “The monsters won, but they left us alive. The tower spoke to you, but nobody else was around to see it. Now we’re running for our lives, but we haven’t seen any real threat all day. I want to believe you, but… it’s hard.”

  “Fuck that. I’m sick of having this conversation,” Nemari said. “Why won’t you just tell us the truth?”

  “Because I don’t fucking know what happened!” Sorin snapped. “It was crazy and impossible, and I wouldn’t believe it either if I didn’t wake up in this body. I’m fifty-fucking-five years old, Nemari, and now I suddenly look like I did back the first time I got to Floor 10. How the hell is any of this possible? What did the tower do to me? Why can’t I remember any of it? And what does it want?”

  The others were silent. They exchanged incredulous looks while Sorin stared a hole in a nearby tree. Finally, Rue asked, “What have you figured out so far?”

  “Not one God-damn thing,” Sorin told her.