Scene 1 — The Ogre's Oath
"You're finally awake."
The fire cracked softly as Toyin stirred, his massive frame shifting beneath a fur-lined cloak that looked small on him. His eyes opened slow—no haze, no confusion—just a heavy stillness, like something inside him had finally stopped slipping.
He opened his mouth.
Closed it again.
Words failed him.
Ras raised one hand before Toyin could force them out and embarrass himself with gratitude he didn't know how to shape.
"No need for thanks," Ras said, feeding another branch into the flames. "To me, what you saw is basic knowledge. Simple math."
The light in Toyin's eyes sharpened—not wild, not flaring, but clean. Understanding. Foundation. The kind of shift that didn't fade when adrenaline did.
He pushed himself upright, then lowered one knee to the stone with deliberate respect.
"It may be a drop in the ocean to you," Toyin said carefully, his voice rough from dryness and smoke, "but to me—and my people—this is the difference between a low-rank tribe and a future."
His fist pressed to his chest, knuckles like carved iron.
"Compared to the tribes of the unconquered floors… this knowledge barely places me among their lowest figures. But it gives us a path. A direction."
Ras glanced sideways.
Selena sat across the fire, posture relaxed, eyes on the flames as if she didn't hear a word. Anyone else might have believed it.
Ras didn't.
Selena's silence was never absence. It was discipline.
"Then all the better," Ras replied. "If that's all you need, lead the way to your tribe. I'll train a few people. Enough that you won't have to worry."
The gratitude that rolled off Toyin wasn't loud.
It was warmth blooming inside deep ice—quiet, slow, impossible to fake.
"My people will follow you," Toyin said steadily, "as the old tribes followed the King."
He didn't say the name with reverence. He said it like a rule carved into culture.
Ras placed a hand on Toyin's shoulder and held it there for a beat—an acknowledgment, not a blessing.
He understood what that meant.
Among warrior cultures, oaths weren't casual. They didn't grant strength. They didn't make your enemies smaller.
They filled the gaps strength couldn't.
Food routes. Shelter. Eyes watching the dark. Hands building what fighters didn't have time to build.
"Good," Ras said. "I need to build a small group anyway."
A faint smile crossed his face—sharp enough to be a threat.
"And I want to meet these Crow tribes you mentioned. Nothing beats bullying your own kind."
Toyin rumbled a low laugh that sounded like stone rolling downhill.
He rose, towering over the fire, then reached down to pull his weapon closer—bone and black rock sharpened into something that didn't care about elegance.
"Then follow," Toyin said. "My tribe is not far."
Ras stood, rolling his shoulders like he'd been waiting for a reason to move again.
A year until the Workshop Battles.
Plenty of time for the Tower to keep pretending it was the one in control.
This was a good start.
Scene 2 — Red Frame
"Again!"
Baam nodded—and forced it out.
Red Shinsu crawled across his arms like living ink. It didn't flow like normal Shinsu. It clung. It latched onto muscle and bone, then hardened into plates along his forearms and shoulders in segmented layers, like an exoskeleton growing out of his skin.
The Red Thryssa answered.
The floor groaned under the pressure, stone complaining as if it recognized something that shouldn't exist inside a Regular's body.
Teddy didn't hesitate.
He shifted modes mid-stride—spear dissolving into bare hands as his stance dropped low. He slid in like a knife and drove an upward strike toward Baam's ribs.
CLANG.
The impact rang through the training chamber.
Baam slid back half a step, boots carving shallow grooves into the stone. The red plates glowed briefly and hissed steam where the strike landed, as if the armor had swallowed the force and translated it into heat.
"Good," Akraptor muttered, arms crossed, eyes sharp. "Don't let him settle."
Heat flared.
Yeon moved next.
Her pink flame snapped forward—compressed, controlled, not blooming like a bonfire. The flame didn't scatter. It hit like a whip, precise and mean.
She wasn't trying to burn him.
She was trying to break his footing.
Baam raised his arm and let the flame crash against the plating. The exoskeleton brightened at the impact point, then thickened—plates knitting tighter where damage threatened. The Red Thryssa learned fast when it was being hurt.
Baam's jaw tightened.
Too much heat and it would cook him under his own defense.
Too little and the Red Thryssa would bite back from inside.
He stepped in anyway.
Teddy pivoted behind him, trying to catch the blind angle that always existed for anyone who fought like a wall.
Baam twisted, caught Teddy's wrist, redirected the force, and slammed him into the floor hard enough to crater stone.
Teddy rolled free instantly.
No hesitation.
No panic.
His breathing was controlled—too controlled.
He wasn't sparring like a teammate.
He was sparring like someone who'd accepted they could be hunted tomorrow.
Baam exhaled once and reset his stance.
"Again," he said—not loud, not angry, just steady.
They came together.
Teddy attacked high, forcing Baam to block instead of evade. Yeon attacked low with short bursts of heat, trying to make Baam shift his weight until she could take his legs out from under him.
The pressure hurt.
But it didn't break him.
"Look at Teddy," Akraptor noted quietly. "He's adapting. He's treating you like a wall."
Baam blocked another strike and didn't blink.
"That's the point," Baam replied.
He didn't blast them away. He didn't dominate.
He waited for the exact moment Teddy committed, then released a controlled Shinsu pulse—short, dense, timed like a shove from a giant.
Teddy got thrown back three meters as if he'd been hit by a battering ram. He hit the wall, rolled, and got up again.
Yeon didn't stop.
She never stopped first.
Her flames burned hotter for a heartbeat, the core color sliding toward red—not from rage, but from density. She tightened her breathing, shoulders squared, eyes locked as if the whole Tower had narrowed to this one exchange.
Her fist came in.
Baam raised his arm.
Blocked—
And the heat cut through his Shinsu coating for a second like a knife.
Baam flinched—not from pain, but from surprise.
He stepped into it instead of away, forcing his Shinsu to coat thicker, forcing his body to remain present instead of retreating into defense.
Yeon's eyes met his.
Assessment.
Something like anger.
Something like relief.
Then she disengaged—turning away so fast it looked like running from a mirror. The heat around her collapsed inward like she'd slammed a door shut on her own power.
Steam rolled off Baam's red plates as the exoskeleton dissolved back into raw Shinsu and vanished into his body.
Akraptor stepped forward.
"Baam," he said evenly, "don't push it."
Baam wiped sweat off his jaw, eyes tracking Yeon's retreating back.
"She's improving," he said quietly.
"She's terrified," Akraptor corrected.
Yeon was already halfway across the room.
She didn't look back.
A soft ripple of presence touched the edge of Baam's senses—like a thread tugging at fate.
Hwa Ryun's voice came from the doorway, calm as always.
"Baam."
He turned, surprised she'd approached without him noticing. That alone raised his alertness.
"I've located Khun," Hwa Ryun said. "When you're ready, we can start moving again."
Baam's face brightened despite the fatigue in his shoulders.
"Thank you," he said quickly. "We'll get ready for the next test right now. I can't wait to catch up with him—and Rak."
Hwa Ryun's lips curved into a small, knowing smirk.
"You should hurry, then," she said. "The Tower doesn't like waiting."
Baam nodded—then glanced once more toward the corridor where Yeon had vanished.
The Red Thryssa inside him stirred like a sleeping beast that had heard its name.
Interlude — The Room That Doesn't Move (Repellista)
Repellista Zahard never left her room.
She didn't need to.
The Tower came to her in layers.
Hundreds of Lighthouses floated in layered orbits, each projecting a different slice of reality—routes, floors, probability lines, prediction threads. Some showed what was. Others showed what would be, if the Tower's story remained obedient.
Repellista reclined at the center, chin resting on one gloved hand.
"Oh," she murmured. "You again."
She didn't need to ask who.
Baam's data was loud—violent spikes, clear trajectory, a story the Tower could pretend to understand even while it feared it.
This thread was the opposite.
Heat without Shinsu flow.
Pressure without Administrator feedback.
Movement that ignored Guide prediction entirely.
Not Baam.
That one walked the road—even when the road bent around him.
This one didn't.
Repellista isolated the anomaly and cross-referenced the file Yuri had kept feeding her in careful, controlled fragments—like Yuri was afraid of handing over too much at once.
Name: Ras
Known Alias: Crow
Movement Pattern: Non-linear
Tower Path Compliance: Negative
Guide Prediction: Failing
Repellista's smile widened slowly.
"That's not rebellion," she said lightly. "That's refusal."
She overlaid the distortion traces with Baam's Red Thryssa signatures.
Two Irregular-grade entities.
Not colliding.
Not cooperating.
But never interfering with each other's trajectories.
Her eyes glittered.
"So that's the pattern."
A Lighthouse chimed—priority outbound.
Recipient locked.
Endorsi Zahard.
Repellista didn't annotate. Didn't warn. Didn't speculate.
She sent raw, high-level intel—Princess-grade encryption, no story attached.
One final line accompanied the data like a blade pressed gently to the throat:
One Irregular walks the Tower. One does not.
Repellista leaned back as the transmission launched.
"Yuri's right," she murmured. "That one's interesting."
Interlude — Dibs (Endorsi)
Endorsi Zahard didn't recognize the name.
That annoyed her immediately.
She leaned against the railing, Lighthouse hovering in front of her as the data stream settled into readable layers.
Designation: Ras
Known Alias: Crow
Movement Pattern: Non-linear
Tower Path Compliance: Negative
Guide Prediction: Failing
Princess Interest Flags: Active
"…Ras?" she muttered.
She scrolled.
Heat-based pressure anomalies.
Ranker encounters with missing aftermath.
Floors skipped without recorded tests.
Her jaw tightened.
She pulled up an older clip—the one she'd saved like a grudge.
Golden heat.
A man walking away while everyone else was still trying to breathe.
Crow.
Her grip tightened on the railing.
"So that's your real name," she said flatly.
The Lighthouse chimed again—secondary overlay.
Princess surveillance nodes accessed.
More data poured in.
Routes monitored by Zahard-aligned Princesses.
Observation requests.
Passive claim markers.
Not confrontations.
Not challenges.
Dibs.
Endorsi's smile vanished.
"…You've got to be kidding me."
She skimmed the list fast—too fast.
Names she recognized.
Princesses who never moved unless something was worth claiming.
And they were circling him.
Not Baam. Not the loud Irregular everyone could see coming.
The one who didn't walk the Tower properly.
The one who vanished between records.
Endorsi shut the Lighthouse down with a sharp gesture.
"Oh hell no."
She straightened, aura snapping into place—not reckless, not flaring.
Focused.
Controlled.
"A bunch of lazy spectators don't get to call dibs," she said coldly. "Especially not on something I found first."
Baam could keep climbing.
He was predictable.
But Ras?
Ras was a moving insult.
And Princesses didn't tolerate being beaten to a claim.
Endorsi Zahard turned toward the upper routes, already rerouting her path.
"If you're going to ignore the Tower," she muttered, lips curling, "then I'll catch you where it stops pretending."
Interlude — Names, Weight, and Blood (Endorsi & Anak)
Endorsi found Anak where Anak always was when she wasn't supposed to be—too close to trouble and too comfortable with it.
Anak was lounging with her feet up like she owned the corridor, chewing something loud enough to be offensive on purpose.
"You look like you want to kill somebody," Anak said without looking up.
Endorsi flicked her wrist.
A Lighthouse projection snapped open between them and dumped the report into the air.
Anak's eyes tracked it, interest sharpening as the data scrolled.
"Ras?" Anak read aloud. Then she snorted. "That's stupid."
"That's the point," Endorsi said. "Crow was a mask."
Anak leaned closer, grin widening as she caught the next lines.
"Princess interest flags… hah." Anak's eyes gleamed. "So you're pissed because other princesses want him."
Endorsi's stare could've cut glass.
"I'm pissed because they think they can mark something they didn't earn."
Anak laughed.
"That's princess logic."
Endorsi stepped closer.
"Your debt isn't paid," she said. "You're coming."
Anak's grin sharpened into something feral.
"Blood debt," Anak said happily. "Now you're speaking my language."
Endorsi didn't smile.
She didn't need to.
Her Lighthouse pulsed again with rumor overlays—FUG movement, missing Rankers, sudden silences where reports should've been.
Anak skimmed the rumor list and clicked her tongue.
"They're saying Rankers are dying around Viole," Anak said. "But… they don't think it's him."
"They don't," Endorsi agreed.
"Because he's too nice," Anak mocked, like the idea offended her.
Endorsi's expression didn't change.
"They think the purges are the other one," she said. "The one who nearly killed you for the Black March."
Anak went still for half a beat.
Then she grinned wider.
"…That guy," she said. "Yeah. That one felt different."
Endorsi shut the projection down.
"We're moving," she said.
Anak cracked her neck, standing like she'd been waiting for permission to commit violence again.
"Lead the way," she said.
Interlude — Homeward (Selena)
Selena walked a half-step behind them.
Toyin led, shoulders squared, moving with the confidence of a man who finally had direction. Ras followed like the road belonged to him already—hands relaxed, posture loose, but awareness sharp enough to slice through fog.
The land changed as they traveled.
Shinsu density thickened, then thinned, then pulsed like a living tide.
A boundary.
A tribal line.
Territory.
Selena felt it before Toyin did.
Not the Shinsu.
The shift.
A subtle pressure change in the thread of consequence itself—like something had been removed from one name and assigned to another without ceremony.
A torch passing hands when nobody was watching.
Selena's expression didn't change. It never did when the world rearranged itself.
But inside, she registered the weight moving.
Not toward Baam.
Away from him.
Elsewhere.
Ras didn't stop walking.
But his head tilted slightly, like he'd heard a sound nobody else could hear.
He glanced back over his shoulder.
For one breath, the crimson in his eyes cooled into blue—deep and clear like winter sky.
Aware.
Not surprised.
Just… acknowledging that he'd felt the same shift she had.
Then the heat returned.
Crimson again.
He faced forward and kept moving.
Selena said nothing.
Toyin kept leading.
The Tower didn't announce the transfer. Administrators didn't speak.
But the air had changed.
And they were already walking inside the consequence.
The weight that moved sideways had found its new direction.