The gate to Floor 17 deposited them in a forest that stretched in every direction.
Ancient trees rose toward a sky choked with perpetual twilight, their branches intertwining so completely that little light reached the ground. The air smelled of wood and moss and something faintly metallic, and the path ahead split into a dozen different routes within the first hundred feet.
Nobody moved.
They stood in a loose cluster, seven instead of eight, and the absence felt like a wound none of them wanted to acknowledge.
Astrid broke the silence first. "So. We just... do this without him?"
"That appears to be the plan." Vex's voice was dry, but his magitech eye kept scanning the treeline as if expecting Dante to emerge from the shadows and say it was all a test. "Unless someone has a better suggestion."
"We could go back." Ren's voice was quiet. "Find him before he gets too far into whatever hidden dungeon he's chasing. Drag him along whether he likes it or not."
