The first scream on Floor Two didn't come from an enemy.
It came from a man who swung too hard.
The chamber had narrowed as they moved—corridors folding inward, ceilings lowering just enough to force heads down and shoulders tight. The crimson glow was stronger here, bleeding from veins in the stone like heat through skin. Every surface felt close, oppressive, as if the floor itself were leaning in to listen.
The Echo-Bound emerged without ceremony.
No roar. No warning.
They stepped out of the walls like mistakes becoming real—humanoid shapes stitched together from cracked stone and sinew, their limbs bending at angles that suggested bones were optional. They moved with a dull inevitability, heavy steps grinding softly against the floor.
Someone panicked.
A man with a fallen blade—unearned, scavenged from a corpse—charged screaming, swinging wildly at the nearest figure. The blade bit deep into stone-flesh, carving a jagged gash across the creature's chest.
The Echo-Bound did not react.
The man did.
He screamed as his own chest split open in the same place, flesh tearing with a wet, horrible sound. Blood sprayed across the corridor walls. He staggered, hands clawing uselessly at himself as his ribs cracked inward, mirroring the wound he had inflicted.
He collapsed choking.
Dead before he hit the ground.
The corridor went still.
No one spoke.
They didn't need the rule explained anymore.
Caelum felt it then—the echo—a pressure like a memory of pain brushing against his skin. Not his pain. Someone else's. A warning, faint but unmistakable.
Floor Two did not forgive excess.
Mireya stood close at his side, her expression unchanged. Her eyes flicked once to the corpse, then back to the Echo-Bound, already calculating.
"Shared," she murmured. "Not equal."
Caelum nodded once.
They moved together.
Aurelian did not.
He stepped forward with Penitent Brand already raised, his massive form filling the corridor like a wall. The Echo-Bound turned toward him as one, their attention drawn by the promise of violence.
Aurelian swung.
The impact was devastating. Stone shattered. One Echo-Bound collapsed inward as the maul crushed its torso, reducing it to fragments.
Aurelian roared—
—and dropped to one knee as his own chest imploded with the same force.
Armor had not yet fully formed on him. The echo ripped through flesh and bone alike. He coughed blood, one gauntlet slamming into the floor to keep himself upright.
He laughed through it.
A raw, broken sound.
"Still standing," he rasped.
Mireya moved before Caelum could.
She slid past Aurelian's bulk, low and close, her blade flashing once—just a whisper of motion. Votive Thorn slipped between stone plates at the Echo-Bound's throat, precise, intimate.
The creature stiffened.
And then simply stopped.
Mireya staggered slightly as a thin line of blood traced itself along her own neck, shallow enough to sting but not slow her. She exhaled slowly, steadying herself.
Minimal echo.
Controlled violence.
Ysara hadn't struck at all.
She moved along the edge of the corridor, whispering just loud enough to be heard—words not meant for the Echo-Bound, but for the people behind them.
"Watch your hands," she said softly. "Watch how badly you want it."
A man lunged past her anyway, desperation overriding caution. He drove a spear into an Echo-Bound's side.
The echo hit him like a hammer.
His side caved inward. He screamed once before his lungs collapsed and he slid bonelessly to the floor.
Seraphine watched it all without expression.
"Forward," she said calmly.
And somehow, people listened.
They advanced in fits and starts, every strike weighed, every movement measured. The Echo-Bound pressed them harder, forcing mistakes, baiting excess.
Caelum waited.
He let the others thin the field, let the rule settle into his bones. When he finally moved, it was with intent sharpened by restraint.
Red Amendment whispered as he stepped in close.
He drove the blade through an Echo-Bound's skull in a single, controlled thrust—no flourish, no drag. The creature collapsed instantly, dissolving into rubble.
Pain flared behind Caelum's eyes.
Sharp. Focused. Gone.
He breathed through it.
This floor rewarded discipline.
They reached a wider chamber at the corridor's end, its ceiling low and ribbed like the inside of a throat. Symbols glowed faintly along the walls, pulsing in time with the floor's slow heartbeat.
The Echo-Bound retreated.
Not fleeing.
Waiting.
The survivors gathered instinctively, wounded, shaken, alive.
Aurelian sank against the wall, blood seeping through his armor seams as the first real plates of black steel began to form along his shoulders—jagged, imperfect, grown rather than forged.
Armor.
Not protection.
Recognition.
Mireya touched her own throat briefly, where the echo had kissed her skin. A thin line of black lace-like markings traced outward, settling beneath her collarbone.
Ysara smiled faintly.
Seraphine turned her gaze upward.
The ceiling shifted.
Stone peeled back in slow, deliberate sections, revealing a vertical shaft spiraling downward into darkness. No ramp this time. No gentle descent.
A drop.
Carved handholds spiraled along the walls, slick with condensation and old blood.
A choice.
"Down," Seraphine said.
They moved.
One by one, they began the descent, bodies pressed close to stone, fingers aching as they clung and lowered themselves into the dark. The echo followed them—not pain now, but anticipation.
Halfway down, someone screamed above them.
The sound cut short.
A body fell past Caelum, slamming into the wall below before vanishing into the darkness.
No echo.
No consequence.
The floor had already claimed them.
They reached the bottom in silence.
Floor Three waited.
It was… different.
Open.
Wide.
A vast arena stretched before them, its floor smooth and dry, unmarred by blood. Pillars rose at irregular intervals, carved with symbols too old to decipher. The air was cooler here, clearer.
Too clean.
Caelum felt Red Amendment tense in his grip.
The others felt it too.
Because standing at the center of the arena—
Was something that did not move.
A throne.
Carved from obsidian and bone, fused together in a shape that suggested authority rather than comfort. And seated upon it—
Two figures.
A man and a woman.
Or something close enough to unsettle the difference.
They sat side by side, posture identical, hands resting lightly on the throne's arms. Their eyes burned crimson, fixed on the survivors with an intensity that made Caelum's skin crawl.
Not monsters.
Not judges.
Examples.
The air vibrated.
The Speaker's voice rolled across the arena, quieter now, more intimate.
"Oh good," it said. "You made it."
The seated figures smiled in unison.
The floor sealed behind them.
And Caelum understood, with sudden, terrible clarity—
Floor Two had taught them restraint.
Floor Three was about to teach them obedience.