[FLOOR 15 — UNLOCKED]
[SIDE STORY FLOOR ACTIVE]
[ENTER FLOOR 15? Y/N]
[WARNING: DEATH IS PERMANENT]
Jas selected yes.
The white light ca up fast.
Floor 15 did not open with the Dark Knight.
The light faded around them, and muddy ground settled beneath Jas’s boots. He slled damp earth first, then old smoke, then sothing sour beneath it that reminded him of the shrine.
They were standing on a road at the edge of a village.
Jas knew where he was before he finished turning his head because it was the sa road, the sa houses, and the sa hill with the shrine at the top, but everything had been changed just enough to make recognition feel wrong.
The road had been wet the last ti. Now it was dry and cracked, with deep lines running through the mud like sothing underneath had pulled the moisture out of it. The houses stood open on both sides of the road, doors hanging inward, windows dark, interiors too still.
No won watched from the windows, no children moved between the buildings, and no old n sat by doorways pretending not to notice strangers.
The village was not abandoned. It had been cleared.
Finn said nothing, but his hand tightened on his weapon.
Ronan raised his shield a little higher.
Cillian’s eyes moved from house to house, and for once he did not make a joke.
The shrine sat above it all, larger against the sky than Jas rembered. Maybe it had not grown, maybe the village had only been emptied enough to make it feel bigger, but the effect was the sa. It dominated the hill.
Above the shrine doors, the Succubus Cross burned red-black.
The sky had no sun in it and no stars either, only a dim red haze spread over everything like firelight trapped behind a curtain and waiting to burn through.
The stream chat reacted almost imdiately.
[IronRingLive]: This is not a boss room.
[SeoulRaidBoard]: The Floor 15 reports never ntioned a village.
[TRBWatcher]: Where is the Dark Knight?
[Anonymous]: What the hell is that cross on the doors??
[LondonTowerWatch]: Team Zero expected this. Look at them. They knew.
Jas did not answer the chat.
The System did.
[FLOOR 15 — SIDE STORY BOSS FLOOR]
[OBJECTIVE: DEFEAT THE DARK KNIGHT]
[FAILURE CONDITION: PARTY DEATH]
Jas looked from the notification to the shrine.
The System still called it a Dark Knight, but the shrine was telling a different story.
Maeve stepped closer to the front of the group and lifted one hand toward the circlet.
The white stone gave a faint pulse.
"Sothing is pushing against the field," she said.
Ronan did not look away from the shrine. "From where?"
Maeve looked at the open houses on both sides of the road.
"Everywhere."
The whispers began from the houses.
At first, they were easy to mistake for air moving through broken doors. It was a low sound, not quite wind and not quite breathing, coming from both sides of the road at once. It slipped through the empty windows, brushed the open doorways, and gathered in the spaces behind them.
Jas kept his eyes on the shrine.
The sound moved closer without becoming louder, and that made it worse. It started to shape itself into things the mind wanted to understand, turning into a na half-heard, a familiar tone, and the edge of a voice that belonged sowhere else.
Jas heard the Saintess from Floor 14.
Her voice was soft, pleased, and waiting, the sa way it had been when the shrine doors opened and she called the marked man by his na.
His hand went to his sword.
Ronan shifted beside him.
It was not even a full step, barely half of one, but his shield turned away from the shrine and toward one of the open houses.
Maeve moved at once.
Pale gold light spread from her feet in a steady ring, the sa clean light as the circlet. It crossed the mud, reached the team, and closed around them like a boundary drawn on the floor.
Ronan stopped.
His eyes cleared, and his shield turned back toward the shrine.
Maeve did not look away from the hill. "Say it."
Ronan swallowed once. "Soone called my na."
"No one here knows your na," Finn said.
Cillian’s lightning flared across his knuckles, too bright for a second before he forced it down. Finn’s grip shifted on his weapon, leather creaking under his hand.
Jas looked at Maeve’s field.
The red haze pressed against the edge of it like smoke against glass. The whispers did not vanish, but they lost their shape and beca distant again, more like noise in another room than voices inside their heads.
The team’s breathing steadied.
The stream caught enough to panic.
[Viewer_88412]: Did the audio glitch or was that intentional?
[GuildScout_EU]: Ronan moved. He almost moved.
[TRBWatcher]: ntal influence. That was a coordinated ntal influence effect.
[Anonymous donated €2,000]: Maeve just saved them all and the floor hasn’t even started yet.
Jas did not thank her.
Maeve said, without looking at him, "Don’t make a habit of needing that."
"I wasn’t planning to."
"Good."
The village went still.
The whispers stopped moving through the houses, and that was worse than hearing them. Every open doorway seed to wait, and every dark window faced the road.
Then the shrine doors opened.
The Saintess ca out into the red light the sa way she had in Floor 14, dressed in white ceremonial clothing with the Succubus Cross at her throat. Her face was calm, almost welcoming, but everything behind her was wrong: the empty village, the red sky, the open doors, and the cross burning above the shrine.
The System feed tightened on her without Jas controlling it. The viewers saw her walking down the shrine steps, but she gave no sign that she knew anyone outside the floor was watching.
The chat did not know what to do with her.
```text
[LondonTowerWatch]: That is NOT a Dark Knight.
[IRL_Fangirl22]: Is that an NPC? Is she a boss NPC?
[SeoulRaidBoard]: Why is there a woman on Floor 15?
[TRBWatcher]: Floor 14 connection confird. Team Zero knew this was here.
[Anonymous]: She’s looking at Jas. Why is she looking at Jas.
Her eyes moved over the five of them as if counting offerings.
When they reached Jas, the red-black cross above the doors pulsed once.
"You refused the call," she said.
Maeve’s field tightened before the words finished leaving her mouth.
Jas did not answer.
"Maeve," he said. "Field stays up."
"It’s up."
"Ronan. Nothing crosses the square."
Ronan raised his shield. "She’ll have to move first."
The Saintess looked at the shield, then back at Jas.
The smile stayed on her face.
Then she began the prayer.
The chat started going wrong.
[Viewer_11902]: Why does her voice sound like it’s right behind ?
[Viewer_62291]: why did she say my na
[Anonymous donated €500]: she is beautiful
[Anonymous donated €500]: she is beautiful
[Anonymous donated €500]: she is beautiful
[TRBWatcher]: CUT THE DIRECT AUDIO. Cut it now.
[SeoulRaidBoard]: Is the stream carrying the influence? Is that possible??
[GuildAnalyst_44]: Three identical donation ssages in a row. That is not normal viewer behavior.
[Deleted_User]: open the shrine
Jas looked at the floating stream panel.
"Audio," Jas said.
Finn was already moving through the System stream controls. His fingers cut through the interface, and the direct floor audio snapped off before Jas finished the command.
The Saintess’s voice ca through filtered after that, distorted and broken into captions instead of clean sound. The viewers could still hear Team Zero and the floor itself, but her voice no longer reached them raw.
For three seconds, the chat kept stuttering.
Then it steadied.
[TRBWatcher]: Audio now filtered. Smart call.
[Anonymous]: I could feel it even through the stream. What IS she.
[LondonTowerWatch]: The influence was travelling through the broadcast.
[GuildAnalyst_44]: If that had continued, this would have beco a public hazard.
"That was the right call," Maeve said, eyes still on the shrine. "Late, but right."
"I know," Jas said.
The Saintess smiled as if nothing had changed.
It was the sa private smile she had given him at the bottom of the stairs when the light had taken him away.
The Succubus Cross above the shrine doors burned brighter.
The white of her dress darkened at the hem first, slowly enough for everyone watching to understand that the change was deliberate. Then the black spread up the cloth in thin lines, climbing across the folds, reaching her waist, her arms, and her shoulders.
tal ford over her skin as if it was growing out of her rather than being worn.
It rose in clean, wrong seams, swallowing the white cloth piece by piece. The ceremonial dress beca armor without ever looking like it had been replaced. The Saintess simply changed around it, her warm expression remaining in place while the thing beneath it stepped closer to the surface.
The red light behind her stretched outward, casting a shadow larger than her body and shaped like sothing with wings.
Maeve’s field pulled tight enough for Jas to feel it through the ground.
Ronan planted his feet and held his shield steady.
Cillian stopped leaning into his usual careless posture. He stood straight with both fists up, lightning crawling along both forearms, and the smirk that had been on his face since the estate was gone.
Finn dropped into his stance.
The viewer count jumped again.
[VIEWER COUNT: 1,204,000]
Across the square, the Saintess stepped down from the shrine in her white ceremonial dress, the Succubus Cross glowing red at her throat.
The world had co to watch Team Zero fight a Dark Knight.
Instead, the first thing standing in front of them was a smiling Saintess.
Then she lifted her hand.
And the village answered
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