Night fell over the camp, and for the first ti in what felt like forever, Neo lay on sothing that almost qualified as comfort.
The bed Byron had put together was absurdly decent for a shack built at the base of a tower in the middle of a closed Breach. The fra held. The roof didn’t drip. And the pelts thrown over the bedding were softer than anything Neo had slept on in years.
He stared up at the ceiling.
’Byron really does feel like one of those dwarves from stories. Give him a pile of wood, so bones, and half a day, and he starts crafting furniture.’
The thought nearly amused him.
Sleep refused to co.
Every ti he shut his eyes, the sa things returned. The white door. The statue inside. That narrow line of light cutting through the interior from sowhere above. The group of five guarding the entrance like mongrels growling over a carcass they didn’t own.
Neo clicked his tongue under his breath.
’Yeah. I’m not sleeping like this.’
He pushed himself off the bed, stepped outside, and let the cooler air hit him. The camp had quieted, though not fully. A few fires still burned low. Soone coughed in the dark. Sowhere farther off, a murmur rose and fell before dying again.
Neo walked without much direction at first, hands in his pockets, letting the camp stretch around him in rough shapes and dying embers.
That was when he saw her again.
The black-haired girl.
She moved through the camp like soone who had never been part of it. People gave her space without needing to be told. No one called her na. Nobody tried to stop her. She passed between the huts and the low fires with that sa distant air clinging to her, like part of her had been left behind sowhere above and the rest was only dragging itself through the days.
Neo slowed.
Curiosity got him moving before he fully thought it through.
He followed.
The distance between them wasn’t small, but it was enough that he still felt ridiculous after a while.
’Great. Now I’m following a girl around at night.’ His mouth twisted. ’I look like a complete pervert.’
He considered stopping and just calling out to her. That would be cleaner and less stupid. Before he decided, the girl stopped on her own.
Neo halted as well.
She had reached the edge of the camp, where the firelight barely reached and the stone of the tower gave way to a quieter patch of open ground. A few graves stood there. Simple ones. Small mounds of earth marked with rough stones and scraps of wood, the kind of graves people made when they had no priest, no ti, and no other choice.
The girl went to them and sat down in front of one, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them.
Neo watched her for a second.
So that was where she had been going.
He walked the rest of the way and stopped a few steps from her.
She didn’t react at first.
Neo looked at the graves, then at her, and skipped every soft way this conversation could have started.
"We’re planning to go into the tower."
Her head snapped toward him so fast it almost looked painful.
Neo kept going.
"So if you don’t speak, a lot of people are going to die." His voice stayed flat, stripped of anything warm. "I doubt you want what happened to your friends to happen all over again."
The reaction ca at once.
"No!" The word ripped out of her. "You can’t! You can’t go in there!"
Neo didn’t move.
"Then what do you want us to do?" he asked. "Sit here? Wait until food runs low? Wait until people start killing each other over scraps?" He took another step closer. "That tower is the only thing in this Breach that looks like an answer."
She shook her head hard. "You don’t understand."
"Then make understand."
Her breathing turned uneven.
Neo didn’t soften. "How many of you went in?"
She pressed her lips together.
"How many?" he repeated.
"...Five."
"And how many ca back?"
The girl said nothing.
Neo answered for her. "One."
That hurt. He saw it.
Her arms tightened around her knees, as if she were trying to stop sothing from splitting open inside her.
Neo kept pressing.
"Did sothing hunt you through the floors?"
No answer.
"Was it a trap?"
Nothing.
"Was it one enemy or several?"
She lowered her head.
Neo clicked his tongue. "If you stay like this, everyone here dies blind. Is that what you want?"
"No..."
The word ca out small, almost crushed under everything else.
"Then stop making drag every answer out of you." His tone stayed dry. "Did you reach the top?"
A pause.
"Yes."
"Good. That’s already useful." Neo held her there with his voice alone. "Was the climb itself the problem?"
She hesitated.
Neo saw it at once.
So that wasn’t where the real danger had been.
"Right," he said quietly. "So it wasn’t the floors."
The girl’s face twisted. "Please..."
"No. I’m not here to leave you alone with it." Neo’s voice dropped, colder now. "Do you have family outside? Anyone waiting for you?"
That landed harder than the rest.
She looked away at once, fingers digging into the fabric around her knees.
Neo didn’t stop.
"If you do, think about them. If you don’t help, people die here for nothing. We’re trapped. The Breach closed. Nobody’s coming for us." His jaw tightened slightly. "So either you speak now, or others walk into the sa place your group died in."
Her shoulders trembled.
Neo watched her for a mont and asked the question he already suspected the answer to.
"The real problem is at the top, isn’t it?"
That was what broke her.
"The tower itself..." Her voice ca out thin. She swallowed and tried again. "The tower itself isn’t that hard."
Neo’s expression didn’t change.
She kept staring at the graves while she spoke.
"The floors aren’t the real problem." Her breathing turned uneven. "The problem is what’s at the top."
’So I was right.’ Neo said nothing, letting the words keep coming.
"There’s a boss." Her voice dropped lower. "Three ters tall, maybe more. Six arms. Six swords." She pressed her mouth shut for a beat and failed to stop the tremor running through it. "Before we could even do anything, it killed one of us."
Her shoulders tightened.
"We didn’t even react in ti. We were all Ember when we entered. All of us. Nobody told us the Breach had closed. Nobody told us it would beco harder." A weak laugh almost ca out and died before it beca anything. "We thought if we reached the top, we’d clear it."
Neo stayed quiet, eyes on her, letting her empty it out.
"They died." The words ca out smaller now. "One after another, they died, and I..." Her voice cracked. "I ran. I left them there."
The tears ca ugly, the way real crying always did. No grace in it. Onlyg uilt finally forcing itself out through whatever had been holding it down.
Neo felt sothing inside himself tighten in imdiate discomfort.
He had no idea what to do with this.
Anger, fear, threats, greed, pride— those he understood. They all had shape. They all moved in ways he could read.
This didn’t.
Soone crying in front of him like this made him feel like he had stepped into a room with no door and no clue how he had gotten there in the first place.
He stood there for a second too long, then forced sothing out anyway.
"You did well."
The girl didn’t answer. She only cried harder for a mont, which made Neo suspect he had chosen the wrong words and then imdiately decide he had no better ones.
At least he had tried.
He let the awkwardness pass in silence and dragged the conversation back where he wanted it.
"Is there anything else?"
She lowered her head and shook it.
No useful final warning beyond what she had already given him.
Neo looked at the graves again.
Six arms. Six swords. Three ters tall.
That was enough to work with for now.
’Good. I finally know sothing.’
The girl kept crying quietly, smaller now, her face buried against her knees. Neo stood there another mont, feeling out of place in a way he disliked, and stepped back.
Tomorrow, everyone would still be talking about plans, waiting, organizing, hoping more ti would make the tower kinder.
Neo already knew better.
His path had just beco simpler.
’Fine.’ He turned his head toward the white shape of the tower rising in the dark. ’Then tomorrow night I’ll sneak in.’
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