The corridor narrowed as they ascended, metallic walls giving way to something older—stone cracked by roots, and vines laced with glittering thorns. The air grew thick with pollen, sweet and cloying, and the smell of rot just beneath it.
Eren was the first to step onto the moss-covered threshold of Floor 9.
It was a garden.
But not like any garden from the world below.
This one was built within a massive dome of living vines and petrified trees, their trunks fused into the Tower's ancient stone. Flowers bloomed everywhere—some pulsing with internal light, others breathing faint clouds of luminescent spores. Fountains dripped crimson nectar into shallow pools that rippled without wind.
And there were eyes.
Thousands of them.
Some bloomed like petals from stalks. Others stared out from trees. More drifted in the air like floating seeds, blinking slowly, silently watching every move.
The moment the group entered, the doors behind them sealed shut.
Rorik tensed, axe in hand. "Feels like we're walking into a trap."
"We are," Eren murmured. "This whole floor is alive."
"Caution," the shard whispered.
"Floor 9 – 'The Garden of Eyes.' Hostile biome. Hive-mind ecosystem. Central node unknown."
The group moved slowly, boots sinking into damp moss. The eyes tracked them, but didn't strike. Not yet. Eren noticed something as they walked—no corpses. No bones. Just the occasional weapon half-sunk into the roots. Whoever came here before didn't die… they disappeared.
One of the porters, a boy no older than sixteen, paused by a patch of glowing lilies. "It's... beautiful," he whispered.
"Don't touch anything," Rorik snapped.
Too late.
The moment his fingers brushed a petal, the flower shivered. Its core opened like a mouth—and screamed.
A chorus of other blooms echoed it.
The garden awoke.
From the trees dropped creatures—humanoid in shape, but covered in bark and vines, their faces a twisting knot of roots with a single massive eye in the center. They moved on all fours, fast and silent, their limbs cracking like branches under strain.
"Form up!" Rorik bellowed, guards closing ranks.
Eren raised the shard and pulsed it outward—seeking a signal, a central mind. The enemies weren't random. They were coordinated. A hive needed a queen.
He spotted it.
At the center of the garden, nestled beneath a massive tree with silver bark, stood a stone altar. Wrapped around it was a being—larger than the others, its body coiled like a serpent of roots and petals. Its face bore hundreds of blinking eyes, all weeping golden sap. It didn't attack.
It watched.
"Central node detected: Root-Mother."
"Warning: Visual contact may cause hallucinations. Engage with indirect targeting."
The Root-Mother turned.
Eren's vision fractured.
He staggered back, suddenly standing in a memory—not his own.
The Princess.
He saw her.
Standing before the Root-Mother, hands glowing with Tower-light. She wasn't afraid. She knelt. The Root-Mother had let her pass.
The vision faded with a jolt.
Around him, the guards fought. One was already down, entangled in vines that pulled him into the earth. Another screamed as a creature gouged at his face with clawed fingers.
Eren steadied himself and did what the shard demanded—he sang.
Not words, this time.
A tone. A resonance.
It vibrated through the garden like wind through glass. The eyes shrieked, the creatures recoiled. Even the Root-Mother tensed.
And then Eren spoke a command, ancient and filled with stolen authority:
"Sleep."
The garden froze.
One by one, the eyes closed.
The Root-Mother curled inward, limbs folding like petals, withdrawing into herself. The creatures dropped limp, vines retreating.
Silence.
Just the sound of water dripping from petrified leaves.
The path forward opened—a bridge of blooming lilies leading through a gap in the trees to the stairwell beyond.
The survivors didn't cheer. They didn't speak. They just moved.
As they left the garden, Eren looked back once.
The Root-Mother remained still—but her final eye opened, golden and sorrowful.
And in his mind, Eren heard a whisper:
"She changed us. You may do the same… or undo it all."
The door to Floor 10 sealed behind them.
And the Tower grew darker.