The sixth floor shifted again.
Tunnels rewrote themselves beneath Leo's will, no longer bound to mortal geometry. They twisted like serpents in dream logic—endless, recursive, hungry.
The Living Walls pulsed with ambient energy, glowing with his intent. They whispered to intruders now.
"Come closer. Come deeper. Come… become."
And at the heart of it all…
Leo sat, calm as a glacier, watching the crystal map flicker with the aftershocks of the Vault's reveal.
The world was waking up.
Not just adventurers.
Not just the infected sibling.
The systems beyond systems.
In the sky above a distant city, bells rang from the Obsidian Spire.
White-robed watchers looked down from glass towers, their pupils glowing with runes. They were the Order of the Labyrinth, a guild so ancient it predated kings.
A girl in silver robes turned from her scrying pool, her eyes narrowing as the dungeon's echo rippled across her soul.
"The pattern broke.""The Vault has opened.""It's begun again."
Back in Leo's dungeon—
He crafted.
With thought alone, he shaped the first divine trap.
A chamber of crystal mirrors. Floor etched with sigils only visible to the dead. Walls whispering prayers that never finished. At the center: an altar of bone, warm with stolen divinity.
[Trap Created: Shrine of the Bound Echo]Type: Psychological | Divine InterferenceEffect: Triggers personal memory replay, siphons guilt and faith to power adjacent rooms.]
Leo stood before it, arms crossed, watching the flow of ambient energy.
It didn't just kill.
It remembered.
That was the key.
"I'm not just building a dungeon," he murmured. "I'm building a temple."
A graveyard for gods.
Suddenly—Elara's voice cut in.
Weak. Strained.
"Leo…"
He tensed.
"Mother?"
Static.
Glitches in divine connection.
"I'm being… blocked. Some of your siblings… fragments pulled too hard. Too soon. The Pattern bleeds…"
"Then give me more power. Let me stabilize it."
"You're not ready—"
"Neither was Lysia."
Silence.
Then—
"I'll send you an Offering Core. Use it wisely. It only works once per floor… for now."
A spark of golden light appeared in front of him. It pulsed with dense, silent magic.
Leo reached out and absorbed it.
[Item Acquired: Offering Core – Tier 1]Effect: Allows creation of "Offering Rooms" where intruders can sacrifice resources, memories, or parts of themselves in exchange for knowledge, favor, or buffs. Highly unpredictable. Reacts to ambient story threads.]
Now we're talking.
Let them bleed. Let them bargain. Everyone wants something.
He began carving the Offering Room into a new branch of the sixth floor. A hexagonal temple, lined with watching statues—each one in a different form of Leo's siblings.
He didn't know why he did that.
Only that it felt right.
And as the dungeon grew…
So did its reach.
Back at the adventurers' guild—
The survivors of the Vault assault arrived in Blackstone City.
Their words were shaky. Their proof was lacking.
But they brought back one thing that mattered.
Zek held up a fragment of black glass—a shard from the Vault walls.
It sang.
Faintly. Painfully. Like the scream of a star in chains.
A guild officer stepped back, pale.
"That's… that's divine."
Mira nodded.
"The dungeon speaks. And it remembers us."
A dozen gazes turned to her.
"It remembers names.""It showed us a goddess.""It said 'Seventh Born.'""And it was crying."
Silence.
Until a new voice entered the room.
Cloaked. Masked.
Calm.
"You've been marked."
They all looked at him. None recognized him.
But he wasn't hiding.
He held out a gold-plated scroll with a deep blue sigil.
"Come with me. The world's not ready for this. But we are."
Zek hesitated.
Then handed over the shard.
Back in the dungeon—
Leo opened his eyes as the Offering Room stabilized.
A single word appeared above the altar.
[Balance]
"What does that mean?"
The altar answered by shifting. Showing an image.
Not of Leo.
Not of the Vault.
But of Naeros.
Still alive.
Still smiling.
Leading a group of humans through a canyon of twisted light.
The image flickered.
Then bled.
Leo snarled.
He's moving. He's guiding people. Leading them like sheep.
I'm not letting another sibling die.
He turned to the Bound Wraith.
"Prepare the halls. We test everything now."
And to the system—
"Expand the seventh floor. Make it a maze."
A notification rang out.
[Seventh Floor Construction Unlocked: Domain of Dissonance][Theme Locked: Fractured Faith & Echoed Oaths]
Leo smiled, slow and cold.
"Let's see how faithful the world really is."