Sky smashed into his eyes.

  He staggered as his boots hit solid ground, shield heavy, stone bracer snug. Cool air stung after swamp rot.

  Floor Three.

  The plains opened around them in every direction.

  Rolling grass stretched to a far horizon, greens and golds rippling in steady wind. Boulders and sparse, oddly spaced trees broke up the view. The sky arched overhead, blue and streaked with clouds, lit by a sun that shouldn't be there.

  Cal had hated this floor the first time.

  No walls. No ceiling. No cover. Just open ground and too much sky. He’d felt exposed, pinned beneath something vast.

  Now the same emptiness hit differently.

  After the swamp’s cling and dragging water, Floor Three’s air felt like a reward. Wind pulled sweat from his skin. Firm earth underfoot was relief, not accusation.

  Nearby, not-quite-sheep grazed by worn outcrops. Their wool was coarse, eyes flat. One stared, flicked its ears, then resumed eating grass.

  Elias inhaled deeply, shoulders loosening as he rolled his neck. “Much better than Floor Two.”

  Cal’s lips twitched upward. “Ten out of ten. Would take weird sheep over leech soup again.”

  Elias made a sound that might have been agreement.

  Cal noticed Jordan’s grip on his staff stayed too tight. Dawnshelter steadied him, but the floor stayed vast.

  “No sprinting,” Elias said. “No wandering. We do this like we said.”

  Cal nodded. “We find the language.”

  Jordan glanced at him. “You just said that out loud like it doesn’t sound insane.”

  “It’s the Tower,” Cal said. “Insane is baseline.”

  Elias pointed with his chin at the nearest low rise. “High ground first. Cal, take lead. Jordan, hinge.”

  “Copy,” Jordan said, automatically.

  They started walking.

  The wind pressed at Cal’s shield, trying to turn it into a sail. Grass rasped his boots as he angled up the slope for a better view.

  His earth sense hummed quietly in the back of his mind.

  Packed soil. Occasional stones like teeth under the surface. Broad, shallow sheets of bedrock a few feet down—the formation that gave the plains their long, rolling lines.

  Elias walked half a step behind and to the right, same forest spacing. He didn’t crowd; he existed where Cal relied on him.

  Jordan moved in the middle, staff angled low, eyes tracking the grass for anything that didn’t belong.

  They crested the first hill.

  More plains spilled away. Grass bent differently, and darker green pockets held moisture. Cal tracked herds and the glint of a broken signpost.

  Elias ignored all of that.

  Elias angled toward a lone, broad-trunked tree down the slope from the crest.

  It was twice Cal’s height, bark rough, branches spreading. Cal had seen a dozen like it on his first run.

  Elias stopped in front of the tree, set his gloved palm flat against the bark for a moment, then stepped back and rapped the trunk twice with the butt of one dagger.

  “Look,” he said.

  Cal frowned and stepped closer.

  At first, all he saw was bark—ridged and fissured, the usual vertical lines of growth.

  Then his eyes adjusted.

  Thin grooves cut across the grain in arcs, spiraling upward in faint, geometric steps. The cuts almost blended in, dismissible as texture if you weren’t seeking meaning.

  Cal reached out and deliberately brushed his fingertips along one of the grooves.

  It wasn’t shallow.

  It was precise.

  Cal swallowed. “I walked past these.”

  “You didn’t see them,” Elias said.

  “No,” Cal admitted. The word tasted like grit. “All I saw was grass, open sky, and my brain screaming something would jump me.”

  Jordan leaned in, head tilted. “That’s…not bark damage. That’s deliberate.”

  “Everything in here is deliberate,” Elias said. “Floor Three’s objective isn’t random patrols. It’s infestation control. The Tower teaches you to stop waiting for predators to find you.”

  He dragged his fingers more slowly along the spiraling mark, focusing on the pattern beneath his hand.

  His earth sense reached down into the roots.

  Something was wrong. Not in a mystical way. In a structural one.

  Voids gaped under the bark where solid wood belonged. Hollow channels. A faint tremor, like a swarm of small legs scurrying in hidden corridors.

  He withdrew his hand.

  “What does it say?” Cal asked.

  Elias’s mouth twitched. “In plain speech? It says: You’re walking into a nest.”

  Jordan made a small sound. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a curse. “Of course it’s spiders.”

  Cal’s jaw tightened.

  They had seen smaller spiders before—finger-sized, swarming over carcasses and scattering as he got close. Annoying, unsettling—not nightmare fuel.

  He hadn’t gone looking for their parents.

  “You’re telling me they live inside the trees,” Cal said.

  “Burrow in and hollow them out,” Elias confirmed. “Lay eggs in the heartwood. Spin anchor webs through the roots. The Tower expects you to crack the nest. Clear enough infestation points, and you get the exit.”

  Cal stared at the grooves.

  He remembered his first time on this floor: hours walking, always watched, emptiness amplifying sound. He’d leaned against a hollow tree to rest—then movement, bark splitting, spiders spilling out like teeth.

  He’d thought it was bad luck.

  He’d thought the Tower had rolled dice.

  “Tower doesn’t roll dice,” Cal said quietly.

  Elias’s gaze flicked to him. “No. It lays traps and waits to see who blames chance.”

  Jordan’s staff tapped once against the ground. “Okay. So. We have a language. We have nests. We need the key phrase that means ‘exit.’”

  Elias nodded. “We need to clear enough nests. But we do it smart.”

  Cal focused on the bark again.

  The spirals weren’t random loops.

  Segments repeated every handspan. The spirals bent more sharply on one side of the trunk.

  Elias traced a gloved finger along a groove where two lines met. “See this break? Think of the cut edge as an arrowhead. The direction of the angled notch points toward the infestation pressure.”

  Cal leaned closer.

  Once Elias pointed it out, he couldn’t unsee it. The grooves weren’t decorative; they were directional. Most of the breaks angled downslope, toward a shallow dip where the grass grew thicker and darker.

  “Means the main pressure’s that way,” Elias said. “Crack this tree open, that’s where the bulk will try to run. Or where reinforcements come from if you drag it out.”

  Cal straightened. “Use it like flow.”

  “Exactly.”

  Jordan squinted at the bark. “How do you tell size?”

  Elias tapped a bulge in the trunk where the bark looked subtly warped. “Warp. Distortion. If the whole trunk twists like it’s trying to spiral out of itself, that’s a big nest. Enough warp to be obvious from ten paces? That’s when you start thinking about whether you want to deal with it.”

  Cal pressed his palm to the bark once more and let his earth sense skim methodically through the roots.

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  He could feel the voids.

  He could feel the web anchors, too—thin tension lines like threads tied into the soNot a literal string he could touch.uch. It was a structural pull that changed how the ground held itself.

  It was data.

  “Age?” Cal asked.

  Elias nodded toward the leaves. Lower down, a circle of foliage around the warped section had yellowed and wilted, veins pale and edges curled.

  “Leaf discoloration tells you how long it’s been chewed up,” Elias said. “New nests haven’t poisoned the tree yet. Older nests throw scouts and burrow pods. They relocate if you let them.”

  Cal’s mind flicked back to that first run.

  He’d seen something sack-like dragged across the grass, a moving lump under thin silk.

  He’d given it a wide berth out of instinct.

  “I saw one of those pods,” he admitted.

  “Good instinct,” Elias said. “Bad interpretation. Now you have both.”

  Jordan exhaled slowly. “So what’s the plan? How many do we need to crack?”

  Elias’s eyes swept the landscape.

  “Enough,” he said. “The Tower isn’t going to post a checklist. But it will escalate the resistance the longer we’re here. We hit a cluster, clear it clean, and we watch for the exit prompt.”

  Cal nodded, already mapping.

  The marked trees weren’t everywhere.

  They were in patterns.

  Clusters.

  They moved at a steady walk, following the gentle rise of the land.

  Elias didn’t head toward the grazers or the shiny debris.

  He angled between larger trees, picking out specific trunks as if he were following a path only he could see.

  “These trees,” Elias said as they passed another marked trunk. “Nests.”

  Cal stopped long enough to confirm with earth sense—hollow channels, tension lines.

  Then he continued.

  The more Elias pointed out, the clearer it became.

  Cal wasn’t just seeing bark.

  He was reading it.

  They reached another marked tree, this one thicker. The bark distortion was more pronounced. A faint needle-scratch smell under the natural wood scent.

  Cal laid his palm flat against the grooves.

  This time, he didn’t just see lines.

  He saw direction.

  The spirals bent harder to the right than to the left. The cut edges were slightly deeper on the downslope side. Up close, the bark had an etched look along that path, like too many legs had scuttled under the surface in the same direction.

  He inhaled slowly.

  Medium nest. Pressure trending east. Egg clusters present. Not an eruption.

  The assessment rose in his mind like overlay labels on a map.

  He stepped back.

  “That hollow,” Cal said, pointing toward a shallow dip where the grass grew darker. “That’s where the pressure’s moving. If we crack this one, they’ll try to run downhill into that.”

  Elias watched him. “Go on.”

  Cal forced himself to articulate it rather than letting it remain a feeling.

  “Tree isn’t dead yet,” Cal said. “Upper canopy’s still green. So the heartwood is compromised but not collapsed. If we hit it wrong, we’ll spill a swarm, but we won’t get the core chamber clean. We need to force it open in a controlled direction.”

  Jordan’s eyebrows lifted. “You just said ‘core chamber’ like you’ve been doing this for years.”

  Cal’s mouth tightened in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “I’ve been doing salvage for years. Structural failure is structural failure.”

  Elias nodded once, almost satisfied. “Then you know what to do.”

  Cal did.

  He just didn’t love it.

  Jordan’s staff tip clicked against a stone, soft. “We’re not cracking anything until we plan. Right?”

  Elias looked at him. “Right.”

  Jordan’s shoulders eased by a fraction.

  Cal caught it.

  Dawnshelter wasn’t just calming Cal.

  It was keeping Jordan from tipping over the edge of his own tension.

  “Up,” Elias said. “Vantage.”

  They climbed to the top of a nearby ridge and crouched in the lee of a boulder, using it for cover and a vantage point.

  From here, the marked trees became obvious once you knew what to look for—spirals written in bark across the rolling plain.

  Elias pointed them out one by one.

  “Cluster there,” he said, indicating a loose web of trunks. “Four worth hitting. Two medium, two small. Anything bigger pulls heat from neighboring nests.”

  Cal squinted, mapping routes.

  One medium tree sat just below their ridge on the south side, arrows pushing pressure east into a shallow gully. Another stood farther along the slope, its marks bent toward a rocky outcrop. The two smaller nests flanked them like punctuation—one nearer the grazers’ path, one near exposed stone.

  Jordan leaned forward, eyes scanning the grass between trees. “Any moving pods?”

  Cal let Earth Sense reach—light, cautious. He didn’t want to broadcast himself into the soil the way he sometimes did when he panicked.

  “None close,” Cal said. “Some vibration near the outcrop. Could be web anchors.”

  Elias nodded. “We avoid dragging it out. In and out.”

  Jordan held up two fingers. “And we don’t let it turn into ‘in and in and in.’”

  Cal glanced at him.

  Jordan met his eyes without smiling. “I’m serious. The open sky is messing with me. I can handle fights. I don’t like the waiting.”

  Cal swallowed. “Copy.”

  Elias tapped the boulder. “We start with the uphill medium. Less chance of getting surprise guests from above. Clear that, then roll the line downslope and use terrain to funnel anything smart enough to relocate.”

  Cal traced the shape of the ridge under them—bedrock close to the surface, solid enough to anchor real shaping without cost spikes.

  “Ground’s good here,” Cal said. “I can raise a low berm between us and that gully. Knee-high. Broken on purpose. Teeth on top. If they try to flood uphill when we crack the nest, they hit it head-on and lose speed.”

  Elias’s gaze flicked to him. “Short and rough. Not a castle.”

  “Learned that lesson,” Cal said. “Less mass, more leverage. No aneurysms for dramatic effect.”

  Jordan, quietly: “Thank you.”

  Cal looked at him.

  Jordan shrugged one shoulder. “I hate when you go full…stone monument. It feels like you’re trying to win an argument with the Tower.”

  Cal’s throat tightened.

  Elias pointed at the second medium nest near the outcrop. “After the first, we hit that one. But only if our first clear stays clean. If it’s messy, we downshift to smalls and leave.”

  Jordan’s staff tip-tapped once against the rock. “Threshold rules.”

  “Exactly,” Elias said.

  Cal nodded and extended his senses again.

  He imagined the slope as an incline map.

  “If anything escapes,” Cal said, “it’ll run with the pressure—toward the gully or toward the rocks. I can seed thin spikes under the grass along those routes. Not to kill. Just to wreck footing. Trip lines for spider legs.”

  Elias’s mouth quirked. “I like it.”

  Jordan’s expression went faintly disgusted. “I do not like thinking about spider legs, but yes, trip them.”

  Elias looked at Cal. “Escape lines.”

  Cal traced them.

  “Back over the ridge,” he said. “Bedrock there. I can throw up a diagonal lip to break the line of sight while we pull. If we get cut off downslope, we cut right instead of left—the grazers avoid that patch. Whatever’s under it has already claimed its buffet. Less chance the herd stampedes into us.”

  Jordan’s gaze flicked to the herd, then to the avoided patch. “So we’re not the weirdest thing on the menu.”

  Elias nodded once. “Yep.”

  Cal’s mouth twisted. “Love that for us.”

  Elias drew the route in the air with two fingers. “Up medium. Berm. Clear. Then outcrop medium. Spikes. If we get a pod release, we pull immediately. No chasing.”

  Jordan lifted his hand. “Beacon?”

  Elias looked at him. “Withheld unless something slips past the berm or we get flanked. You manage your threshold. You call a pause. We stop.”

  Jordan’s shoulders eased again, the relief small but visible. “Copy. Necessary only.”

  Cal felt the rule settle into place like a brace.

  Not because he doubted Jordan, but because he refused to treat Jordan like a battery.

  “Ready?” Elias asked.

  Cal looked out over the plain. On his first run, this floor had been a blank page with teeth.

  He nodded.

  “Ready,” Cal said.

  They moved.

  The approach was quiet. The grass hid sound better than the forest did, but it also hid movement. Every ripple looked like something crouching.

  Cal kept his pace measured, letting earth sense do the work. He tracked the tree’s roots as they approached the first medium nest.

  He stopped ten paces out, and Elias halted immediately.

  Jordan halted a heartbeat after that, hinge position intact.

  “Berm,” Cal said.

  “Do it,” Elias replied.

  Cal pushed aether into the ground.

  Stone rose in a low, broken arc between them and the gully—knee-high, jagged at the top, with deliberate gaps that would slow a surge but not trap them. Not a wall. A tool.

  His ribs ached as the effort warmed his channels.

  But it wasn’t the screaming pain from early floors.

  It was controlled.

  He exhaled.

  Jordan watched him, eyes narrowed like he was tracking Cal’s breathing cadence.

  “You good?” Jordan asked.

  Cal nodded once. “Good.”

  Elias moved up to the tree, sword still sheathed. He tapped the bark in three places, listening. “Core chamber is high,” he murmured. “We crack low and force spill.”

  Cal understood.

  If you split it at the base, you control where the swarm exits.

  If you split it near the chamber, you get a face full of spiders.

  Jordan shifted his staff to a two-handed grip. “Please don’t say ‘face full’ again.”

  Elias ignored him, calm. “Cal, you open the seam. Not wide. Just enough.”

  Cal placed his palm against the bark.

  Earth sense reached inside.

  He felt the hollow.

  He felt the thin barrier between living wood and infestation.

  He pushed.

  The bark creaked.

  A fracture line ran vertically, subtle at first, then widening.

  A dry, papery sound answered from inside.

  Then the tree moved.

  Not swaying. Shuddering as something within it pressed outward.

  Elias drew one short sword in a smooth motion, blade low.

  Jordan’s humor was gone. Dawnshelter steadied the air around them like a held breath.

  The bark split, and spiders rushed forth. They weren’t finger-sized. They were hand-sized and sometimes even larger.

  Bodies like black knots, legs too long, too many joints, movement too coordinated to be random.

  Cal’s stomach tried to revolt.

  He forced it down.

  “Berm holds,” Elias said, voice level. “Let them run.”

  They did.

  The swarm poured downhill, as predicted, hit the broken arc of stone, and hesitated—legs scrabbling for purchase on jagged rock.

  That hesitation was everything.

  Elias moved.

  Aqua Lance snapped—tight, controlled, not wasteful. Water pressure punched through clustered bodies, shredding silk and chitin.

  Cal stepped in with shield and spear, not trying to crush, just to redirect. He used the berm gaps as kill funnels, shoving spiders into choke points where Elias’s lances could hit multiple targets.

  Jordan stayed hinged, staff sweeping low to knock stragglers off-line.

  One spider tried to climb the tree’s split seam and leap past the berm.

  Jordan’s staff struck it midair.

  The spider hit the ground and skittered.

  Cal slammed it with his shield.

  “Good,” Elias said.

  Cal didn’t know if he meant the hit or the plan.

  Maybe both.

  More spiders spilled. A second wave. Then a third.

  Cal felt the tree’s heart chamber loosen.

  The hollowness shifted.

  “Something bigger is coming,” Cal warned.

  Elias nodded once. “Stay measured.”

  Jordan’s breathing tightened.

  Cal didn’t look away from the spill.

  “Jordan,” Cal said.

  Jordan answered immediately. “I’m good.”

  Then, quieter: “I hate them.”

  Cal almost laughed as the bark split wider.

  A larger spider pushed through—torso thick, legs corded, silk glands visible like pale nodules.

  Not a boss.

  But a mother.

  It hit the berm and climbed.

  Fast.

  Cal’s heart jumped.

  Elias’s Aqua Lance would take it, but the angle was wrong—risk of splash into the gaps, risk of losing the funnel.

  Jordan’s staff lifted.

  Cal felt the start of Beacon—the pressure change, the way attention in the air sharpened.

  Jordan stopped himself.

  “Not yet,” Jordan said through clenched teeth. “Not yet.”

  Cal understood.

  They didn’t need it.

  Not if Cal did his job.

  He slammed his palm down into the ground.

  A small lip of stone rose at the berm’s top edge—not a wall, just a sudden shift.

  The mother spider’s front legs caught.

  It lost purchase.

  It slipped.

  Elias fired.

  Aqua Lance punched through its center mass.

  The spider spasmed, then dropped, legs folding the wrong way.

  The swarm beneath it faltered.

  Cal exhaled.

  Jordan exhaled too, the sound sharp.

  “Clear,” Elias said.

  The remaining spiders broke—some trying to retreat into the tree, others scattering into the grass.

  Jordan clipped stragglers that came too close and let the rest go.

  They’d said no heroics.

  They meant it.

  When the movement stopped, Cal realized his hands were steady.

  His stomach still hated the floor.

  But his body wasn’t betraying him.

  Jordan’s shoulders sagged a fraction, then squared again.

  “You didn’t Beacon,” Cal said quietly.

  Jordan’s mouth twitched, humor trying to reattach. “I wanted to. For the record.”

  Elias sheathed his blade. “You didn’t need to. That’s the point.”

  Jordan nodded once, serious. “Necessary only.”

  Cal looked at the split tree.

  The grooves on its bark looked less like a warning now.

  More like a solved problem.

  “One down,” Cal said.

  Elias scanned the plain. “And we didn’t pull the whole floor down on our heads.”

  Jordan tapped his staff against the stone once. “Yet.”

  Cal’s lips twitched.

  Then he looked toward the outcrop medium nest.

  “Second?” Cal asked.

  Elias’s gaze held him for a beat. “Check yourself.”

  Cal took a breath and listened.

  Ribs aching, stable.

  Channels warm, not screaming.

  Mind clear.

  He glanced at Jordan.

  Jordan met his eyes and made the smallest possible nod.

  Still good.

  Cal looked back at Elias.

  “Yes,” Cal said.

  Elias nodded once. “Then we go.”

  They started toward the outcrop, measured and deliberate, leaving the cracked tree behind like a mark on the map.

  The plains rolled onward.

  And for the first time, Cal felt like he was reading the floor instead of being read by it.