Team Zero was still in the entry hall when the notification came.

They had barely caught their breath from Floor 16. Cillian was still favoring his side, Finn still had blood drying down half his face, and the MVP window was still fresh enough that none of them had stopped feeling good about it.

Then the world’s System lit up at once, and the good feeling drained out of the room.

[FLOOR 20 RAID PARTY ELIMINATED]

[ALL CHALLENGERS HAVE PERISHED]

[MAIN STORYLINE ACTIVATED]

[MAIN STORY QUEST UNLOCKED: ANGEL OF LUST — THE FIRST DISCIPLE]

[ENTRY REQUIREMENT: 20 CHALLENGERS]

Nobody said anything for a moment.

"Angel of Lust." Maeve read it twice. "That’s the Floor 15 line. The Cross. The Mother thing."

James didn’t answer her right away.

He knew the name. He knew it the way his throat still knew it, where a hand had closed around it and lifted him off the ground while a winged woman told him he carried something that wasn’t his. He knew exactly which presence the Tower had just put a quest title on.

What he did not know was what had happened inside Floor 20.

Neither did anyone else. That was the whole problem.

The hours after gave them nothing.

News feeds ran the same five facts on a loop. Emerald Spire’s advance team had entered Floor 20. The team was wiped. No one came back. The System had changed the floor’s rules. That was all anyone could confirm, and it was not much.

There was no footage. No survivor. No message logged before the vitals went flat. Not one confirmed sighting of whatever had killed them.

So the talk filled the space the facts left empty.

"—analysts suggesting a boss-tier entity, though the Bureau has not confirmed any monster type—"

"—others questioning whether a six-person advance team was simply too small for a threshold floor—"

"—and a growing theory that Floor 20 was waiting for a first failed attempt before unlocking its true quest—"

Everyone had a theory. Nobody had a fact. The only thing the Tower had actually said was a number, and the number was twenty.

At Emerald Spire, Marcus Hale read the vitals himself, line by line, because he would not take it from anyone else.

Six names. Six flat lines. No emergency return. No rescue beacon. No final report.

He did not break. He stood over the screen with his hands flat on the desk and let it land, because they had been his people, sent in under his order, carrying his guild’s name through that gate.

Then he straightened.

"Pull the elites," he told the officer beside him. "Everyone who cleared Floor 19. Full gear, full briefing. We prepare for Floor 20."

"You’re leading it?"

"They died under my name." His voice stayed level, which was worse than shouting. "I’ll answer it myself."

The officer hesitated, then said the other thing. "Sir — the Bureau’s called a summit. Every major guild master and the independent S-ranks. Emergency session, this afternoon. They want you there."

Marcus looked at the six flat lines a moment longer.

"Then they’ll hear it from me there too," he said.

By midday the whole country knew a summit was coming.

The reports made it bigger than Emerald Spire, because Floor 20 was a main story raid now, and that belonged to all of Ireland. The Bureau had pulled in every guild master who mattered and every independent S-rank it could reach. No roster had been released. No statement was promised until after.

That gap was enough for the public to start fighting over the twenty seats before a single one had been handed out.

@redbrick_ronan: Marcus opened the floor. his team died for it. he leads. simple

@towerclips: emerald spire FAILED. you don’t hand the whole raid to the guild that just got wiped

@dublin_mam_of_3: twenty seats and half the country thinks they deserve one. here we go

@just_here_lurking: genuine question, would a rising team even get looked at over the veterans? or is that mad

Nobody had the answer yet. That was what made it loud.

The Bureau’s main conference room was full by the time O’Shea sat down at the head of it, Niamh at his right hand with a tablet.

It was not a friendly room. Marcus Hale sat halfway down one side, still and grim. Declan Roe, who ran the Ironwall Guild, sat across from him with two of his officers behind. Saoirse Doyle, S-rank and beholden to no guild at all, had taken a chair at the far end and folded her arms. Three more guild masters filled the rest of the table, each with enough teams, money, and pride behind them to make trouble if the Bureau handled them wrong.

O’Shea did not open with sympathy. He opened with facts.

"Emerald Spire’s advance team is dead. All six. We have no footage and no survivor, so I won’t pretend we know what killed them." He let that sit. "What we know is this. Floor 20 is now a main story raid. Exactly twenty Challengers can enter, no more. And Ireland has two weeks before the first official attempt is expected to go in. We are deciding today how those twenty seats are filled."

That was as far as he got before the room opened up.

"Then Emerald Spire leads it," Marcus said. "My team opened that floor. My people died walking through that door first. The lead is ours."

"Your people died, and the floor changed because of it." Declan Roe did not raise his voice, but he did not soften it either. "That makes it a national raid, Marcus, not an Emerald Spire revenge run. You don’t get to own a floor because you lost a team on it."

"Careful."

"I’m being honest. There’s a difference, and your grief doesn’t erase it."

"Guild politics shouldn’t decide a floor nobody understands." Saoirse Doyle spoke from the end without unfolding her arms. "We don’t know what’s in there. We’re carving up seats over a door none of us has seen the other side of. Whoever goes in had better be picked for fit, not for whose banner they wear."

The other masters talked over each other after that, every one of them angling for seats, and O’Shea let them run until the shape of it was clear in the room.

Then he set his hand flat on the table, once.

The noise dropped.

"Here is the Bureau’s position," he said. "Marcus will be considered the natural lead. He’s the strongest person available and the face of this country’s Challengers, and that’s not flattery, it’s fact. But no single guild owns these twenty seats. Emerald Spire does not run this raid alone. The Bureau approves the final roster. All of it."

Roe sat back, satisfied enough. Marcus did not, but he held his tongue.

"There’s one more allocation I’m putting on the table now," O’Shea said, "so you all hear it from me and not from a leak. Three provisional seats are reserved for Team Zero."

The room reacted before he finished the sentence.

"Team Zero." Roe almost laughed. "They’ve been climbing eighteen months. Half this table has people who’ve cleared more floors than that team has fought."

"Frequent clears aren’t readiness," one of the other masters said. "This is a main story raid, not a side floor. You don’t send children up against a story boss because they’re popular this season."

"And one of them is on supervised release." Roe again, harder. "You want to put a necromancer who dropped a hotel on live television into a national raid? After Ashford Grand? The public will burn you for it."

O’Shea waited for them to finish.

"I’m not picking them because they’re popular," he said. "I’m picking them because of what that floor is named. Team Zero has cleared abnormal floors that broke the people who tried them before. They have direct history with the Angel of Lust line — they fought the Dark Knight of the Succubus Cross and lived. And James Ganner is the only Challenger in this country who has had direct contact with that entity and walked away from it."

The room quieted at that, because none of them had a counter to it.

"The floor named something they’ve already touched," O’Shea said. "That’s not favoritism. That’s relevance."

"And to be clear," he added, "I’m not asking for James Ganner the individual. I’m offering three seats to Team Zero as a unit. They choose who fills them."

Niamh slid the names across without comment. James. Finn. Maeve.

"My recommendation," O’Shea said. "James for the connection. Finn as a frontliner who just took MVP on Floor 16. Maeve because her read of a battlefield is worth more on an unknown floor than another sword. Their other two stay out of the first attempt. Twenty seats is twenty seats."

He had barely finished the second name when Marcus moved.

"Not Finn."

It came out flat and fast, and every head at the table turned.

"He’s a registered Challenger," O’Shea said. "He cleared Floor 16 yesterday. He qualifies."

"I don’t care what he qualifies for. He’s not going into Floor 20." Marcus’s hands had closed on the edge of the table. "I just pulled six flat lines off a screen this morning. Six people I sent through a door I couldn’t see the other side of. I will lead this raid. I will give you five Emerald Spire elites. I’ll hand you my best and stand in front of all of them. But not him."

For a moment, the guild master was gone, and what was left was just a man who did not want to lose his son in the dark.

The room saw it. Nobody was unkind about it.

O’Shea did not push, but he did not bend either.

"Finn Hale is a registered independent Challenger," he said quietly. "Not Emerald Spire. The Bureau will put the offer to him directly."

"He’s my son."

"He is." O’Shea held his eyes. "Which is why it’s his to answer, Marcus. Not yours."

Marcus said nothing. His jaw worked once, and he let go of the table.

The meeting closed on a rough shape.

Marcus would lead, if he accepted the Bureau’s final conditions. Several seats would go to Emerald Spire’s Floor 19 elites because their guild master was leading. The other major guilds would split a limited number between them. The independent S-ranks would be considered on fit. Three provisional seats would be held for Team Zero, pending their acceptance.