Breakfast ended not long after.

The food had done little for the camp beyond keeping hunger from turning uglier, but it was enough to get people moving. Byron came for them himself and told them to follow. His voice carried none of the strain from yesterday’s argument, though Neo noticed the way he kept scanning the camp as they walked, counting faces, measuring who had come and who had chosen not to.

They reached the center of the camp, the same place as before.

Most of the survivors were already there. But not all.

The four from the gray-haired bastard’s group who had gone into the tower had yet to show themselves. Byron noticed it too. He paused once, let his attention travel across the gathered people, and waited as if he expected them to stroll in late with some excuse already prepared.

They didn’t.

That was enough to start the murmuring.

The same voices rose first. The same people from the day before, the ones who had already made fear into a habit and now wore it like caution.

"Byron, this again?" one man snapped. "We already told you what we think about entering the tower."

A woman near the front spoke right after him, her arms folded so tightly it looked painful. "You can’t force us to go in there against our will. We’re not dying for other people."

Byron let out a breath through his nose.

"Let me speak first," he said. "Things have changed."

The woman gave a bitter laugh. "What could’ve changed in a single day? Probably nothing."

Byron turned his head toward her, and some of that easy roughness he carried most of the time dropped away.

"You haven’t let me say anything yet," he replied. "So show me enough respect to wait until I’m done."

That shut her up, if only because his voice had stopped asking.

Byron shifted slightly, turned toward the rear of the gathering, and said,

"Come forward, please."

A figure moved out from behind the others.

The black-haired girl.

The camp knew her at once. Even the ones who had never spoken to her knew who she was. She had been the first person to reach the tower. The first survivor in this place. The girl who had gone in with a full group and come back alone.

A different kind of hush spread this time, one made of expectation and old discomfort.

Byron stepped aside enough to give her the space.

"As you all know," he said, "she and her group reached the final floor of the tower. She was the only one who returned. She is also the only person here who knows what happened up there and what we’re truly facing." He glanced over the camp before continuing. "Today, she’s here to tell us herself."

Snot leaned slightly toward Neo and lowered his voice.

"I didn’t expect this," he murmured. "If she says it herself, it carries far more weight than Byron repeating it."

Neo agreed.

Byron could organize, calm people, hold them together.

But he had not seen the tower’s upper floors. She had. Fear sounded different in the mouth of someone who had walked into it and crawled back out alone.

The black-haired girl stood in front of all of them, hands drawn close to herself, shoulders narrow beneath the pressure of so many waiting faces. When she began, her voice came out quiet enough that people leaned in without meaning to.

"Before I say anything..." She stopped, gathered herself, and forced the words through cleanly. "I want to apologize. I think the loss of my group hit me harder than I wanted to admit. I didn’t want to keep going without them. I didn’t want to think about what happened. But that doesn’t change anything." Her fingers tightened against each other. "I have to accept the reality of where we are and keep moving for their sake too. So... I’m sorry. A large part of the blame is mine for waiting this long to tell you what’s inside the tower."

No one interrupted her. No one cut in with one of those stupid little remarks people liked to make when they wanted to sound braver than they were.

She had earned that much.

She drew in another breath and continued.

"The tower is large. You can all see that much from outside. When my group entered, the first floor was simple. A circular room with a statue in the center and a spiral staircase leading upward. Most of the floors are built like that. They aren’t complicated. They aren’t full of traps or strange riddles."

Neo kept his face still.

So the front route truly was that plain.

Her voice steadied slightly as she went on, as if speaking facts was easier than speaking memory.

"There are several types of Soul Beasts inside. The spiders from the jungle. Night Stalkers too. And there are knights..." Her mouth tightened faintly. "They look like vagabonds wearing old armor. Most carry different weapons, but all of them fight at close range."

The camp listened harder now.

Even the doubters and the frightened ones.

"The floors themselves are not the real problem," she said. "The real problem is the top."

That sentence did more to darken the gathering than any shout the day before.

"There’s a boss on the final floor. Three meters tall, maybe a little more. Six arms. Six swords." She swallowed. "That was enough. Before we could react properly, one of my group died. The rest followed. It wiped us out almost instantly." Her voice thinned at the end despite her effort to keep it steady. "I was the only one who got away."

The camp’s mood dropped like a body into deep water.

The words spread through the crowd without anyone needing to repeat them.

Wiped out.

A full group.

One attack.

One survivor.

The people who had opposed the tower before didn’t look convinced now. They looked vindicated. A few lowered their heads. Others stared at the ground as if they’d already begun backing away in their minds.

Byron stepped forward before the fear could root itself again.

"That happened because they didn’t know what was waiting for them," he said, his voice cutting cleanly through the gathering. "And they entered as a single group. Five people. That is not what we have here."

The camp’s attention shifted to him.

"Many of you have been hunting in the jungle every day," Byron continued. "You’ve gained Soul Cores. You’ve grown stronger. You understand these beasts and this Breach better than you did when you first entered it. We are not five people walking blind into the tower. We are more than fifty."

His tone rose with every line, not into cheap drama. "In six days, we enter the tower," he said. "And in six days, we stop hiding from the only road that leads out of this place. Many of you have family waiting outside. Parents. Brothers. Sisters. People who know the Breach closed and have no way of knowing whether you’re alive or dead." He swept a hand over the camp. "So prepare yourselves. In six days, we go in together, and we leave this place together."

By then he had them again.

He pressed the advantage.

"You all know the fame that comes from clearing a closed Breach. The odds are always written against the people trapped inside. Good. Let them write those odds. We’ll be the reason they have to change them."

That one drew a different response. Backs straightened. Faces lifted. A few of the same people who had looked half-dead a minute ago showed something else now, small and flickering, but there.

Will.

Snot leaned toward Neo with a faint breath of approval.

"I think this is workable," he said. "A lot of them just needed a push."

Neo kept his attention on the camp. "Yes. But that group will be trouble. I don’t trust them." He paused before adding, quieter, "I want to talk to you later."

Snot gave him a brief side glance, caught the tone, and nodded once without asking for more.

"Later, then." He folded his arms and shifted his weight. "First, we should go hunting. If we work hard these next days, we can push you to Vein before the tower. Maybe Alice too if we don’t waste time."

Neo inclined his head.

That was better than sitting in camp and letting fear ferment into stupidity. Better than giving the gray-haired bastards more room to grow stronger in private.

Around them, the meeting was already breaking apart into smaller conversations. Some people spoke with more life than before. Others stayed hesitant. The doubters hadn’t vanished, but they no longer had full control of the mood.

That was enough for now.

Neo let his attention drift once toward the black-haired girl. She had stepped back from the center after speaking and stood off to the side again, smaller than Byron, smaller than the crowd she had just steadied, but no longer absent from it.

Good.

He turned back to Snot.

"Let’s go kill something," Neo said.

That brought a grin to Snot’s face at once.

"Now you’re speaking properly."