Floor 9 became a threshold for the party.

The air was fiery hotter, The walls were lava flows frozen mid-cascade, rippling with heat shimmers. The portal to Floor 10: the boss chamber, the Pyre Wyrm, the goal they’d been climbing toward, pulsed at the far end, tantalizingly close.

Three Elite Magma Centipedes stood between them and the portal.

Massive, each longer than the Alpha from Floor 5, segmented bodies armored in black plates, legs ending in scythe-like points. They moved with horrible, fluid coordination, antennae twitching in unison. Cores hidden deep within, protected by layers of dense armor. No obvious weak points. No easy targets.

The party engaged. Mirko took point, [Impenetrable Fortress] blazing. Elise supported from behind, her Frost Golem... now barely six feet, a shadow of its former self, moving to freeze legs. Dillon and Garrett fought despite shattered summons. Nathan fired his last physical arrow, watched it bounce harmlessly off armor, and switched entirely to [Mana Arrow].

Kuro shifted to humanoid form... a ripple of shadow, a coalescence of darkness. Twin daggers materialized. She activated [Invisibility] and moved to flank.

But the Elites were more coordinated that the ordinary mobs.

The first centipede baited Mirko’s [Aegis Strike]. It lunged, scythe-legs sweeping low. She blocked, absorbed the force, released the shockwave and the second centipede struck from behind. Its tail whip caught her across the back, timed to the exact moment her barrier was committed to the front. [Impenetrable Fortress] flickered. Cracked.

The third centipede lunged.

Mirko tried to raise her sword but was too slow. The mandibles closed around her neck, and [Impenetrable Fortress] shattered completely.

Green light erupted.

Nathan had seen summons dissipate before. Red. The Cloud Serpent. But this was different. This was Mirko... his first summon, his Knight, the voice that had been in his head since the day everything changed. Her body dissolved into particles of emerald mana, streaming backward into his summon mark. The mark burned on his hand, searing hot.

She wasn’t dead. She was shattered. Just like Red. Just like the Cloud Serpent.

Nathan stared at his summon mark. The green light faded. The mark throbbed, a dull, painful pulse.

’Master...’

Her voice through the link was faint. Distant. Barely audible over the roar of lava and skitter of centipede legs and the pounding of his own heart.

’I cannot hold form. I’m sorry. I...’

The voice cut out.

Nathan’s borrowed bow creaked in his gri as his hands shook.

Kuro appeared beside him. Daggers drawn. Her black eyes sweeping the chamber... three Elites still standing, scythe-legs clicking; lava flows cutting the floor into islands of black stone; the Floor 10 portal so close and so impossibly far.

’Summoner.’ Her voice was quiet, steady, the calm of an Assassin who’d already calculated every outcome. ’We cannot win this floor. Mirko is shattered. The sheep and serpent are gone. The Frost Golem is diminished. Your arrows are spent. If we continue...’

"I... know."

Nathan looked at his party. Garrett, hollow-eyed, summon mark pulsing weakly, mace arm trembling. Dillon, clutching his katana with both hands to stop them shaking, knuckles white. Elise, Frost Golem barely six feet... a fragile thing of ice and fading mana... exhaustion visible in every line of her body, in the tremor of her staff hand, in how she favored her left leg.

"We’re... extracting."

No one argued, No one had the strength to. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Nathan pulled the escape crystal from his belt. The others did the same. Garrett’s hand fumbling, Dillon’s fingers clumsy, Elise’s movements precise but slow. The small stones pulsed with faint light, the promise of escape, of safety, of a world outside this furnace.

They crushed them together.

Light enveloped them. The Tower of Ash dissolved around them: the lava, the heat, the Elites, the portal to Floor 10 they’d never reach. For a moment, only silver light and the feeling of being pulled sideways through reality, away from the fire and the failure and the sound of Mirko’s voice cutting out.

[Ding! Escape successful!]

[Penalty: Unable to climb the Tower of Ash for 7 days!]

Then the cold Ashwick afternoon hit Nathan’s face. He stood outside the Tower entrance. The sun setting, pale gold through drifting ash. Birds sang somewhere distant, oblivious.

They had lost.

The party stood in silence.

Garrett dropped to his knees in the dirt, mace falling beside him. He didn’t speak. He didn’t cry. He just stared at his summon mark, the faint, erratic pulse of Red’s presence somewhere deep within.

Dillon leaned against a rock, staring at his own mark. His katana hung loose. His Cloud Serpent’s absence was a weight in the air around him.

Elise stood perfectly still. Frost Golem dismissed. Staff planted. Expression unreadable, but Nathan had learned to read her silences. She was hurting.

Nathan looked at his own summon mark. Mirko’s presence was a faint warmth, barely perceptible. He couldn’t hear her voice. Couldn’t feel her thoughts. She was there, alive, recovering, but not there in the way that mattered.

Kuro shifted to bunny form and settled on his shoulder. She didn’t speak. She had Nothing to say really.

The Tower of Ash loomed behind them, black spire wreathed in smoke and embers. Still standing. Still uncleared. Still waiting for a party strong enough to finish what they’d started.

They weren’t that party, not today.

Nathan clenched his fists. The Leyline Ring hummed on his finger as a reminder of past victories: the Dread Knight, the Shadow Wyrm, the Veiled Colosseum. But past victories didn’t clear Towers. Past victories didn’t bring back shattered summons.

"We’ll... come back." His voice was quiet, but it carried in the morning silence. "We’ll get stronger. We’ll clear this Tower. We’ll clear every Tower. This isn’t the end."

Garrett looked up. His eyes were red, but he met Nathan’s gaze. Dillon pushed off the rock, grip tightening on his katana. Elise nodded slowly, once.

"It’s just the first loss," Nathan said. "We’ll make sure it’s the last."

But even as he said it, he knew it wouldn’t be. Losses were part of climbing. Every Climber who’d ever reached the top had fallen along the way. The difference was whether you got back up.

He would get back up. They all would.

But not today. Today, they had lost. And the weight of it was heavier than any Tower.

Nathan turned his back on the Tower of Ash and began the walk back to the village. His party followed, limping, silent, their summon marks pulsing with the ghosts of fallen comrades.