The marsh had gone silent except for the low, rolling growl that came from all three throats at once, a sound that seemed to vibrate up through the soles of William’s boots.
"Move!" Reyes’s shield arm swept out, catching Ilsa and shoving her sideways as the center head lunged, jaws closing on empty air where she’d stood a heartbeat earlier.
Kessa was already in motion, twin daggers flashing as she circled wide, looking for an opening on the flank. Bram’s bow sang, three arrows loosed in rapid succession, wind mana trailing behind them in thin blue lines. All three struck the beast’s shoulder and did almost nothing, the fur there rippling like water and letting the arrows skid off at odd angles.
"Its hide is deflecting elemental damage!" Bram shouted, already nocking again.
’Floor ten guardian.’ William’s mind raced even as his body backed toward the treeline on instinct. ’That means it’s rated for parties triple our size, at minimum. We shouldn’t even be able to see it, let alone fight it.’
The right head snapped toward Kessa, and she barely rolled clear of the bite, her cloak catching flame from the creature’s breath and forcing her to tear it off and abandon it in the mud. Reyes bought her the second she needed, slamming his shoulder into the beast’s foreleg with the kind of impact that should have broken bone in a normal creature and instead only made the thing stagger half a step.
"Belforht, what’s it doing here?" Reyes barked between breaths. "Displaced how? From where?"
"I don’t know!" William’s voice cracked. "Towers don’t drop Floor Ten monsters onto Floor Three, there’s no precedent, there’s—"
The left head turned toward him.
Every instinct in William’s body screamed to run, and for a single frozen second he almost did. Then something else rose up beneath the fear, an old, familiar itch at the base of his skull, the same sensation he got whenever his Taming Talent flared near something living.
’It’s hurt.’ The thought arrived unbidden, clearer than anything else in the chaos. ’Under all that power, something about it is wrong. Weakened. Why would a floor ten guardian be weak.’
There wasn’t time to think it through. The left head lunged, and William threw himself sideways into the reeds, mud soaking through his clothes as he scrambled backward on hands and heels.
"Kessa, left flank, now!" Reyes’s voice had lost all its earlier boredom, replaced by the flat urgency of a man recalculating his odds of survival in real time.
William’s back hit a fallen log and he had nowhere left to retreat. The center head loomed over him, red eyes narrowing, and in that instant every ounce of his training, useless as it had always seemed, surged up through his chest and out toward the beast in a desperate, instinctive reach.
He’d never tried to tame anything this size. He’d never tried to tame anything that could kill him with a glance. But his Talent didn’t ask permission, it simply acted, throwing out threads of intent toward the creature’s mind the way it had a thousand times toward marsh crawlers and stray dogs, except this time the threads met something vast and furious and utterly unwilling to bend.
The rejection hit him like a physical blow. William’s vision whited out, his nose bled, and he collapsed sideways into the mud, every nerve in his body screaming from the backlash.
Somewhere above him, Kessa’s voice, sharp with disbelief. "Did he just try to tame it? Is he insane?"
"Get him out of the way!" Ilsa’s hands were suddenly on his shoulders, hauling him backward with a strength her slight frame shouldn’t have had. "William, can you hear me? William!"
He could hear her. He couldn’t answer. His whole body had gone rigid, locked in the aftershock of a failed bond attempt against something so far above his level that the very act of trying had nearly killed him on its own.
’Weak.’ The word echoed through what was left of his focus, distant and strange. ’It’s not just hurt. It’s dying.’
Reyes hauled the center head back with a two handed strike that finally, finally drew blood, black and steaming where it hit the marsh grass. The beast reeled, all three heads snapping in confused, pained arcs, and for the first time since it had emerged from the earth, it seemed less like an unstoppable force and more like a wounded animal lashing out.
"It’s slowing down," Bram called out, another arrow already nocked. "Reyes, I think we can actually—"
"We’re not fighting a Floor Ten guardian for glory," Reyes snapped. "We retreat. Now. Ilsa, get Belforht up, we’re not leaving anyone behind."
For a moment, hearing those words, something in William’s chest loosened despite the pain radiating through his skull.
The moment didn’t last.
The stairwell down to floor four pulsed to life behind them, unprompted, the Tower’s ancient mechanisms responding to something none of them understood. Cerberus’s three heads turned toward the sound in perfect unison, and whatever confusion the beast had been suffering seemed to sharpen into singular, furious focus.
It surged toward the stairwell, toward Reyes, toward all of them, and the fragile calculation that had let the party believe retreat was possible collapsed in an instant.
"Go!" Reyes roared. "Get to the stairs up, I’ll hold it!"
Kessa didn’t hesitate. Bram didn’t hesitate. Ilsa hauled William upright, his legs barely cooperating, and half dragged him toward the stairwell leading back to the surface entrance while Reyes’s iron body absorbed a blow that sent him skidding twenty feet through the mud.
William looked back once, vision swimming, and saw Reyes climbing back to his feet, blood streaming from a gash across his forehead, standing alone between the party and a monster that shouldn’t have existed on this floor.
’He’s staying.’ Something in William’s chest twisted painfully. ’He’s actually staying to hold it off.’
He didn’t get the chance to see what happened next. Ilsa shoved him through the stairwell threshold, and the world dissolved into the disorienting pull of Tower transit, floor three’s grey marsh replaced in an instant by the stark stone corridor of floor two.
They collapsed there together, gasping, and it took several long seconds before anyone spoke.
"Reyes," Ilsa finally managed. "We have to go back for him."
Kessa’s face had gone pale beneath the mud and soot. "Going back means fighting that thing again. We barely survived the first exchange."
"He held the line so we could escape!"
"And if we go back, his sacrifice means nothing because we all die anyway!" Kessa’s voice cracked with something between fury and grief. "You saw what that thing did to him in one hit."
William pushed himself upright against the stone wall, his head still throbbing from the backlash of his failed taming attempt, and forced his voice steady even though nothing about him felt steady. "There has to be another way. A displaced guardian, this far above the floor rating, someone at the Association needs to know immediately. They could send a rescue team, an evac squad, something."
"That takes time we don’t have," Bram muttered, checking his remaining arrows with shaking hands. "And even then, who’s going to risk an A Rank team on a rescue for a low tier raid party?"
Nobody answered him, because they all knew the truth of it. Reyes had bought them an escape. Whether he’d bought himself one too was an entirely different question, and the silence that followed made it clear nobody in the party believed the odds favored him.
’We can’t just leave him.’ William’s hands curled into fists despite the tremor still running through them. ’Even if my Talent is useless, even if I can barely stand right now, I can’t just leave him.’
He didn’t get the chance to argue the point further. The stairwell behind them shuddered, the telltale sign of something massive approaching from floor three, and the decision was made for all of them in the sudden, terrified scramble toward the surface exit.
They emerged into Ashvale City’s pale afternoon light without Reyes, and the first thing William registered, past the ringing in his ears and the ache behind his eyes, was Kessa already reporting to the gate registrar in a voice gone flat with shock.
"Guardian class anomaly. Floor Three. One casualty."
The registrar’s pen paused mid stroke. "Confirmed guardian class? On Floor Three?"
"Confirmed." Kessa’s jaw tightened. "It came from below. Displaced somehow. We don’t know how it’s possible."
William stood apart from the others, mud soaked and trembling, and stared back at the Tower’s black surface rising over the city like it hadn’t just swallowed a man whole.
’This is only the beginning of something much worse.’ The thought settled into him with a cold, unshakable certainty. ’And I’m not strong enough to stop any of it.’