The path collapsed without warning.
One mont they were crossing a stable bridge of stone between islands, the next the rock beneath their feet crumbled into dust and they were falling in three different directions as the floor’s twisted gravity pulled them apart.
Dante grabbed for Astrid without thinking, his hand closing around her wrist as they plumted toward a cluster of small islands below. But Ravenna was already beyond reach, tumbling toward a different platform entirely, her lavender form shrinking with distance as gravity claid her for a separate trajectory.
"Ravenna!" He tried to adjust his fall, to sohow change direction mid-plumt, but Floor 7’s physics didn’t work that way.
"I’ve got myself!" Her voice ca back, already faint. "I can see where I’m landing! Find later!"
Then she was gone, disappearing into the floating debris and distance between them.
He and Astrid crashed onto a moss-covered platform hard enough to knock the breath from both of them. He rolled while absorbing the impact the way eight years of Tower climbing had taught him, and ca up in a defensive crouch.
The island was small, maybe fifty ters across, covered in thick vegetation that looked almost Earth-normal if you ignored the faintly luminescent growths mixed among the green. No imdiate threats visible and no obvious paths to other platforms.
"That sucked." Astrid pushed herself up and shook dirt from her hair. "You okay?"
"Fine. You?"
"Nothing’s broken." She stood and looked around with narrowed eyes. "Where’s the demon girl?"
"Different island, northwest of here I think." He studied the surrounding clusters while tracking Ravenna’s trajectory in his mory. "She’ll have landed on one of the anchor platforms, and as long as she stays put we can find her."
"And if she doesn’t stay put?"
"She will, she’s smart enough to know moving makes it harder for us to regroup."
Astrid made a sound that might have been agreent, then walked to the edge of the island and peered down into the endless sky below.
"So, just us for a while?"
"Looks that way."
She turned back to face him with sothing complicated in her expression. "Good."
---
They spent the first hour surveying their situation.
The island had no obvious exits. The nearest platforms were too far to jump even with Astrid’s enhanced physical abilities, and the gravity hadn’t shifted in a way that might bring them closer. They were stuck until sothing changed.
"You could use that shadow thing," Astrid said while watching him examine the gaps between islands. "The teleport move, get yourself across and find a way to bring us together."
"Shadow Step has a range of about twenty ters, the closest island is at least eighty." He shook his head. "And even if I could reach it, I’d be leaving you stranded."
"So we wait."
"So we wait."
Astrid found a relatively comfortable patch of moss and sat down with her back against a large rock, watching him with eyes that held too much intelligence for her brutish exterior.
"You know, you’re not what I expected."
He settled across from her while maintaining a careful distance. "What did you expect?"
"When I first saw you in the arena? Cold, efficient, a machine shaped like a person." She pulled at a strand of grass and shredded it between her fingers. "And you are those things, sotis. But you’re also..."
"Also what?"
"Human, underneath all the walls and the silence and the ’I’ve seen too much’ bullshit." She t his eyes. "You helped those stranded climbers yesterday, didn’t have to, slowed us down actually, but you did it anyway."
"Ravenna asked."
"Ravenna asked because she knew you’d say yes, that’s the point." Astrid leaned forward with intensity building in her posture. "You pretend to be this broken weapon who doesn’t care about anyone, but you save a half-demon girl from a mob. You let a berserker you beat in thirty seconds follow you across multiple floors. You tell strangers how to escape a trap that had them stuck for days."
"I don’t see what you’re getting at."
"I’m saying you’re full of shit." She grinned, but there was sothing vulnerable underneath it. "And I like you anyway, that’s the part I wasn’t expecting."
She let that sit there, waiting for his response.
He didn’t know how to respond. In the original tiline he had been alone for most of the climb, by choice and then by circumstance. Social dynamics, especially romantic ones, were territories he had never learned to navigate.
"I fight," he said finally. "I survive, I protect the people who stay close to , that’s all I know how to do."
"Is that why you won’t look at the way you look at her?"
The question caught him off guard. He forced himself to keep his expression neutral.
"Ravenna and I have a history, a complicated one."
"You’ve known her for what, a month? That’s not history." Astrid stood and paced the small island with the restless energy that seed to define her. "You saved her, okay, I get that, first person to treat her like she mattered, tragic backstory, devotion for life, classic stuff. But that doesn’t an there’s no room for anyone else."
"Astrid—"
"I’m not asking you to choose." She stopped pacing and faced him with her shoulders squared. "Not yet. I’m just asking you to see , not as a rival you beat in a fight, not as a berserker who punches things and shouts a lot, but as soone who actually gives a damn about you."
The vulnerability in her voice was startling because this was a side of Astrid he had never seen in either tiline.
"I see you," he said quietly. "I’ve seen you since the arena when you demanded a rematch instead of walking away. I just..."
"Don’t know what to do about it?"
"Don’t know what to do about any of it." He stood and closed so of the distance between them. "In my first life I had one relationship that mattered, she left for soone she thought was stronger and said I wasn’t enough saying I’d never be enough."
Astrid’s expression shifted with anger flickering behind her eyes. "Who?"
"Soone you’ll et on Floor 8, soone who’s going to look at like I’m the most interesting thing she’s ever seen, and I’m going to have to pretend I don’t rember what she did to the version of that trusted her."
"Your ex." Her voice was flat. "She’s coming?"
"In this tiline we’ve never t, she doesn’t know what she did because she hasn’t done it, might never do it if things go differently."
"But you still rember."
"I rember everything." He t her eyes. "That’s the problem, I rember every betrayal, every death, every mont of weakness that cost soone their life. I rember caring about people and losing them, and so part of thinks it’s safer just to stop caring."
"But you can’t."
"No." The admission cost him more than he wanted to show. "I can’t."
Astrid closed the remaining distance between them, close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from her transformation-touched body.
"Then stop trying to." Her voice was fierce but quiet. "Care about the demon girl, care about whoever else cos along. I’m not going anywhere, and neither is she. You want to protect people? Start by letting them protect you back."
She reached out and gripped his forearm, her fingers strong enough to leave bruises if she wanted.
"We’re your team now, that ans sothing."
He didn’t pull away and didn’t know if he wanted to.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay." He t her eyes and let her see sothing of the broken thing underneath his walls. "I’ll try."
Her grip loosened and transford into sothing almost gentle.
"That’s all I ask."
---
The gravity shifted three hours later, bringing a chain of smaller islands within jumping distance. They crossed quickly and efficiently with the awkwardness of their earlier conversation transford into sothing that almost resembled understanding.
Ravenna was waiting for them on an anchor platform exactly where he had predicted, her expression shifting from worry to relief when she saw them approaching.
"You found ."
"Was there ever any doubt?"
She ran to et them, her arms wrapping around him in a hug that he allowed to last longer than he usually would. Over her shoulder he caught Astrid watching with an expression that mixed acceptance with determination.
Sothing had shifted between all of them, and he wasn’t sure yet if that was good or dangerous, probably both. But that uncertainty didn’t slow him down.
"Co on," he said while gently disengaging from Ravenna’s embrace. "The exit gate is less than a day away, let’s finish this floor."
They moved together, three people who had started as strangers and beco sothing more, toward whatever waited at the end of Floor 7.
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