Nate didn't wait for morning.
He pushed himself up from the wall, ignoring the ache in his newly healed side, and started walking toward the cathedral. The bodies of Garrett and his crew lay behind him, cooling in the dark. He didn't look back.
Seven days. Maybe eight. That's all he had left before the tower opened and everything inside came pouring out.
No more grinding. No more playing it safe. He had to move.
The cathedral loomed in the darkness, its broken spires clawing at the crimson sky. Inside, two arches waited—one leading back to the surface, the other deeper into the tower.
[Floor 4 — Recommended Level: 15-20]
He was Level 15. The bottom of the range. Underprepared, undertrained, and still feeling the ghost of the machete wound in his side.
It didn't matter. He stepped through the arch.
The world shifted.
Cold hit him first—a brutal, biting cold that cut through his torn clothes and sank into his bones. His breath misted in front of his face. Frost crunched under his boots.
He stood at the edge of a frozen wasteland.
Ice stretched in every direction, broken by jagged formations that rose like teeth from the ground. The sky above was pale and colorless, heavy with clouds that seemed to press down on the world. Snow drifted in lazy spirals, accumulating on his shoulders, his hair, his eyelashes.
No ruins here. No buildings. Just ice and stone and the howling whisper of wind.
And in the distance, dark shapes moving across the white.
[Frost Stalker — Level 16]
The notification appeared as the first creature emerged from behind an ice formation.
It looked like a wolf, but wrong. Too large, too angular, with fur that seemed to be made of crystallized ice. Its eyes glowed pale blue, and when it opened its mouth, mist poured out between fangs that looked like icicles.
More appeared behind it. Five. Ten. A pack, spreading out across the ice, surrounding him.
Nate didn't wait for them to attack.
He charged the nearest one, closing the distance before it could react. His fist connected with its skull, [Pressure] adding weight to the blow, and the frost stalker's head snapped to the side. It stumbled but didn't fall—the ice-fur was harder than it looked, absorbing some of the impact.
The stalker lunged, jaws snapping for his throat. Nate caught it by the muzzle, one hand on top, one below, and wrenched in opposite directions. The jaw dislocated with a wet crack. The creature screamed—a sound like breaking glass—and he silenced it with a knee to the skull.
The pack hit him from behind.
Teeth sank into his shoulder, his arm, his leg. The cold of their bodies burned like fire, frost spreading across his skin wherever they touched. He roared and spun, throwing one off, stomping on another, but they were fast and coordinated and there were too many.
[Killing Intent].
The pressure rolled off him in a wave. Some of the stalkers hesitated, stumbling back, their pale eyes flickering with something like fear. Others pushed through it, their hunger or pack loyalty overriding their survival instincts.
Nate met them head-on.
He grabbed one by the throat and used it as a club, swinging it into its packmates. Bones cracked. Bodies flew. He dropped the corpse and drove his fist through another stalker's ribcage, feeling the frozen bones shatter around his knuckles.
[Impact].
A committed strike to the largest stalker's skull. The head exploded in a spray of ice and gore. The body collapsed.
The survivors fled, scattering across the ice, disappearing into the white.
[Frost Stalker] defeated.
[Frost Stalker] defeated.
[Frost Stalker] defeated.
[Frost Stalker] defeated.
[Frost Stalker] defeated.
[Frost Stalker] defeated.
Experience gained.
Nate stood in the bloody snow, breathing hard.
His shoulder was torn where the stalker had bitten him, the wound rimmed with frost that burned as it melted. His arm ached. His leg was bleeding sluggishly, the cold slowing the flow but not stopping it.
Six kills. Maybe a minute of fighting.
He was already injured.
No time to rest. He picked a direction and started walking.
The first day was hell.
The cold sapped his strength, made every movement harder, every breath a labor. The frost stalkers hunted in packs, emerging from the ice without warning, hitting fast and fading back into the white when he fought back. He killed dozens of them, but they kept coming, and each fight left him a little more battered than the last.
His shoulder wound reopened. Then froze. Then reopened again.
A stalker caught him across the back, claws raking through cloth and skin. Another got his thigh, teeth sinking deep before he could throw it off.
He kept moving. Kept fighting. Kept killing.
[Frost Stalker] defeated.
[Frost Stalker] defeated.
[Frost Stalker] defeated.
Experience gained.
Night fell—or what passed for night in this place. The pale sky darkened to gray, and the temperature dropped even further. Nate found a crevice in the ice and wedged himself inside, his body shaking with cold, his wounds throbbing with every heartbeat.
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He couldn't feel his fingers. His toes were numb. The blood on his clothes had frozen stiff.
Sleep came in fragments, broken by the howling of the wind and the distant calls of the stalkers. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Garrett's face. Sara's. Vince's.
He pushed the images away and focused on surviving until dawn.
The second day brought something worse.
He'd been tracking a pack of stalkers through a field of ice formations when the ground shook. The stalkers scattered, abandoning their pursuit, fleeing in every direction with yelps of panic.
Something was coming.
Nate turned.
The creature that emerged from behind an ice spire was massive—fifteen feet tall, vaguely humanoid, made entirely of jagged ice and compacted snow. Its eyes were empty pits that glowed with pale blue light. Its arms ended in hands like clusters of icicles, each finger a foot long and sharp as a blade.
[Frost Giant — Level 18]
Three levels above him. And it was already swinging.
The first blow caught him across the chest.
Nate tried to dodge, but the giant was faster than something that size should be. Icicle fingers raked across his torso, shredding his shirt, carving furrows in his flesh. The force of the impact sent him flying.
He hit an ice formation hard enough to crack it. Stars exploded across his vision. He tasted blood.
The giant was already closing in, each step shaking the ground.
Nate rolled to his feet, gasping. His chest was on fire—three deep gouges running from shoulder to hip, blood pouring down his stomach and freezing as it went.
The giant swung again. He ducked, felt the wind of its passage ruffle his hair, and drove a punch into its leg.
[Pressure].
The ice cracked but didn't break. The giant didn't even stumble. It backhanded him with its other arm, and he went tumbling across the snow.
Too strong. Too durable. He couldn't trade blows with this thing.
The giant advanced. Slow. Inevitable. It knew he couldn't hurt it. Knew he was just prey.
Nate pushed himself up. His arms were shaking. His vision was blurring at the edges.
[Impact].
He needed to end this in one shot. Find a weak point. Put everything into a single strike.
The giant raised both arms for an overhead smash. If that hit him, he was dead.
Nate ran toward it.
The arms came down. He dove, sliding across the ice on his stomach, passing between the giant's legs as its fists cratered the ground behind him. He came up on the other side, spun, and leaped.
His fist found the back of the giant's knee—the joint, where the ice was thinner, where the structure was weakest.
[Impact].
The click. The focus. The multiplied force.
The knee shattered.
The giant roared—a sound like an avalanche—and toppled forward, its massive body crashing into the ice. Nate was already moving, climbing its back, scrambling toward its head.
It thrashed beneath him, trying to throw him off. One of its arms swept back, icicle fingers catching his leg, tearing through muscle. He screamed but held on.
He reached its head. Found the eye socket—one of those empty pits of pale blue light.
He drove his fist inside.
[Impact].
The giant's head exploded from within. Ice and light and something else—something that might have been essence—sprayed across the snow. The massive body shuddered once and went still.
[Frost Giant] defeated.
Experience gained.
Level Up! Level 15 → Level 16
The level-up warmth flooded through him.
His wounds began to close—the gouges on his chest knitting together, the tear in his leg sealing. But it wasn't enough. There was too much damage, too many injuries. The warmth faded, and he was still bleeding. Still broken.
Better than before. But not healed.
Nate lay on the giant's corpse, staring at the gray sky, and let himself breathe for one minute. Two.
Then he got up and kept moving.
Days blurred.
He lost count somewhere around the fourth or fifth. The ice stretched on forever, broken only by formations and the occasional frozen lake. The frost stalkers kept coming—Level 16, Level 17, hunting in larger and larger packs as word spread of the intruder in their territory.
He killed them. Over and over. But each fight cost him something.
A bite on his forearm that went to the bone. A claw across his face that nearly took his eye. Ribs cracked by a stalker's charge. Fingers broken when he punched through ice that was harder than he expected.
The level-ups helped. Each one brought a wave of healing warmth, closing some wounds, mending some damage. But they came slower now—the experience curve steepening as he climbed—and his injuries accumulated faster than the levels could fix them.
Level Up! Level 16 → Level 17
He was limping now. His left leg had been savaged by a pack of stalkers three fights ago, and even the level-up hadn't fully repaired the torn muscle. Every step sent pain shooting up his hip.
His ribs ground against each other when he breathed. Two broken, maybe three. He'd stopped counting.
The gouges on his chest had scarred over but still ached, the new tissue thin and fragile. The wound on his forearm had closed wrong, leaving a ridge of scar tissue that pulled every time he made a fist.
He was falling apart. And he was only halfway through the floor.
Another giant found him on what might have been day six.
[Frost Giant — Level 19]
Bigger than the last one. Faster. Smarter.
It didn't give him time to find his footing. It came at him in a rush, arms sweeping, ice shattering with every step. Nate dodged the first swing, the second, but the third caught him across the side and sent him spinning.
He hit the ground. Tried to rise. His leg buckled—the bad one, the one that wouldn't work right—and he went down again.
The giant loomed over him, raising its fist for the killing blow.
[Killing Intent].
He poured everything into it. All the pressure, all the will, all the killing force he'd accumulated over weeks of slaughter.
The giant hesitated.
Just for a moment. Just long enough.
Nate threw himself at its ankle and drove his fist into the joint with everything he had.
[Impact].
The ankle shattered. The giant fell.
He climbed. It thrashed. He held on.
Its arm caught him—a glancing blow that still cracked something in his back—but he reached its head. Found the eye socket.
Punched through.
[Frost Giant] defeated.
Experience gained.
No level-up this time. Not enough experience.
Nate slid off the giant's body and collapsed in the snow. His back was screaming. Something was wrong with his spine—not broken, or he wouldn't be able to move at all, but damaged. Every movement sent electric jolts of pain through his entire body.
He lay there for a long time.
He thought about giving up. Just staying here, in the snow, letting the cold take him. It would be peaceful. Easy. An end to the pain.
But the timer was still running. The tower was still waiting. And somewhere outside, there were people who'd die if he failed.
Tyler. Mira. The camp.
Nate gritted his teeth and stood up.
The exit appeared on what he thought was day seven.
An arch of ice, glowing faintly, standing alone in the middle of a frozen lake. Beyond it, darkness—the same swirling void that connected each floor.
[Floor 5 — Recommended Level: 20-25]
Level 20 to 25. He was Level 17.
He looked down at himself. Torn clothes stiff with frozen blood. Skin mottled with bruises and frostbite. His left leg barely functional. His ribs grinding with every breath. His back sending spikes of pain through his nervous system with every step.
He should rest. Should grind more stalkers, get closer to Level 20, heal some of these wounds before moving on.
But there was no time. The deadline was close—maybe past, for all he knew. He'd lost track of the days somewhere in the endless white.
Nate limped toward the arch.
Each step was agony. The ice cracked beneath his boots. The wind howled around him, cutting through his ruined clothes, finding every wound and making it burn.
He reached the arch and stopped.
Beyond it, darkness. And beyond that, whatever was waiting on Floor 5. The final floor. The last obstacle between him and clearing the tower.
He was in no shape to fight. He could barely walk. A strong breeze might knock him over.
But he was out of time. Out of options.
Nate took a breath—felt his broken ribs protest, felt his damaged back scream—and stepped through the arch.
The darkness swallowed him whole.
