Floor 5 was Thornfield.

Not the twisted, shadow-haunted version from Floor 1. This was Thornfield as it had been — before the ritual, before the Blight surged, before everything ended. Perfect, detailed, cruelly accurate. The sun hung low over fields of golden wheat. Smoke curled from chimneys. The sound of a hammer on an anvil — Garrett the blacksmith, who always worked late — rang across the square.

Kael stopped in the doorway. His lungs forgot how to work.

"Kael." Sera's hand on his shoulder. "This isn't real."

"I know." His voice was a whisper. "But it looks exactly—"

"That's the point." She squeezed his shoulder, then released it. "The Tower takes your memories and builds them. Every detail is from your own mind. It can't invent — only recreate."

He stepped forward. His boots — Pike's boots, solid and real — crunched on familiar gravel. The path from the square to his house. He'd walked it ten thousand times.

The first person he saw was Mrs. Aldric, carrying a basket of bread. She smiled at him — warm, genuine, the same smile she'd given him every morning since he was a child. "Good evening, Kael! Tell your father I have his order ready."

His throat closed. Mrs. Aldric had died in the ritual. They all had.

"Don't respond," Sera said quietly. "They're echoes. If you engage, the floor locks deeper."

He walked past Mrs. Aldric without answering. Her smile faltered — confused, hurt — and he felt something tear inside him.

---

The Tower was patient.

It didn't attack them. Didn't send monsters or illusions or traps. It simply... showed. Kael's childhood, played out around him like a theater production with perfect actors and a willing audience.

There was his house — the front door with the loose hinge his father never fixed. Through the window, he could see the kitchen table, set for three. His father's chair at the head, his own to the left, and at the right—

His mother's chair.

Empty, of course. It had been empty for ten years. But the place setting was there — a plate, a cup, a pair of chopsticks — as if she might walk in at any moment.

"Your mother," Sera said. She was watching him carefully. "The Tower is trying to pull you in through her."

He knew. He *knew*. But knowing didn't stop the ache.

They moved through the village. Every face was familiar. Every voice was a knife. The butcher who'd taught Kael to tie knots. The herbalist who'd given his mother medicine. The children who'd played in the square while their parents worked.

All dead. All here. All smiling.

And then — evening fell. The sun dropped below the wheat fields, and the sky turned the color of blood.

"It's starting," Sera said, drawing her sword.

Kael felt it too. The air thickened. The Whispers — which had been murmuring all along, like conversation in the next room — rose to a roar.

*"Do you remember this night, Kael?"*

He remembered.

---

The ritual began as it always began: with Elder Maren standing in the center of the square, a circle of chalk and salt, and every villager gathered around.

Kael watched from the shadows. His past self — two weeks ago, an eternity ago — stood in the crowd, young and trusting, watching his mentor perform the ritual that would save their village from the Blight. His father stood beside him, hand on his shoulder.

"I need you to stay here," Kael whispered to Sera. "I have to watch."

"You don't."

"I do." He looked at her. "The Warden said I should tell the truth. This is my truth. I was there, and I didn't stop it."

Sera's jaw tightened. But she nodded and stepped back.

He walked into the square. Not his past self — his present self. The echoes couldn't see him, couldn't interact with him. He was a ghost in his own memory.

Maren began the chant. The chalk circle glowed. The salt ignited — blue, then green, then white. Beautiful. Hypnotic.

Kael had always thought the ritual was supposed to reinforce the Hearthstone — the ward that protected Thornfield from the Blight. Maren had said so. Everyone believed it.

But now, standing in the memory, hearing the Whispers translate the words Maren chanted—

*"He wasn't reinforcing the ward. He was opening the door."*

"I know," Kael whispered.

*"He didn't know what would happen. He truly believed he was saving his village. The corruption in the chant — it was ancient, woven in centuries ago, waiting for someone desperate enough to speak the words."*

"I know."

The ritual reached its peak. The light blazed. And then — the screaming began.

---

He watched them die.

Not quickly. Not mercifully. The Blight poured through the broken ward like water through a breached dam — dark, liquid, alive. It touched skin and skin became ash. It touched bone and bone became dust. It moved through the crowd in seconds, and the screaming stopped almost as fast as it had started.

His father pushed him away. "RUN!" The last word his father ever spoke.

Kael watched his past self run. Watched the boy stumble, fall, get up, run again. Behind him, the village collapsed — buildings crumbling, ground splitting, the Blight consuming everything and leaving nothing but gray dust and silence.

And Maren — standing in the center of the circle, untouched by the Blight, eyes wide with horror at what he'd done. He didn't run. He stood there as the Blight took him — not dissolving like the others, but *absorbing*. Pulling him into the ground, into the Tower beneath, into the structure of the prison he'd accidentally opened.

The echo faded. Thornfield was gone. The courtyard was empty — just dust and silence and the fading glow of broken chalk.

Kael stood in the ruins of his village and cried.

Not the shaking, dramatic sobs of stories. Just tears — quiet, steady, running down his face and dripping onto the ash that had been his home. He cried for his father, for Mrs. Aldric, for the children in the square, for Maren who'd tried to save them and destroyed them instead.

He cried until the Whispers stopped.

---

When he looked up, two Shards sat in the ash before him.

Not one — two. Larger than any he'd received before, glowing with colors he couldn't name. He picked them up and felt — not grief, not guilt, not loneliness — but *understanding*. The understanding of a man who'd made a terrible mistake and couldn't take it back. And beneath that, deeper, older: the understanding of something that had watched it happen and wept.

Five Shards now. His hands tingled with their weight.

Sera was there. She said nothing. Just stood beside him, close enough that their shoulders almost touched, and waited.

"My mother crossed this floor," he said eventually. His voice was raw.

"Maybe."

"She watched this. Or something like it. Her own worst night. And she kept climbing."

"Yes."

He wiped his face with his sleeve. Looked at the ash. Looked at the door on the far side — iron-banded, serpent handle, waiting.

"Then so will I."

They walked to the door. Kael pushed it open.

On the other side, the corridor hummed with blue light. And Ghost's voice — clearer than ever — said:

*"That was the hardest floor you'll face. Until Floor 30."*

Kael didn't answer. He just walked forward, Sera at his side, five Shards burning in his pocket like tiny stars.