Ryuu was already turning.
"Growl, Haineko."
Ash flooded the corridor in a rushing grey cloud. It wrapped around the creature's legs and blinded its eyeless face.
Alise burst through the smoke a second later, fire already climbing her blade.
"Burn, Engetsu!"
The flames took the spider-thing full in its rooted core, and it went up in a shrieking blaze like the dry, dead husk it was. Kaguya walked calmly through the smoke, smoothly opening the creature's throat before it even hit the ground.
"One," Kaguya noted.
There were far more than one.
They came in a relentless rush after that.
The deep maze spat its half-monsters at the intruders from every reef and cross-passage.
For a while, it was simply work—hard, ugly, and loud. Gareth held the vanguard, letting the creatures break themselves against his massive shield.
Riveria's ice pinned down whatever needed pinning.
Finn moved through the chaotic press like a small, bright storm, his spear finding the soft spots on monsters that had no right to have soft spots.
But when an entire reef tore loose from the wall and hurled itself at them—a massive, writhing wave of roots, mouths, and stolen grief—Rayleigh finally drew the blade he'd been saving.
"Scatter, Senbonzakura."
The sword shattered into a thousand blades of pale pink light.
He unleashed the glowing cloud onto the reef, and it was less of a strike than a devastating storm passing through.
The razor-sharp petals poured over and through the mass, threading between every root and screaming flower.
When the flurry subsided, nothing remained of the reef but a fine rain of shredded pulp settling on the floor, leaving a sudden, blessed silence where a dozen dead voices had just been screaming.
Cassandra stared at the drifting pink light.
Tears pooled in her eyes, and for once, fear hadn't put them there.
"It's beautiful," she whispered faintly. "That's horrible..... but it's so beautiful."
"Most of what he makes is," Daphne muttered, staying close to her side. "It's the most annoying thing about him."
They were nearing the bottom when the deep gave them a threat even Ottar had to take seriously.
The corridor opened onto a broken staircase that spiraled down the inside of a massive vertical shaft.
It was a literal wound in the earth, dropping away into a black void far past the reach of their light.
And rising up that shaft toward them—filling it from wall to wall—was a guardian built on an entirely different scale. It was a true watcher, as Merek had called it.
The size of a house, it was a horrifying fusion of monster-bone and Daedalus iron. It hauled itself up the chasm on limbs like bridge spans, its vast surface crawling with the ancient marks that made it listen and hate.
Cassandra's warning tore out as a scream.
A sea of red petals bloomed across the entire staircase.
"It's bringing the stairs down! All of them! It doesn't care if it falls, as long as we fall with it!"
The creature slammed into the shaft wall.
The ancient stairs shuddered and immediately began to crumble. Whole sections sloughed away into the dark below as the ground literally unmade itself beneath their feet.
Ottar moved.
Despite his sheer size, he crossed the collapsing steps faster than anything that massive had a right to.
He planted himself exactly at the structural weak point where the stairs were tearing away from the wall, and drew his blade.
"Roar, Tenken."
As the sword left its sheath, a second, spectral arm manifested in the air above him.
It was vast, armored, and burning with heavy red reiryoku, perfectly mirroring his own movements.
Ottar reached up and pressed his hand flat against the collapsing stone overhead. The giant arm did the same—and it held.
It caught the falling staircase. It took the crushing weight of the entire shearing structure on a single armored palm the size of a wagon, and simply refused to let it fall.
The Warlord stood anchored beneath it, boots planted and face perfectly calm, shouldering the death of an entire staircase so the rest of them could run.
"Move," Ottar commanded. It was the first word he had spoken since leaving the surface. "I got this."
They moved.
They sprinted the length of the failing stairs under the shadow of that colossal arm.
Cassandra's glowing petals lit up the safe stones just one bound ahead of their feet, and Gareth half-carried Daphne over the gaps that were too wide to jump.
Finally, the far side of the shaft swallowed them into a solid passage of firm ground.
Only then did Ottar step back and let go.
The giant arm vanished. Behind him, the entire ruined staircase finally tore completely from the wall and plummeted into the dark.
They listened to the structure smash itself to pieces all the way down, the deafening echoes taking a very long time to finally fade.
Ottar strolled out of the passage unhurried, rolling one broad shoulder.
Tenken was already back in its sheath. If anything, he looked mildly disappointed.
"It was strong," he allowed.
His pale eyes found Rayleigh. "The thing we came for. Is it stronger than that?"
"The thing we came for doesn't fight fair," Rayleigh replied. "You'll like her even less."
For the first time in their entire descent, the passage ran perfectly level and straight.
That was how Rayleigh knew they had finally arrived somewhere that mattered.
The monstrous violas thinned out.
The markings on the walls grew older, deeper, and more deliberate, carved by a careful hand rather than grown wildly out of the stone.
Up ahead, the corridor opened into light.
It was a real, steady, and entirely unnatural glow—cold and green-gold—spilling back toward them from a chamber none of Merek's maps had ever touched.
Cassandra stopped dead in her tracks, every drop of color draining from her face.
"This is it," she breathed. "The room. This is the room from my dream. She's—"
She didn't have to finish.
They all saw it now.
The corridor opened into a massive, circular chamber.
The stone here was carved to a deliberate smoothness the wild maze above never possessed. In the center of the room lay the door.
It didn't look like a standard door. It looked like a sealed wound—a vast circle of black stone and ancient iron set flush into the floor.
It was completely ringed by the deepest marks Rayleigh had ever seen, the oldest language of the cursed Daedalus bloodline.
The green-gold light bled up through its tight seams. Whatever lay on the far side was incredibly large, incredibly patient, and had been waiting a very long time.
Standing directly before it, small and unhurried, was a woman.
She had one hand raised, tracing the ancient marks with a sick kind of tenderness.
She didn't turn around immediately. She let them look at her back, displaying the deliberate calm of someone who had heard them coming but simply hadn't finished her task.
When she finally did turn, the cold green light cast harsh shadows across the ruined side of her face.
Old burn scars ran jaggedly from her brow down to her jaw.
She smiled at the sight of them, beaming the way an old friend smiles across a crowded room.
"The Astraea Familia," Valletta Grede said, her voice warm, delighted, and utterly mad. "Oh, it's been years. And you brought the whole city with you."
Her scarred fingers drifted back to the heavy marks on the great door.
"You're just in time! I was starting to think I'd have to open it all by myself."