Floor Eight opened onto a village.
Not a construct-arena, not a battlefield dressed up as scenery — an actual, breathing village, thatched roofs and cobbled lanes winding between cottages built low and round, smoke curling from chimneys into a sky the color of watered honey. Small figures moved between the houses, no taller than Ren's knee, translucent at the edges like light through water, humming to themselves as they tended gardens that grew flowers Ren didn't recognize.
FLOOR EIGHT — OBJECTIVE: RETRIEVE THE SEALED VESSEL FROM THE VILLAGE SHRINE WITHOUT HARMING A SINGLE INHABITANT.
Ren read the text twice, waiting for the trap to declare itself the way Floor One's had. It didn't. He'd learned that lesson already, though — the absence of an obvious trap wasn't the same as the absence of one.
