The corridor delivered Ren into Floor Nine's frozen light without ceremony, mist curling low across a vast lake sealed beneath ice, sky bruised violet overhead with storm clouds that churned but never broke.
FLOOR NINE — OBJECTIVE: DEFEAT THE APPOINTED CHALLENGER.
The mist at the lake's far edge thickened, curling inward with unnatural purpose, and when it finally parted, Ren's stomach dropped through the frozen ground beneath him.
He was looking at himself.
Not a rough approximation. Silver hair, the same worn creases in the same training clothes, Bloodsucker's chain coiled loose across the same forearm, right down to the faint, healing welt along his sternum where the elf's strike had landed three floors back.
