Floor 75 was wrong.
The air here wasn't just cold—it was oppressive. Thick with more than frost or lingering mana. It carried something else, something Arthur couldn't name. The moment he crossed the threshold from Floor 74, he felt it: an invisible pressure creeping up his spine, like the dungeon itself had grown eyes.
The frost pulsed. It moved. It watched.
He stepped forward.
Bare feet crunched over ice and shattered bones. His spear—the same one he'd pried from the corpse of the Floor One boss—rested tight in his grip. His pants were shredded at the edges, ragged and frostbitten, clinging by willpower and thread. His shirt was long gone, lost somewhere around Floor 60, replaced by a torn cloth knotted at his waist, just enough to carry potions and rations.
His body was lean. Scarred. Hardened.
A Beastborn survivor, sharpened by blood and fire.
But none of that prepared him for the sound.
A voice—distant, broken—drifted through the cavern like a dream cracked open.
"...Brother..."
Arthur froze.
The spear nearly slipped from his fingers.
That voice...
It wasn't Olivia.
It wasn't any enemy he'd heard before.
It was Leo.
His twin. The only family he'd ever known. His other half.
"...Brother... where are you...? We need to find each other... no matter what... no matter where..."
Arthur's heart slammed against his ribs.
He spun, eyes wild. "Leo?" he whispered. His breath fogged in front of him. "Leo, is that you?!"
Silence.
Then—
"...Help me... I can't find the way out..."
The voice echoed through the frost-choked halls, warped and fragmented, like someone had taken Leo's voice and dragged it through shattered glass. It made Arthur's skin crawl. But still—it tugged at him. At his chest. At something deeper.
At memories.
His grip on the spear tightened.
He ran.
Not carefully. Not tactically.
He sprinted into the mist, past the corpses of serpents he'd slain. A camouflaged viper lunged from the snow—he skewered it without slowing.
Every wall glowed faintly with Monarch Crystals—those eerie shards of golden light embedded in ice and stone. Their glow warped in the mist, casting shadows that didn't move quite right.
"...Brother... I waited for you... for so long... why didn't you come...?"
The voice pierced through him.
Arthur gritted his teeth. "I'm here now!" he shouted. "Where are you?!"
His thoughts spiraled—hope and dread tangled together. He didn't stop to wonder how Leo could be here. He couldn't.
The voice was too real.
He didn't see the next beast.
But he felt its death.
His spear moved on instinct, skewering a white-scaled thing that burst in a splash of crimson snow.
"LEO!" he screamed, feet slipping on ice as he surged forward.
The voice was wrong.
So wrong.
And yet—
It felt right.
The next few minutes blurred. He tore through a nest of frost-serpents. One bit into his arm—venom burning like ice in his veins—but he didn't stop. He shattered it against a wall, foam at his lips.
He didn't stop. Didn't stop to breathe.
Couldn't.
The voice was louder now.
Closer.
"...Brother... I'm waiting... we promised... remember...?"
He rounded a corner.
And stopped.
Cold. Still.
The frost wasn't outside him anymore. It was in his bones.
Something stood just beyond a ridge of jagged ice and glowing crystal.
It didn't move. It didn't breathe.
But it waited.
Arthur's breath hitched.
His instincts screamed. Every part of him begged to run.
And that's when he understood.
He wasn't just scared.
He was afraid.
Not beast-fear. Not the thrill of battle.
This was different.
Worse.
Because this wasn't the fear of death.
This was the fear of truth.
He wasn't facing a beast.
He had stumbled upon something else.
Something that wore Leo's voice like a mask.
And as it moved—slowly, deliberately—Arthur's body refused to obey. His vision blurred. His thoughts recoiled.
Then—
The voice came again.
Closer.
Right behind his ear.
"...You came for me, didn't you? We're finally together again... brother..."
He spun.
Nothing.
Only ice.
Only silence.
His chest heaved. Warmth ran down his face—he didn't know if it was sweat or tears.
And then he felt it.
A presence so ancient. So vile. So utterly alien that even the Void within him recoiled.
This wasn't a predator. This wasn't some intelligent horror.
It was a monster.
Not because of how it looked.
But because of how it made him feel.
It was terror without shape. Dread without reason.
A universal fear.
The kind that whispered that nothing he had done, nothing he had become, would matter.
And then—
It looked at him.
The feeling hit him like a god's fist.
His knees buckled.
And Arthur Morningstar—the Beastborn—felt something he hadn't since the day he was first caged:
Helpless.
Hopeless.
And before him stood something that showed him the shape of eternal dread.