The fever came in the night.

  Elias had expected it, infection was inevitable given the conditions, the contaminated claws of the Scab Stalker, the limited supplies in his medical kit. But watching Mira's temperature climb, seeing the sweat bead on her forehead and the flush spread across her cheeks, still filled him with a cold dread.

  He'd treated fevers before. Hundreds of them. In sterile hospital rooms with IV antibiotics and monitoring equipment and teams of nurses ready to respond to any complication. Here, in a cramped alcove beneath a fold of scar tissue, with nothing but basic supplies and his own exhausted hands, the fever felt like a death sentence.

  Mira drifted in and out of consciousness, her breathing shallow, her body fighting the infection with whatever reserves it had left. Elias changed her bandages, cleaned the wounds with their precious water supply, and watched for the telltale signs of sepsis—rapid pulse, confusion, dropping blood pressure.

  So far, she was holding on.

  Vitality: 100/100

  His own vitality had recovered during the night, the Tower's strange biology restoring what the Cardiac Overclock had cost him. But vitality was just a number. It didn't account for the exhaustion that settled into his bones, the weight of responsibility that pressed down on his shoulders.

  Lira sat nearby, her ghostly form casting a faint pale glow in the darkness. She watched Mira with wide, solemn eyes, occasionally reaching out to touch the woman's forehead—her translucent fingers passing through without contact.

  "Is she going to die, Papa?"

  The question cut through Elias like a blade.

  "No," he said firmly. "I won't let her."

  He didn't know if it was a promise he could keep. But he made it anyway, because that was what fathers did. They promised impossible things and then broke themselves trying to deliver.

  The approach that Lira had sensed the previous night had never materialized. Whatever warm presence had been moving toward them had either changed course or stopped. Elias had spent hours watching the entrance to their shelter, spear in hand, waiting for an attack that never came.

  Now, in the gray light of the Tower's approximation of morning, the immediate danger seemed to have passed. But Mira's condition meant they couldn't move, couldn't continue toward the transition to Floor 13. They were trapped here until she recovered enough to walk.

  If she recovered.

  Elias pushed the thought away. He focused on what he could control, monitoring her condition, rationing their supplies, keeping watch for threats.

  Mira's eyes opened around midday, hazy with fever but present.

  "Still here," she rasped.

  "Still here," Elias confirmed. "How do you feel?"

  "Like something's eating me from the inside." She tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace. "Infection?"

  "Probably. I've cleaned the wounds, but without antibiotics..." He let the sentence trail off. They both knew the implications.

  "Survived worse." Mira closed her eyes again, but didn't sleep. "Tell me something. Distract me from the feeling of my flesh rotting."

  Elias hesitated. "What do you want to know?"

  "You said you were a doctor. Before." Her voice was weak but curious. "What kind?"

  The question stirred memories Elias had spent years trying to bury. He looked at Mira's pale face, at the trust implicit in her question, and found himself answering.

  "I was a combat medic first. Army. Three tours—two in Afghanistan, one in Syria." The words came slowly, dragged up from depths he rarely visited. "I saw... too much. Soldiers torn apart by IEDs. Children caught in crossfire. People dying while I worked on them, their blood on my hands, their eyes going empty while I tried to hold them together."

  Mira was quiet, listening.

  "After I got out, I went to medical school. Thought I could do more good as a doctor than as a medic. Specialized in emergency medicine—trauma surgery, the worst cases, the ones no one else wanted." He laughed, a hollow sound. "Turns out I was just trading one war zone for another. The ER on a Saturday night isn't much different from a battlefield. Same desperation. Same impossible choices."

  "But you kept going."

  "I kept going because I didn't know how to stop." Elias stared at his hands—the hands that had held so many dying people, that had fought so hard to save them. "And because I was good at it. That was the worst part. I was really, really good at keeping people alive in situations where they should have died."

  "That doesn't sound like a bad thing."

  "It's not. Until it is." He paused, the memories pressing closer. "Until you start to believe you can save everyone. Until you push too hard, take too many risks, because you've forgotten that death is supposed to win sometimes."

  Mira opened her eyes, studying him. "What happened?"

  The question hung in the air between them. Elias felt the familiar tightness in his chest, the weight of the thing he'd never spoken about, not fully, not to anyone.

  "There was an accident," he said finally. "A car crash. My wife—Lira's mother—she was driving. Lira was in the back seat." He forced the words out, each one a struggle. "A drunk driver ran a red light. Hit them on the passenger side. By the time I got to the scene..."

  He stopped. Some memories were too heavy to carry all the way to the surface.

  "Elena died on impact. Lira... Lira was still alive, but barely. I worked on her in the ambulance, in the ER, through two surgeries. I used every trick I knew, every technique I'd learned in twenty years of keeping people alive against impossible odds."

  "And she survived."

  "She survived." Elias looked at his daughter's ghost, at the pale remnant of the girl he'd fought so hard to save. "But she never woke up. Eighteen months in a coma. The doctors said there was no hope, that I should let her go. But I couldn't. I kept her alive because I couldn't accept that my skills weren't enough, that all my experience meant nothing against—"

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  He broke off. The rest of the story, the desperate gamble, the Tower, the ritual that had bound Lira's soul to his own vitality—was too complicated to explain. And too shameful.

  "I made choices," he said quietly. "To save her. Choices I can't take back. And now we're here, and she's—she's what she is, and I have to keep climbing because the only way to undo what I did is to reach the top."

  Mira was silent for a long time. When she spoke, her voice was different, softer, stripped of its usual edge.

  "I had a daughter too."

  Elias looked at her sharply.

  "Sophie. She was nine when we entered the Tower." Mira's eyes were distant, fixed on something Elias couldn't see. "Her father died when she was three—military, like me. I raised her alone. She was... she was everything. Smart, brave, stubborn as hell. Just like her mother."

  "What happened?"

  Mira's jaw tightened. "We made it to Floor 12. Right here, the Scab Fields. We'd been climbing for weeks, surviving, fighting. I thought we were doing well. I thought I was keeping her safe."

  Her voice cracked, and she paused to collect herself.

  "There was a group. Other Climbers. They seemed friendly at first—shared food, offered to travel together. I should have known better. Should have seen the signs." Her hands clenched into fists. "They waited until I was asleep. Took Sophie. Left me for dead with a knife wound in my gut."

  "Siphoners?"

  "No. Just people. Regular, desperate people who decided my daughter was worth more to them than my life." Mira's eyes finally focused on Elias. "I've been looking for her ever since. Four months I've been searching. Following rumors, tracking leads, killing anyone who gets in my way."

  "Do you know who took her?"

  "I know names. Faces. I know they headed toward the upper floors, toward some kind of settlement where—" She stopped, shaking her head. "It doesn't matter. I'll find her. I have to."

  Elias understood. The desperate certainty, the refusal to accept loss, the willingness to do anything—become anything—to save the one person who mattered most. He saw his own grief reflected in Mira's eyes, his own pain echoed in her voice.

  "We'll find her," he said. "Together. After we get out of the Scab Fields, after Lira is stable, we'll look for Sophie. I'll help you."

  Mira stared at him. "Why? You have your own mission. Your own daughter to save."

  "Because I understand." Elias held her gaze. "Because I know what it's like to lose a child and refuse to accept it. And because you've helped me, risked your life for me and Lira, even though you had no reason to."

  Something shifted in Mira's expression—a crack in the armor she wore, a glimpse of the person beneath the survivor's hardness.

  "You're a strange man, Elias Thorne."

  "So I've been told."

  Lira drifted closer, her attention moving between them. She settled beside Elias, her ghostly form leaning against him without weight or warmth.

  "Papa?"

  "Yes, sweetheart?"

  "She's sad like you." Lira's voice was soft, matter-of-fact in the way only children could be. "Inside. Where the hurt lives. She's sad like you are when you think I'm not watching."

  Elias felt the words land like a physical blow. He'd tried so hard to hide his grief from Lira, to be strong for her, to project confidence he didn't feel. But children saw everything. Even ghost children.

  "We're both sad," he admitted. "We've both lost people we love. But we're also both trying to find them again. That's why we keep going."

  Lira nodded solemnly. "I hope she finds her daughter. Like you found me."

  Mira made a small sound—somewhere between a laugh and a sob. She turned her face away, but not before Elias saw the tears sliding down her cheeks.

  They sat in silence for a while, the shared grief forming a bridge between them that words couldn't build. Outside their shelter, the Scab Fields stretched empty and quiet, the distant warm presence still unmoving.

  Eventually, Elias pulled out Old Tom's most recent messages, spreading them across the floor. The crude maps and cryptic warnings formed a rough guide to the territory ahead.

  "We need to plan our route," he said, giving Mira something to focus on besides her pain. "According to Tom's notes, the next few floors are Siphoner territory. The Vineyard controls everything from Floor 13 to Floor 18."

  Mira wiped her eyes and pushed herself up slightly, studying the maps. "Six floors of enemy territory. That's a lot of ground to cover without being seen."

  "Tom mentions safe routes. Tunnels that bypass the main thoroughfares, areas the Siphoners avoid." Elias pointed to a series of markings. "If we follow these paths, we might be able to slip through without direct confrontation."

  "Might."

  "It's the best option we have." He traced a line through the map. "The alternative is going through them. And after what happened on Floor 8, I don't think we're ready for that fight."

  Mira nodded reluctantly. "What about the thing Lira sensed? The big warm presence?"

  "I don't know. It stopped moving sometime during the night. Could be another Climber group, could be a creature, could be Siphoners." Elias frowned. "We need more information before we move."

  "So we wait."

  "We wait. At least until you can walk without reopening your wounds."

  Mira's jaw set stubbornly, but she didn't argue. She knew her limits, even if she hated them.

  They spent the next hour reviewing Tom's notes, memorizing routes, identifying potential danger points. Lira watched with patient interest, occasionally pointing to marks on the maps and asking questions that Elias answered as best he could.

  It was during this review that Elias noticed something he'd missed before—a small alcove at the back of their shelter, partially hidden by a fold of scar tissue. He moved toward it, curiosity overriding caution.

  Inside the alcove, barely visible in the dim light, was a body.

  Human. Dead for weeks, maybe months, based on the desiccation. The Scab Fields' dry environment had preserved it somewhat, preventing the worst of the decay. The corpse wore the tattered remnants of climbing gear, and clutched in its skeletal hands was a small leather-bound book.

  "Found something," Elias called back to Mira.

  He carefully extracted the book from the corpse's grip, offering a silent apology to the dead Climber. The leather was worn, stained with something dark—blood, probably—but the pages inside were largely intact.

  A journal.

  Elias brought it back to the main shelter, settling beside Mira as he opened it. The handwriting was cramped, urgent, the words of someone who knew they were running out of time.

  "Day 47," he read aloud. "Made it to Floor 12. The Scab Fields are worse than the rumors said. Lost Jen to a Stalker ambush yesterday. Marcus is wounded, might not make it. The Siphoners are everywhere—we can hear their drums at night, calling to each other across the plateaus."

  He flipped forward, scanning entries.

  "Day 52. Marcus died. I'm alone now. Tried to reach the transition to Floor 13, but the Vineyard has it locked down. There's a checkpoint. They're taking blood—two liters for passage, more if you're carrying anything valuable. I don't have two liters to spare."

  More pages. The handwriting grew more erratic.

  "Day 58. Found a safe place to hide. An alcove under a scab fold. Going to rest here, recover my strength, try again in a few days."

  "Day 61. Something is wrong in the Vineyard. I've been watching them from a distance. There's a new leader—they call him Brother Sero. The other Siphoners fear him. He doesn't take blood like the others. He does something else. Something worse."

  Elias felt a chill run down his spine. He continued reading.

  "Day 63. I saw Brother Sero heal a wounded Siphoner. Just touched him, and the wounds closed. No blood transfusion, no Altar. Just... healed. But the man he healed changed afterward. His eyes went empty. He follows Sero now, does whatever he commands. Like he's not a person anymore."

  The final entry was dated Day 65.

  "I'm dying. Stalker got me two days ago, and the infection is spreading. I won't make it out of this alcove. If anyone finds this journal, take it. Learn from it. And whatever you do, don't trust the one who heals without blood. Brother Sero isn't offering salvation. He's collecting souls."

  The journal ended there.

  Elias closed the book slowly, his mind racing. A Siphoner leader who could heal without blood. Who changed people, made them follow him, stripped away their will.

  "Brother Sero," Mira said, her voice grim. "I've heard that name. Whispers among other Climbers. They say he's building an army in the upper floors."

  "An army of what?"

  "I don't know. No one who gets close enough to find out comes back the same." She met Elias's eyes. "This changes things. If Sero controls the path forward..."

  "Then we need to be very careful." Elias tucked the journal into his pack. "And we need to find out more about what he can do before we encounter him."

  Outside, the light was dimming again, another cycle of darkness approaching. Somewhere in the distance, barely audible, a drum began to beat.

  Vitality: 100/100

  Blood: 2.4 L

  Soul Integrity: 95.4%

  Lira's integrity was still declining. The clock was still ticking. And now, ahead of them, waited a new kind of monster—one who wore a human face and offered healing as a trap.

  Elias looked at the journal's final warning, the words burning themselves into his memory:

  Don't trust the one who heals without blood.

  Welcome to the story!

  I’ve already released 10 chapters for you to enjoy now, but I’m releasing 1 chapter every day at 6:00 AM PKT (US times: 8 PM EST / 7 PM CST / 6 PM MST / 5 PM PST, previous day) until Chapter 17 (Feb 2). After that, the remaining chapters will be uploaded, and the story may be removed from Royal Road and become available on Kindle Unlimited.