Regression of the Tower's Final Survivor-Chapter 80: The Third Fragment

The Driftwardens’ final task was simple: retrieve a navigation artifact from a dead island at the edge of explored space. Simple in theory, which meant complicated in practice, because nothing on Floor 14 was ever actually simple.

"The island lost its anchor stone three years ago," the Driftwarden representative explained, spreading a star chart across the table. "Without it, the formation drifted into the outer void, beyond our ability to track reliably. We know approximately where it ended up, but the approach is through unstable gravity corridors that have killed everyone we’ve sent."

"And you want us to retrieve the artifact because...?" Astrid crossed her arms, her skepticism evident.

"Because you killed a Graviton Beast that had been terrorizing trade routes for a decade." The representative’s expression was grudgingly respectful. "If anyone can navigate the outer void and survive, it’s the team that did that."

Dante studied the chart, running calculations against memories from a timeline where he’d mapped most of Floor 14’s hidden routes. The corridors the Driftwardens marked as unstable were dangerous, true, but not impassable. Not if you knew how to read the gravity flows.

"We’ll do it," he said. "But we’ll need a vessel."

"We can provide a gravity skiff. Standard equipment for void navigation."

"And the third Void Fragment is our payment?"

"Upon successful retrieval, yes."

The deal was struck with a handshake, and Dante gathered his team to prepare for what would likely be their most dangerous expedition on this floor.

The corridor was designed to kill them, but panic was a much faster method of suicide.

They discovered Adrian’s involvement three hours into the journey.

The gravity skiff was a marvel of Drift-Born engineering, a vessel that surfed the currents between islands instead of fighting them. Vex had taken to piloting it with surprising aptitude, his instincts for trajectory and momentum translating naturally to three-dimensional navigation through chaotic physics.

"Something’s wrong," he said, his magitech eye flickering as it processed visual data from the void ahead. "There’s another vessel tracking the same course."

Dante moved to the observation rail, and his jaw tightened at what he saw.

Adrian’s ship was faster, sleeker, and clearly designed for exactly this kind of mission. It cut through the gravity corridors with precision that suggested expensive equipment and expert handling, pulling ahead of them with every passing minute.

"He knew," Ravenna said quietly. "He knew we’d be going after the third Fragment, and he got here first."

"He probably had his own arrangement with the Driftwardens." Dante’s mind was racing, calculating distances and intercept possibilities. "The dead island is valuable enough that they might have contracted multiple teams."

"So it’s a race."

"It’s a race." He turned to Vex. "Can we catch them?"

The sniper’s expression was grim. "Not with standard navigation. Their vessel is better equipped, and they’ve got a head start. By the time we reach the island, they’ll already be there."

"Then we don’t use standard navigation." Dante pointed at a cluster of instability markers on the chart. "That corridor there. The one the Driftwardens said killed everyone who tried it. Can you fly us through?"

Vex was quiet for a long moment, his fingers tracing the route on the map.

"Maybe," he said finally. "The gravity shifts are extreme, and one wrong adjustment would crush us or tear us apart. But if I time the transitions right, if I trust my instincts instead of the instruments..."

"Then do it."

The sniper met his eyes, and something passed between them that didn’t need words.

"Hold onto something," Vex said, and pushed the skiff into the death corridor.

Vex didn’t respond to the silent plea. He was already moving, his silhouette disappearing into the gloom ahead as he scouted for the next threat.

The passage was absolute hell.

Gravity shifted from crushing to weightless to sideways in the span of seconds, throwing everyone against walls and ceilings and each other as the skiff tumbled through forces it wasn’t designed to handle. Vex fought the controls with desperate intensity, his magitech eye dark as he relied entirely on instinct to guide them through.

Dante found himself hanging from a support beam, the Core pulsing painfully beneath his ribs as his body was stressed in ways bodies weren’t meant to be stressed. Around him, his team was scattered across the cabin in various states of disorientation, only their physical conditioning keeping them conscious through forces that would have killed normal humans.

Then, suddenly, it was over.

The skiff burst from the corridor into stable space, and the dead island hung before them like a ghost against the void.

"We made it," Sera gasped from somewhere behind him. "We actually made it."

More importantly, they’d arrived before Adrian.

"Move," Dante ordered, already heading for the exit hatch. "Find the artifact before they catch up."

Leon flinched as if struck. The revelation hit the group like a physical blow, silencing even Astrid’s usual commentary.

The dead island was aptly named.

Whatever catastrophe had stripped away its anchor stone had also killed everything living on its surface. Structures stood empty and decaying, their inhabitants long gone, and the gravity that held the formation together was unstable in ways that made walking dangerous and running suicidal.

Dante led his team through the ruins, following memories from a timeline where he’d explored similar formations. The navigation artifact would be in the island’s core, protected by whatever defenses the original inhabitants had installed, but those defenses were probably long decayed along with everything else.

They were halfway to their destination when Adrian’s team caught up.

The golden boy emerged from a side passage with his people arrayed behind him, his perfect smile firmly in place despite the exertion of the chase.

"Dante. Impressive navigation through that corridor. I didn’t think you’d take the risk."

"I’m full of surprises." Dante’s hand was on his weapon, but he didn’t draw. Not yet. "The artifact is ours. We were here first."

"First doesn’t mean anything if you can’t hold what you’ve claimed." Adrian’s smile widened. "Fortunately, I’m not proposing a fight. I’m proposing a partnership."

"We’ve seen how your partnerships end."

"Have you?" Adrian spread his hands in a gesture of innocence. "I don’t recall any of our collaborations ending in violence. The incident on the collapsing island was a tragic accident, nothing more."

"An accident you orchestrated."

"Prove it."

The standoff might have continued indefinitely if Dante’s attention hadn’t snagged on a figure standing behind Adrian’s main group.

It was Seira.

She was wearing Adrian’s team colors now, the dark blue and silver that his faction used to identify their people. Her expression was carefully neutral, but her eyes met Dante’s for just a moment before sliding away.

"You recruited her," Dante said flatly.

"She came to me." Adrian’s voice was mild, conversational. "After your team made it clear she wasn’t welcome, she needed somewhere to go. I offered her a place where her talents would be appreciated."

Behind Dante, Leon made a sound that might have been a word but came out as pure anguish.

"Seira." He pushed forward, past Dante, past Ren’s attempt to stop him. "What are you doing with him?"

"I’m surviving." Her voice came out steady, but Dante’s trained eye caught the tremor in her hands. "You all made it clear I was never going to be part of your team. Not really. So I found a team that actually wanted me."

"This isn’t about wanting—"

"It’s about everything being about wanting!" The façade cracked, showing the desperation underneath. "I tried, Leon. I carried bags, I followed orders, I did everything they asked, and none of it mattered because Dante was never going to let me in. He looked at me from day one like I was already an enemy, and nothing I did changed that."

"Seira..."

"I’m sorry." She turned away, taking her place among Adrian’s people. "But I can’t keep fighting for a place I’m never going to earn."

The silence stretched, broken only by the wind whistling through dead streets.

"Well," Adrian said brightly. "Now that the family drama is settled, perhaps we can discuss the artifact?"

Dante didn’t respond. His attention was on the gravity patterns shifting around them, the subtle wrongness in the air that his Core was screaming warnings about.

"Storm," he said quietly. "Gravity storm. Incoming."

"What?"

Then the world inverted.

---

A gravity storm on Floor 14 was not a metaphor.

The forces that held reality together simply stopped agreeing about which direction was down, creating pockets of crushing pressure next to zones of weightlessness next to corridors where gravity pulled sideways or upward or in directions that shouldn’t exist.

Everyone fell.

Dante watched his team scatter as the ground became ceiling became wall became something else entirely. He watched Adrian’s people tumble into the chaos, their expensive equipment doing nothing against physics that had stopped following rules.

He watched Seira scream as she was torn from her handhold and sent spinning into the void; then he stopped watching and started acting.

The Ancient Core blazed to life, green-gold energy stabilizing the space immediately around his body. He planted his feet against what had been a wall, orienting himself through sheer force of will, and reached for the power that had nearly killed him against the Graviton Beast.

This time, he didn’t fight for dominance. He remembered the dream, the Core’s whisper about harmony instead of control.

He let the power flow through him instead of trying to direct it, becoming a conduit rather than a container.

The storm raged around him, but where he stood, the gravity simply... settled.

Dante walked through the chaos as if it wasn’t there, his Core creating an island of stability in an ocean of destruction. He found Ren first, grabbing the tank’s arm and pulling him into the zone of normality. Then Astrid, then Ravenna, then each member of his team one by one until they were all standing in a circle of sanity while the world went mad around them.

"How?" Sera gasped, staring at him with something like awe.

"Later." He was already moving toward the island’s core, toward where the artifact waited. "Storm won’t last forever. We need to move."

They moved.

Behind them, Adrian’s team struggled to survive forces they couldn’t control. Dante caught a glimpse of the golden boy clinging to a stable formation, his face twisted with fury as he watched his rivals walk calmly through the apocalypse.

The artifact was exactly where Dante expected, a crystalline compass that pulsed with navigation magic. He grabbed it, secured it, and led his team toward the extraction point as the storm finally began to subside.

They found their skiff intact, protected by the island’s core structure, and were airborne before Adrian could organize a pursuit.

---

The journey back to the Anchor was quiet.

Leon sat apart from the others, staring at nothing, and nobody pressed him to speak. The betrayal of Seira’s defection cut deep, deeper than words could address, and some wounds needed time before they could even begin to heal.

Dante stood at the observation rail, watching the islands drift past while the third Void Fragment hummed in his pack alongside the others.

"You saved everyone." Ravenna joined him, her voice quiet. "Adrian’s people too, if they had any sense to follow your example."

"Probably not." The storm’s survivors would make their own way back to the Anchor, bitter and defeated but alive. "Adrian isn’t the type to learn from demonstrations."

"The Core didn’t hurt you this time."

"I tried something different." He looked at his hands, at fingers that weren’t shaking. "Harmony instead of control. The dream was more useful than I expected."

"So you’re learning to survive it?"

"Maybe." He didn’t want to hope too hard, didn’t want to believe the answer could be that simple. "Or maybe this was a good day and tomorrow it goes back to killing me. Either way, we have all three Fragments now."

"Floor 15 soon, then."

"Floor 15 soon." He looked back at Leon, at the broken expression on the buffer’s face. "But first, we need to deal with the fallout from what happened today."

"Seira made her choice."

"She made a choice based on what she believed was true." Dante’s voice carried an edge of something that might have been regret. "I never gave her a chance to believe anything different."

"You had your reasons."

"I did." He turned away from the void, heading below deck. "Doesn’t mean they were right."

Ravenna watched him go, her demon eyes seeing the weight he carried more clearly than ever.

The game was getting more complicated, but they had all three Fragments, and Floor 15 was waiting.