I’d seen a lot in this dungeon. Things that bled wrong. Things that whispered from ceilings. Things that remembered your face between runs.

  But I hadn’t seen her.

  She stood near the edge of the platform, tall and thin as a scarecfsteadyrow, wrapped in rags that shimmered like torn spellcloth. Her arms dangled like broken marionette strings, and her head was bowed as if listening to something I couldn’t hear. Maybe something under the floor. Maybe inside it.

  The veil that hid her face wasn’t cloth. Not entirely. It shimmered faintly, the threads woven with filaments of mana, glowing like veins in starlight. And beneath it, her mouth moved constantly—soundless, muttering, humming. Praying?

  “Who are you?”

  Her head tilted slightly, just enough to suggest she’d heard. That was all.

  Then—

  She turned toward me, though her face never moved.

  “You crossed them without speaking,” she murmured. “The carpets. They don’t like that.”

  Crossed them? What did that even mean? Was I supposed to apologize to a rug?

  “You… talk to the carpets?”

  “I listen,” she said, tilting her head just slightly. “They whisper their paths. They tell me who’s kind, who steps too hard, who falls too often.”

  Great. I’d finally snapped. Standing in a dungeon listening to a thread-obsessed lunatic talk about whispering rugs—and part of me was listening back. “They tell you all that?”

  She nodded, slow, deliberate. The mouth beneath her veil never stopped moving, even as she responded.

  “This one says you bounce.”

  I blinked. “Come again?”

  She raised one arm in a jerky, unnatural motion, pointing to the rug beneath my feet. The rug beneath my boots twitched like it recognized the weight of me. Like it resented it. “Not just physically. You fall. And get up. Again and again. The thread’s frayed, but not cut. It remembers the pressure of your body.”

  “That’s… not comforting.”

  “It is,” she insisted softly. “Some carpets like those who return. Others want fresh tread.”

  I glanced down at the platform I’d just landed on.

  “So do they… tell you where to go?” I asked. “Which ones lead deeper?”

  She tilted her head the other way, and that humming got louder again. “They offer suggestions,” she said. “Warnings. Patterns in the weft.”

  “So you’re not a weaver.”

  “No,” she said, and there was something like pride in the way her veiled head lifted slightly. “I’m a listener. The weavers force threads. I ask politely.”

  The humming returned full force, worming into my ears like a bad memory I hadn’t earned.

  I took a step back, slow. “What do you want?”

  She didn’t answer. Her mouth just kept moving. No sound came out this time, just breath behind cloth.

  And behind her, one of the carpets shivered like it had been listening too.

  “Too many try to weave alone,” she said. “The floor turns on them. The carpets refuse to catch them.”

  I tilted my head. “You think... the dungeon’s making me fall?”

  “No, no, no.” Her veil fluttered with the slight shake of her head, the humming behind it dimming for a moment. “The dungeon doesn’t help. It waits. It watches. But carpets they catch. When you share your path.”

  That made me laugh, dry and low. “I’m not a team player.”

  Teamwork got people killed. Usually the ones na?ve enough to think they were safe. Usually me. I didn’t say the rest.

  Because I’d tried that once. More than once. Trusting people. Leaning on them. Thinking maybe we could get through the worst parts of this place together if we just stayed sharp, kept each other alive. But they’d burned me.

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  The humming stopped entirely.

  She stilled.

  “Then you’ll bounce forever.”

  Forever already felt like it had started three runs ago. Maybe longer. Maybe always.

  But the words weren’t angry. They didn’t carry judgment. Just the truth. A quiet truth spoken by something that had seen it happen too many times already.

  I stared at her.

  That hum, that endless, looping sound that had been chewing its way into my ears since she emerged was gone. The silence she left behind was worse. Thicker.

  “Right,” I said, shaking my head. “So what? You want me to hold hands with the next idiot who can spell ‘summon’? Sing carpet songs around the campfire?”

  Still no hum. No movement. She didn’t laugh. Didn’t even twitch.

  “I don’t trust people,” I said, sharper this time. “You think that’s a flaw? It’s the only reason I’m alive.”

  “You’re not alive,” she murmured. “You’re repeating.”

  I swallowed, throat dry.

  The carpet beneath me felt warm all of a sudden. Too warm. I took a step back onto the platform behind me.

  Her voice remained soft. “You fall. And rise. And fall again. The dungeon resets, yes. But you, Rod, you’re not learning the right lessons.”

  “And you think that lesson is friendship?”

  “I think,” she said slowly, “that the path is too wide for one pair of feet.”

  My hands curled into fists. “No one stays. Not in this place.”

  She nodded once. “And yet you do.”

  “You really believe that?” I asked. “That the floor’s punishing me for going it alone?”

  “The floor doesn’t care,” she said. “But the weave always remembers.”

  She tilted her head again, and for the first time, I noticed the strands in her veil weren’t all cloth. A few were thread-thin cords of mana, woven through like veins of pale starlight. Her whole body was humming with stored tension, like a harp string stretched too tight.

  “You’re not the first who’s tried to defy the loom,” she said. “You won’t be the last. Some carve their own patterns. Others insist on stitching against the flow. The brave. The proud. The desperate.”

  She paused, fingers tracing the floor beneath her. “But the ones who endure? They don’t force the thread. They follow it. Learn the rhythms. Step in time with others, even if only briefly.”

  “And what about you?” I asked. “What rhythm are you dancing to?”

  “I’m not dancing,” she said, voice calm. “I’ve already fallen. I just haven’t hit the ground.” She tilted her head again, and something in her spine gave a small, brittle pop. Like the pose was held together by tension, not bones.

  My mind snagged on her words. "Haven't hit the ground? What's that supposed to mean? Are you… stuck?"

  Her head tilted, the mana threads in her veil pulsing a little brighter, like stars waking in twilight. "Stuck is a flat word for an endless descent," she murmured, the sound barely more than the rustle of her veil. "There are prices for listening too closely, for trying to hear every thread in the loom at once. Some patterns are not meant for a single ear. Some songs are too vast." She paused, and for a moment, the ever-moving mouth beneath the cloth stilled, a flicker of something almost like sorrow passing through her posture before the ceaseless motion resumed. "I sought to understand the whole tapestry. Instead, I became a loose thread, unraveling but never quite detaching. I hang by the memory of the weave, neither part of it, nor truly free."

  It was more poetry than explanation, but the chill it sent down my spine was real. This wasn't just some eccentric giving cryptic advice; this was someone who had plumbed depths I couldn't imagine and hadn't come back whole.

  I wasn’t just falling. I was looping. Every death, every run—it didn’t matter how efficient I got, how strong my classes were. Each run, no matter how well I did, I was limited in how many orbs I could claw my way toward. I wasn’t breaking through. I was ricocheting off the same invisible wall, over and over.

  The Carpet Whisperer crouched low, long limbs folding like broken scaffolding, and plucked a tassel from the edge of the platform. She stroked it like a pet; slow, affectionate, like it might purr if she did it right.

  She was mad. That much was obvious. But I’d dealt with worse.

  Klericho’s face flashed behind my eyes: righteous, furious, lit by that final, horrible moment. The way he looked at me when he realized what I’d done. The silence since. Three full runs. Not a glimpse. Not a word.

  We’d fought side by side. I thought that meant something. I’d been wrong and that stung

  So I’d made a vow. I wasn't going to team up again. I’d been wanting to claw my way to 100 alone…

  But if this got me there faster... I placed the Velvet Horizon beside it, less a strategy than muscle memory.

  The Whisperer turned her veiled face toward it immediately. Her mouth twitched into a wider hum. She crouched beside the thing like greeting an old companion.

  "Hello again," she murmured to the construct, voice soft, reverent.

  I stared. “You know it?”

  She didn’t respond. Just kept humming. The kind that wrapped around your bones if you let it.

  I crouched beside her, laying a cautious hand on the Weaver’s frame. It thrummed beneath my palm, faintly alive, though I’d summoned it just moments ago. I never really thought of these constructs as more than tools. Temporary helpers, not companions. But she looked at it like it mattered.

  The Whisperer leaned closer. Her breath fogged against the Velvet Horizon’s sigil.

  “This one remembers you,” she whispered. “Even if you don’t remember it.”

  That made me pull my hand back. Her veil shifted. A shiver in the weave. “Not your first time placing it.”

  I frowned.

  “What, are you new? Everything here loops,” she said. “Even the things you think dont do.”

  I didn’t like the way she said that. My skin prickled. The air grew colder, like the dungeon itself had inhaled. I hated how certain she sounded. Like she knew something I hadn’t dared to ask.