The first Dermling died easy.

  The second one learned from its mistake.

  Elias pivoted as the creature lunged, but it anticipated the movement, twisting mid-air to catch his coat sleeve with those needle teeth. The fabric tore. Pain lanced up his forearm, shallow cuts, nothing arterial, but enough to make him hiss through his teeth.

  He slammed the butt of the spear into its skull, felt bone crack, and the thing released him with a shriek that sounded almost human.

  VITALITY: 96/100

  The third Dermling circled, more cautious than its packmates. It had watched the first one die. It had seen what the blade could do. Now it was thinking—if something without eyes and with a brain the size of a walnut could be said to think.

  "Daddy, there's more!"

  Lira's voice came from behind him, pitched high with fear. Elias risked a glance over his shoulder and felt his stomach drop.

  She was right.

  The darkness beyond the bioluminescent pools was moving. More eyes—four pairs, six pairs, eight—blinking into existence like stars appearing at dusk. The skittering grew louder, a chitinous symphony of claws on flesh.

  "Stay close to me," he said, keeping his voice level. Panic was contagious. "Don't move unless I tell you."

  "But I can't...." Lira looked down at her translucent hands. "I can't do anything. I'm not real."

  "You're real to me. Now stay close."

  The third Dermling chose that moment to attack.

  It came in low, going for his ankles, a smart play, meant to topple him so the pack could swarm. Elias had seen similar tactics in Afghanistan, wild dogs bringing down wounded soldiers in the valleys. He knew the counter.

  He jumped.

  Not high—just enough to clear the creature's lunge, letting it pass beneath him. As he landed, he drove the scalpel-spear down in a vicious arc, the surgical blade entering behind the skull and severing the spinal cord at C2.

  Instantaneous paralysis. Cessation of autonomous functions. Death in three to five seconds.

  The Dermling dropped, twitched once, and went still.

  But now the others were coming.

  Elias counted them as they emerged from the darkness: nine more Dermlings, their skinless bodies glistening in the red light. They spread out as they approached, flanking him with an intelligence that belied their bestial classification.

  Pack hunters. Coordinated. Dangerous.

  He shifted into a defensive stance, spear held low, and let his training take over.

  Assess. Prioritize. Execute.

  The first two came together, a coordinated strike from left and right. Elias stepped back, drawing them in, then lunged forward into the gap between them. His blade caught the left one across the throat, opening the carotid in a spray of dark blood. Without pausing, he reversed the stroke and drove the point through the right one's eye socket, into the brain.

  Two down. Seven remaining.

  VITALITY: 94/100

  Something hit him from behind, claws raking across his back, tearing through coat and shirt to the skin beneath. Elias spun, swinging the spear in a wide arc that forced the attacker back, and saw blood on its teeth.

  His blood.

  VITALITY: 92/100

  "Daddy!"

  "I'm fine." He wasn't fine. The cuts on his back burned, and he could feel warm wetness spreading down his spine. But he'd treated worse in the field. He'd caused worse in the field. "Just stay behind me."

  The remaining Dermlings regrouped, circling like sharks. They'd learned that direct assault was costly. Now they were probing, testing, looking for weakness.

  Elias gave them one.

  He let his right arm drop slightly, as if the cuts were worse than they were. Let his stance waver. Let his breathing grow ragged.

  The largest Dermling, the alpha, if they had such things—saw the opening and took it.

  It launched itself at his throat.

  Elias was ready.

  He sidestepped at the last instant, grabbed the creature by the scruff of its neck with his free hand, and slammed it into the fleshy ground. Before it could recover, he drove the scalpel-spear through its chest, angling up, piercing the heart.

  The creature screamed—a high, keening sound that made Lira clap her hands over her ears—and then went silent.

  Cardiac rupture. Exsanguination in eight seconds.

  The remaining six Dermlings froze. Their eyeless heads twitched toward their fallen alpha, toward the blood pooling around Elias's boots, toward the blade that dripped with the viscera of their packmates.

  Then, as one, they fled.

  They vanished into the darkness, their skittering fading until the only sound was Elias's ragged breathing and the eternal thu-thump of the Tower's heart.

  He stood there for a long moment, spear raised, waiting for them to return.

  They didn't.

  Elias lowered the spear and took stock.

  Five dead Dermlings lay around him in various states of destruction. The fleshy floor beneath them had absorbed most of the blood, drinking it up like a sponge—feeding, Elias realized with a distant horror. The Tower was feeding on the death he'd caused.

  He checked his wounds. The cuts on his forearm were superficial—dermal lacerations, no muscle involvement. The ones on his back were deeper but not dangerous. He'd need to clean them when he found water, watch for infection, but for now they'd clot on their own.

  VITALITY: 92/100

  The number hovered in his vision, confirming what his body already knew. He was hurt, but functional.

  "Daddy?"

  Lira's voice was small. He turned to find her standing exactly where he'd left her, arms wrapped around herself, flickering faintly at the edges.

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  "It's okay," he said. "They're gone."

  "I know." She wasn't looking at him. She was looking at the Dermlings—at the bodies, the blood, the ruined meat that had been living creatures thirty seconds ago. "I just..."

  She paused. Her lower lip trembled.

  "Does it hurt them, Daddy? When they die?"

  The question hit him like a bullet.

  He thought about the men he'd killed in Afghanistan—not as a medic, but as a soldier, when the lines between healing and harming had blurred in the chaos of combat. He thought about the insurgent he'd shot in Kandahar, the one who'd been reaching for a grenade, how the man's eyes had gone wide with surprise before they'd gone empty.

  Did it hurt?

  "I don't know, sweetheart," he said honestly. "I hope it's fast. I try to make it fast."

  Lira considered this for a moment. Then she nodded, a child's acceptance of adult truth.

  "Okay," she said. "I don't want them to hurt. Even if they're monsters."

  Elias felt something crack in his chest—not his heart, but something older. Something he'd thought was already broken.

  "I know," he said. "Neither do I."

  The System prompt appeared without warning:

  HARVESTING AVAILABLE

  DECEASED TARGETS DETECTED: 5

  ESTIMATED YIELD: 1.2 L

  INITIATE HARVEST? [Y/N]

  Elias stared at the words. He knew what they meant—the Tower's currency was blood, and the dead had plenty to offer. But knowing and doing were different things.

  He knelt beside the nearest Dermling and examined the corpse. Skinless muscle, needle teeth frozen in a death rictus, dark blood pooling around the entry wound. It was already cooling, the heat of life fading into the Tower's ambient warmth.

  INITIATE HARVEST? [Y/N]

  "How do I...?" He reached out, hesitant, and placed his palm against the creature's chest.

  Nothing happened.

  PHYSICAL CONTACT REQUIRED. CONCENTRATE ON EXTRACTION.

  Concentrate. Right.

  Elias closed his eyes and focused on the blood—on the idea of blood, the concept of pulling it from one vessel into another. He thought about transfusions, about the red bags hanging from IV poles, about the steady drip of life flowing from one body into another.

  And he pulled.

  The sensation was indescribable. It felt like breathing in, but through his hand—like his palm had become a mouth, drinking deeply from a cup he couldn't see. The Dermling's body shuddered beneath him, collapsing in on itself as the blood was drawn out, and Elias felt it flowing into... somewhere. Not his veins. Not his stomach. Somewhere else, a space the System had carved inside him that hadn't existed before.

  HARVESTING COMPLETE

  BLOOD ACQUIRED: 0.2 L

  He pulled his hand back. The Dermling was a husk now—dried out, withered, like a fruit left too long in the sun. What blood remained had pooled beneath it, too contaminated with floor-matter to harvest.

  Elias looked at his palm. It was clean. There was no blood on his skin, no sign of what he'd just done.

  But he could feel it inside him—a warm weight in his core, a fullness that had nothing to do with food or drink.

  HARVESTED BLOOD: 0.2 L

  He moved to the next body. And the next. And the next.

  By the time he finished, he'd harvested all five:

  HARVESTED BLOOD: 0.8 L

  It wasn't much. According to what the Tower had whispered to him, what Old Tom had explained in the fragmented messages that had reached the outside world, monster blood was the lowest quality. A full liter might buy him half a percent of Lira's Soul Integrity.

  But it was a start.

  "That was weird."

  Elias looked up to find Lira hovering beside him, staring at the desiccated Dermling corpses with a mixture of fascination and unease.

  "Weird how?"

  "I could feel it." She pressed a translucent hand to her chest. "When you did... whatever you did. The pulling thing. It felt like—" She struggled for words. "Like drinking through a straw, but inside me instead of my mouth."

  Elias frowned. The System had called her a Foundling, had linked her Soul Integrity to his interface. It made sense that she'd be connected to the harvesting process somehow.

  "Did it hurt?"

  "No." Lira shook her head. "It felt... warm. Like hot chocolate." She looked at the corpses again. "But also kind of icky. They're all dried up now."

  "I know."

  "Is that what happens? When you take their blood?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh." She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Are you going to do that to everyone? Every monster we fight?"

  The question was innocent, but its implications were not. Elias thought about what lay ahead, ninety-nine more floors, each filled with creatures worse than Dermlings. Creatures he'd have to kill. Creatures he'd have to harvest.

  And eventually, if the rumors were true, creatures that weren't creatures at all.

  "Yes," he said. "I have to. To save you."

  Lira nodded slowly. "Okay," she said. "I understand."

  She didn't understand. She couldn't, she was seven years old, frozen in time, her innocence preserved like a specimen in amber. She didn't know what her father would become. She didn't know what he'd have to do.

  Elias hoped she never would.

  "Come on," he said, rising to his feet. "We need to keep moving."

  They walked for an hour through the Tower's first floor.

  The terrain was unlike anything Elias had ever seen, and after Afghanistan, after Chicago, after seven years of watching the world end in slow motion, he thought he'd seen everything.

  The Skin Flats stretched in every direction: a vast, cracked plain of leathery tissue that looked disturbingly like the sole of a giant's foot. The ground was dry here, rougher than the wet flesh of the entry corridor, covered in fine scales that crunched under his boots. Occasionally, he'd step on a crack and feel the surface give, like pressing on a bruise.

  The ceiling was a hundred feet up, dotted with bioluminescent organs that cast a perpetual dim glow—not quite red, not quite orange, but something in between. Pores the size of dinner plates pocked the ceiling at irregular intervals, exhaling warm air that carried the smell of living tissue.

  "It's like being inside a giant," Lira said, floating beside him. "Like we got eaten."

  "Don't say that."

  "But it is, isn't it?" She looked around with a child's wonder, unbothered by the horror of it. "The Tower is alive. We're inside it. That means it ate us."

  Elias didn't have a good response to that.

  They passed abandoned campsites as they walked, signs of Climbers who had come before. A tattered backpack, half-buried in skin-flakes. A broken spear, its blade rusted. A dark stain on the ground that might have been blood or might have been something worse.

  And bones.

  Human bones, scattered across the flats like discarded toys. Ribs. Vertebrae. A skull, grinning emptily at the ceiling.

  Lira didn't seem to notice them, or if she did, she didn't comment. Small mercies.

  Then, in the distance, Elias saw movement.

  Three figures, walking in a loose formation across the flats. They were too far away to make out clearly, but their silhouettes were unmistakably human—two large, one small—and they were heading in the same direction Elias was going.

  Toward the stairs. Toward Floor 2.

  "Other Climbers," Lira said, perking up. "Maybe they're nice! Maybe we can be friends!"

  Elias watched them for a long moment. Something about their movement was wrong—too coordinated, too purposeful. They weren't walking like people exploring. They were walking like people hunting.

  "Maybe," he said. "Let's keep our distance for now."

  They followed the other Climbers at a distance, close enough to keep them in sight but far enough to avoid notice. Elias kept one hand on his spear and one eye on Lira, who drifted beside him in companionable silence.

  "Daddy?"

  "Yeah, sweetheart?"

  "How long is this going to take? Getting to the top?"

  Elias did the math in his head. A hundred floors. Each one larger and more dangerous than the last. If he was lucky—incredibly lucky—he might clear two or three floors a day in the early levels.

  "I don't know," he admitted. "A long time."

  "Like a vacation?"

  "Longer than a vacation."

  "Oh." Lira was quiet for a moment. Then: "Will I get to see the sun again? When we're done?"

  The question was a knife.

  "Yes," Elias said, and prayed he wasn't lying. "When we're done, we'll go somewhere sunny. Somewhere warm. With beaches and ice cream and—"

  He stopped.

  Ahead, the other Climbers had stopped too. They'd reached a ridge—a fold in the skin-floor where the terrain rose steeply—and they were looking down at something on the other side.

  Then, without warning, they charged over the ridge, weapons drawn.

  Screaming reached Elias's ears—high, panicked, human—followed by the unmistakable sounds of violence.

  Metal on flesh. Bone breaking. A wet, gurgling cry that cut off mid-breath.

  Lira pressed herself against his side. "Daddy? What's happening?"

  Elias didn't answer. He crept toward the ridge, staying low, and peered over the edge.

  The scene below made his blood freeze.

  The three Climbers he'd been following, two men and a woman, stood over a fourth figure: a man, young, maybe early twenties, curled in a fetal position on the ground. His pack lay open beside him, its contents scattered. His clothes were torn. His face was bloody.

  One of the attackers knelt beside him, pressing a hand to the young man's chest.

  Harvesting.

  The victim's body shuddered, collapsing in on itself as the blood was drawn out, and the attacker smiled—a thin, hungry smile that made Elias's skin crawl.

  They weren't just killing him. They were feeding on him.

  SOUL INTEGRITY: 98.5%

  Elias looked at the number. Looked at his daughter. Looked at the monsters below wearing human skin.

  "We need to go," he whispered. "Now."

  Lira's eyes were wide. "But he's—they're—"

  "I know." He pulled her back from the ridge, heart pounding. "I know. But we can't help him. Not right now."

  "But Daddy—"

  "Please, Lira."

  She fell silent. Her flickering increased, her edges blurring with distress.

  Elias led her away from the ridge, away from the screams that had faded to silence, away from the Climbers who had become something worse than the monsters they'd been sent to fight.

  The Tower had rules. He was beginning to understand them.

  And the first rule was simple: in here, humans were prey too.

  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.