Wobewt led Eugene through a maze of forgotten passages. Moss-slick ramps curled downward into darkness. Collapsed tunnels forced them to double back more than once. The air grew thick with mildew and quiet. These were centaur paths, older than most of the floor’s mapped sections, and Wobewt knew them with an unspoken certainty. Neither of them spoke much. Not until they reached it.

  The door stood at the far end of a narrow corridor, an opulent wooden frame with twin brass knobs and a polished finish that shimmered in the faint lantern light. It looked absurd here, like something plucked from a royal hall and shoved into the wall of a cave.

  Eugene stopped. Wobewt pawed at the ground.

  "I don’t wike this pwace," the centaur said. "Thewe are stowies about what wives in thewe. We say the woom eats guests who fowget they’we not the host."

  Eugene placed a hand on Wobewt’s shoulder. "Then it’s a good thing I’ve been learning manners."

  Wobewt frowned. "You mean you'we going in awone?"

  "I have to. You’ve brought me far enough."

  The lantern at Eugene’s hip glowed. Cozimia emerged first in a warm golden shimmer, plump and smiling. "Thank you, sugar. You looked after our boy. That makes you family."

  Hazel Fortuna flickered next in soft purples and curling smoke. "Don't feel too bad, Wobewt. He tends to find his way out of impossible things. Most of the time."

  Finally, Enalia unfolded from light like a broken mirror reassembling midair. Her voice echoed like a thought. "Not all partings are permanent. But they are necessary. The centaurs may yet see the stars again, Wobewt, when they remember to look up."

  Wobewt lowered his head. "May the next fwoor be kindew than this one."

  Eugene opened the door. It vanished behind him.

  The Feeding Room was beautiful.

  Velvet furniture. A fire crackling in the hearth. Chandeliers dripping with crystals. A tea tray waited with steam still rising from the cups. Bookshelves lined the far wall, thick with dustless tomes.

  Eugene slowed as he took it all in, unsettled. This wasn't just a random manifestation. Krungus had made this room. But why? For guests? For tests? For punishments? It had the trappings of a lounge, but the silence felt curated. Predatory. He imagined Krungus, millennia ago, lounging in that chair with a goblet in hand, testing the etiquette of apprentices, or watching visitors squirm under invisible social pressure. Was it once a place for debates? Duels disguised as tea service? Eugene couldn’t tell.

  Whatever it used to be, it wasn’t safe now.

  There was no door, no ladder, no exit.

  Eugene walked in slow circles, eyes scanning every detail. The floor creaked politely. The fire did not pop. It merely whispered.

  He waited.

  And waited.

  Finally, he muttered, "Maybe it really is just a weird room."

  He sat.

  The couch bucked beneath him, jawlines of upholstery splitting open with a ravenous snarl. The ottoman slammed into his chest, pinning him down. The arms of the couch coiled like serpents.

  "You don’t treat guests like this!" Eugene shouted.

  Hospitable Rebuke surged from him in a golden wave. The furniture shrieked and flung him off.

  Every piece of furniture in the room woke up.

  Chairs leapt forward like beasts, their legs bending unnaturally, mouths gaping open where cushions split apart. End tables galloped like wooden horses, slamming into the walls and rebounding with sharp wooden cracks. A standing lamp pivoted on its base and fired a beam of searing light like a spotlight, trying to blind him. Forks and knives launched themselves off the tea tray, spinning midair like darts.

  Eugene ducked as a silver serving tray flew past his head, embedding itself in the wood behind him. "Seriously?!" he shouted.

  A bar cart barreled forward, its wheels squealing, tossing glass bottles like grenades. Eugene dove behind a divan, which promptly sprouted clawed feet and tried to crush him.

  The chandelier above groaned ominously and fell. Not at random, but with deliberate aim. Eugene rolled just in time as it shattered on the floor, scattering crystalline shards that slithered toward him like snakes.

  The candelabra moved last. It didn’t rush. It strode.

  Its wrought iron limbs clicked like clockwork. Its arms, six in total, spread wide, each holding a flame that flickered blue and green with unnatural hunger. The bells tied to its limbs rang with each step, not chaotically but in cadence, as though keeping time in a song only it could hear. It exuded authority. Command. Hate.

  Cozimia’s voice rang from the lantern. "Shameful service! This room should be ashamed of itself."

  A second Rebuke blasted outward, golden and crackling, shoving half a dozen attackers into the walls. One chair split down the middle. Another slid across the floor like a scolded dog.

  Hazel Fortuna’s magic slipped through him like a breeze catching sails. A spinning candlestick hit the chandelier’s broken base and ricocheted into the bar cart’s wheel, sending it crashing sideways.

  Eugene spun, ducked a whizzing spoon, and shouted, "Bad manners! No host attacks a guest! That’s rule one!"

  Enalia murmured something that made the air hum. Eugene felt his panic harden into resolve. He stood taller, more confident. Not because he was unafraid—but because he knew what kind of fight this was.

  "This is my visit," he declared, stomping forward. "You’re the ones overstaying your welcome!"

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  The room hesitated. Some of the furniture began to back away.

  Eugene narrowed his eyes and activated Echo Step—a power Hazel had hinted at but he'd only begun to understand. For a breath, time trembled. Multiple possibilities unfolded before him: a vase cracking against his shoulder; a chair pinning his leg; a path clearing just long enough if he kicked a stack of books now.

  He chose that last one.

  Moving fast, Eugene lunged sideways and kicked over a teetering tower of tomes. They fell like dominoes. One thudding into a stool, which ricocheted into a table, which staggered sideways and knocked over a cabinet. It gave him a corridor.

  He sprinted through it as the room reeled, Echo Step still humming in his blood like ringing glass.

  Then, a bookshelf tipped over. Behind it, hidden until now, a narrow gap. And behind the gap: a rope ladder leading up into a trapdoor in the ceiling.

  Eugene ran.

  As he sprinted toward the ladder, his eyes darted across the room, looking for opportunities—cracks in the chaos he could widen. Hazel Fortuna stirred in his chest like a live wire. He veered toward a precariously stacked pile of books and knocked it over with his elbow.

  The tumbling volumes struck a leg of a galloping chair, toppling it sideways into an advancing floor lamp. The collision splintered both, sending sparks into the air.

  Another shelf leaned overhead, its joints loose. Eugene reached up and yanked it hard as he passed. It fell behind him with a thunderous crash, flattening a flock of silverware and pinning a side table that had been bounding like a dog.

  He heard the bells again.

  The candelabra was right behind him.

  He lunged for the ladder, grabbing the rope rungs two at a time, feet scrambling. A dining bench tried to intercept him, but Hazel’s magic twisted its legs mid-stride, sending it crashing into the broken chandelier.

  As Eugene climbed, a lamp swung like a pendulum beneath him, trying to catch his legs. A vase hurtled upward, smashing just beside his face.

  He climbed faster.

  The candelabra roared flame. Heat licked his boots. It was climbing the wall itself now, claws gouging into the wallpaper for purchase.

  Eugene Rebuked downward with every third rung. Golden bursts of etiquette and fury forced the furniture to recoil, but the attacks didn’t stop—they regrouped.

  Ten feet to go. Five.

  The trapdoor remained shut.

  He reached the top, muscles burning, and slammed his fist against the wood. "This room is unfit for guests! I withdraw my presence!"

  The lantern flared. The Jennies surged as one.

  Cozimia, Hazel, Enalia.

  The trapdoor blew open.

  Eugene hauled himself through just as the candelabra lunged upward, claws raking the air below.

  The door slammed shut behind him.

  He lay on hands and knees, panting.

  Beneath him: wood.

  He looked up.

  He was on a dock. Narrow, about twenty feet across. It stretched maybe a hundred feet into fog.

  Around him, black water shifted slowly, endlessly. No land in sight. No sky. Only mist and the low lapping of waves.

  The trapdoor was gone.

  Cozimia hummed uneasily.

  Hazel Fortuna muttered, "Tides are tricky things."

  Enalia, distant and soft: "Potential drifts. You must anchor it."

  Eugene stood.

  Now what the hell was he supposed to do?

  He glanced down at the lantern. "Cozimia," he whispered. "Do you have any idea where we are?"

  The lantern flickered. Cozimia’s voice answered, uncertain for once. "I’ve seen a thousand hearths, sugar, but I never saw no ocean on a floor like this. Not unless Krungus brought one with him."

  Eugene looked out into the mist again. The sea didn’t feel imagined. It felt ancient.

  "Why would he build this?" he murmured. No one answered.

  He waited. For minutes. Maybe longer. The fog made it hard to track time. There was only the rhythmic lap of waves and the creak of the dock under his boots.

  Then he heard it.

  A song.

  It began as a distant echo—thin and wavering, barely audible through the mist. But it grew clearer with each note, haunting and melodic. A sea shanty, but unlike any he’d heard. It was beautiful and lonely, laced with longing and loss. It wasn’t just being sung. It was being carried, like it had traveled a long way to find him.

  Out of the fog, a shape formed: a small dinghy gliding silently over the water, oars cutting clean lines through the black sea. A lone figure rowed, her wide-brimmed hat bowed low over her face.

  The voice came from her.

  She sang with the ease of someone who'd sung the same words a thousand nights in a thousand storms.

  As she drew closer, the lantern at Eugene’s side flickered gently.

  The woman lifted her head.

  Her eyes shimmered like wet glass, reflecting nothing but the gray. Her voice continued, clear and mournful:

  "One star for the sailor who sails without shore,

  Two bells for the dead who will knock no more.

  Three tides to carry the bones to their keep,

  Four winds to cradle what sinks in the deep."

  "Five years I wandered, and six I forgot,

  Seven were the secrets the sea never taught.

  Eight is the number that I wear in my chest,

  For I row for the lost and I sing for the rest."

  She continued rowing, slow and deliberate, the boat gliding like a memory over the water.

  Eugene stayed exactly where he was. He didn’t wave. Didn’t call out. He just waited.

  The dinghy reached the edge of the dock and came to a quiet stop.

  The woman—still without lifting her eyes fully—tied the rope with practiced ease, the knot firm and fast.

  She stood up, hands on the oars, and finally addressed him. Her voice carried across the planks like wind off open water.

  "You boarding or not, dock rat? Tide don’t wait for the dawdlers."

  Then, as if that had clarified everything, she stepped back and waited, gaze never quite meeting his.

  Now that she was closer, Eugene took in her appearance fully. Saltless Nell stood tall and wiry, with weatherworn skin the color of driftwood and hair like bleached kelp, fraying out from beneath her wide-brimmed, salt-stained hat. Her coat was a sailor's relic—navy blue, patched and mended, weighted with tarnished brass buttons and faint arcane embroidery along the seams. Her boots were mismatched and waterlogged. One eye gleamed silver, a glimmer of something not entirely natural, while the other remained storm-gray and unblinking. She looked carved out of tide and time, like a ghost who never quite sank.

  She smelled faintly of brine and sweat. The fog pressed in around them both.

  She raised her chin slightly and said, "Captain Saltless Nell, last of the Tidebound, bearer of the Moonwake Oath, and ferrier of what still floats. If you've got coin, soul, or story—I'll take any one. Or none. Makes no difference to the sea."

  It wasn’t said for grandeur, it was said the way some people breathe. Eugene didn’t know what to make of her, but he did know one thing: this floor wasn’t built for storage or defense. It wasn’t a trap or a vault. It was built for something else entirely.

  Adventure.

  This floor was waiting for him.