At their lodge that night, after the Christmas call ended and the camp quieted down again, Phong sat beside Alex and let the silence settle first.
Little Fireball had claimed the phone.
Or rather, she had claimed the right to be angry at the phone.
The chick stood in front of the screen, pecking at it every few seconds with growing outrage because the signal on Floor 2 was too weak to load her K-drama properly. Every few moments the screen froze, dropped quality, or sank into the cursed blur of automatic 144p. Little Fireball chirped like she had been personally insulted by technology.
Phong watched her for a second, then looked back at Alex.
"We missed it again," he said quietly.
Alex turned her head. "Missed what."
"Our engagement ceremony."
The words hung there between them.
New Year's Eve had come and gone in pieces already, at least in planning, in hope, in all the little promises that kept getting shoved aside by floors, wars, and floor bosses who enjoyed being cruel for sport.
Alex looked away first.
"I know."
Phong rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "I'm sorry."
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, "I'm still mad at you."
He nodded once. "Fair."
Alex drew one knee up and rested an arm over it. The firelight in the lodge made her look softer than she probably wanted right now, but there was still enough of that steel in her voice to keep the truth sharp.
"You jump too fast when fear gets involved," she said. "You decide first, then carry the consequences after, and you act like it's your job to absorb all of it before anyone else can."
Phong did not argue, because that was not the kind of thing one argued against when it was true. It was always there in him since the incident with his aunt and uncle. It happened at the decoy camp that later became camp Harpy, it happened when Em came to camp Stymphalian for the first time, then again during their trip to Lyon. He would paint a big, red target on himself if it meant people he cared about were safe.
Alex let out a breath and looked down at her hands.
"Still," she said, quieter now, "I also know you've always given me space. You've always yielded ground to me, been patient with me." She glanced up at him again. "So I overreacted too. I was taking that for granted and didn't know how to react when you held the ground. I shouldn't have acted like that."
Phong's mouth twitched. "You did threaten me with your face."
Alex almost smiled. "It was an effective face."
"It was deeply unfair."
"That sounds like surrender."
"It was."
And with that, the last hard edge of the fight finally loosened.
They made peace the way they usually did. Not through big declarations, but by choosing to meet each other halfway once both had burned through the pride and fear enough to see clearly again.
Little Fireball, meanwhile, chirped with full heartbreak because the screen had buffered again. She stomped one foot on the table, and her whole body puffed up like a small red pompom.
Alex reached over, took the phone back before the chick pecked it into the next century, and set it face down.
"No K-drama tonight," she said.
Little Fireball made a small, outraged sound and turned her back on both of them like a betrayed noblewoman.
Phong laughed under his breath.
Since Alex was still sulking a little, and because both of them were more tired than either wanted to admit, they did not make love that night. Instead, Alex lay beside him and asked, "What were you going to do after college?"
Phong blinked. "What?"
"If none of this happened." She gestured vaguely, meaning the dungeon, the camp, the monsters, all of it. "What was the plan?"
He thought about it for a moment.
Then answered honestly.
"Real estate, probably." He looked up at the lodge ceiling as he spoke. "Be a white collar employee for a few years. Learn actual business white selling my youth to the corpo. Save some money." His mouth softened just a little. "Then eventually take over my uncle and aunt's restaurant once I know enough not to ruin it."
Alex smiled at that.
"That explains why you're such a good cook."
Phong turned to look at her. "I'm hearing a compliment."
"It is." She leaned back a little more into the blanket. "Though your recipes can be overwhelming sometimes."
"That sounds less like a compliment."
"It's both."
Phong studied her face for a second, then returned the question.
"What about you?"
Alex was quiet for less time than he expected.
"I was going to be a doctor."
The answer made sense considering her choice of college, then the rest of it followed in her voice, and the softness left.
"At least, I was. Before the hospital bent the knee to Josh's father."
Phong's expression shifted.
Alex looked at the ceiling too now, but her eyes had gone farther than that.
"In a way," she said, "I'm grateful to the dungeon."
That made him raise a brow.
Alex huffed softly. "I know how that sounds."
"No. I get it."
She nodded once.
"If the dungeon hadn't happened, I would've learned what that industry really looked like much later." Her tone sharpened just a little. "A few years into the career, maybe. Deep enough that leaving would feel like cutting out part of my own spine." She looked back at him. "And I would have hated it."
Phong did not interrupt, as he understood that kind of betrayal too well. He had wanted to do business too, until he learnt what Josh's father could do.
Alex's voice softened again after a second.
"Besides," she said, "being a diver led me to you."
That sat warm in his chest.
Phong smiled.
"We would've met eventually."
Alex gave him a look that asked how he could possibly know that.
He shrugged.
"Maybe just as strangers."
"That sounds romantic."
"Maybe not at first." His smile turned crooked. "Maybe I'd just be some capitalist slave in that timeline who had to visit your clinic every day because of stress-related health issues."
Alex laughed, low and real.
"That part I believe."
"You'd tell me to sleep more."
"You wouldn't."
"You'd still tell me."
"I'd be right."
"That part is annoying."
"Truth usually is."
Before he could answer, Little Fireball let out a furious chirp from the foot of the bed.
The chick had somehow pecked the phone awake again, and now the screen showed exactly what had broken her spirit before: the spinning circle, the stuttered frame, and the ancient curse of automatic 144p.
Little Fireball chirped louder, offended beyond language.
Phong laughed despite everything.
Despite being trapped on Floor 2 of a worldwide dungeon.
Despite frozen lakes, floor bosses, wars, and all the ways the world kept trying to make their lives impossible.
He laughed anyway.
And beside him, Alex smiled and leaned into his side while the chick waged her personal war against bad signal in the dark.
Camp Orthrus had been quiet for three days.
That alone felt wrong.
The feline attacks did not stop at once, but they slowed. Then slowed even more. In the end, they thinned into scattered tests rather than true assaults. A leopard illusion here, a mountain lion trying the outer line there. But nothing like the first wave after they defeated Đăm Bhi.
The Timatoes handled all of it with ugly delight.
After a while, the pressure around camp eased enough that Phong noticed something else: the dill and the basil had stopped mutating completely. They were still growing well in the dungeon soil, still healthy, still vigorous, but whatever pressure had started twisting them before was gone now. Or at least... diffused.
The Timatoes had changed the balance. Their violence, their patrols, their refusal to let anything come close without paying in blood and boiling juice, all of it had pushed back the outside stress hard enough that the new plants no longer had reason to change.
That was useful, and also deeply annoying.
Because it meant the floating tiger tomatoes were now both the strongest shield Camp Orthrus had and a fresh problem Phong would eventually need to solve.
He was still thinking about that when camp woke to visitors. Three of them to be precise, and each had the power to shake the entire dungeon with every step.
Phong stepped out and froze so hard that Alex, just behind him, nearly walked into his back.
Under the frozen lime-oak sat the White Tigress.
This time she wore Phong's aunt's face.
Not perfectly, not enough to fool him for one second, but Phong doubted the Tigress even care if her mimicry was perfect or not. She had kept the white hair, the tiger ears, the tail, the armor, all of it, as if she wanted to make extra sure he knew exactly who had chosen this shape and exactly how cruel that choice was.
Behind her stood two more figures.
The first was a boy.
Young, fourteen maybe, sixteen at most. He was chubby in the way of someone not yet grown into himself. His hair was moss green and tied into thick dreadlocks that hung loose around his head and shoulders. He looked past everyone in camp and stared straight at the Timatoes with bright, hungry curiosity.
That got Phong's attention fast.
Because the Timatoes, who had shown fear of nothing since they came into this world, were reacting very differently than usual.
They hovered low and tense around the edge of camp, spines up, little faces tight with a kind of wary fear Phong had never seen in them before. For the first time since they came into being, the Timatoes didn't attack on sight, didn't try to bite strangers, and didn't vibrate with condensed aggression.
The third figure looked almost ordinary by comparison.
He wore a business suit so clean and crisp it felt unreal in the middle of Floor 2. He had thick blond sideburns that made him instantly recognizable even before he smiled and pushed his sunglasses up with two fingers.
Phong's stomach dropped.
The man smiled wider.
"Nice to meet ya," he said. "I'm Mister Zero. The one who created the diver app and the Divers Association."
No one in camp moved, no one breathed normally either.
Then Mister Zero added, in the same easy tone,
"But down here, I believe the term Pillar is more fitting for me."
That broke the silence in the worst possible way.
Because now everyone understood that three Pillars were standing in Camp Orthrus like they had walked into a family visit.
Phong recovered first.
Maybe because fear had burned down to practicality long ago, given how many absurd things he had met since planting those potatoes in the dungeon. Maybe because if he stopped to properly process what was happening, he would never have the gut to speak again.
He stepped forward and looked at the White Tigress.
"What do you want?"
The others were still too shocked to do more than stare.
The tigress, wearing his aunt's face with shameless ease, smiled like this was all perfectly normal.
"New Year's Eve," she said, "is a time for family. Reunion. Reconciliation. Harmony. That sort of stuffs. I'm not too used to human culture."
Phong eyed her with his best poker face. His expression unchanged despite standing in front of three god-like beings, and that made her smile a little more.
"So I decided to use this chance to bring two of my brothers to Camp Orthrus and speak of a ceasefire."
The sheer audacity of that made Alex's hand twitch toward her side.
Phong spoke before anyone else could.
"You only did this because humans decided to stop pushing toward Death Peak."
The White Tigress did not even try to deny it.
"Yes," she said at once.
Like that answer cost her nothing.
Like the truth itself amused her.
And somehow that was worse than if she had lied.