Jaehyuk kept his hand on the Broker's collar until the man's back hit the wall.
The stone was damp. Cold enough to bite through cloth. Somewhere behind them, the Lobby kept breathing its usual noise, all clinking cups and trader calls and the soft stamp of climbers trying not to look afraid.
The Broker's hood shifted. A thin smile sat under it.
"You grip hard for someone who wants information," they said.
"You charge for information," Jaehyuk said. "This is the part where you earn it."
"No. This is the part where you decide what it costs."
Jaehyuk pressed closer.
The Broker did not flinch. That was the irritating part. Most people did, even if they pretended not to. The Broker just looked mildly entertained, like they'd been invited to an argument they already knew the ending of.
"Floor 23," Jaehyuk said. "Tell me what happens."
The Broker's gaze moved past him for half a second.
Not away. Past.
They were checking the room.
Jaehyuk noticed the detail and filed it under useful. The Broker always priced fear like a merchant. That meant they respected danger, even if they never admitted it.
"You already read the ledger," they said.
"I want specifics."
"Specifics are expensive."
"I'm not in the mood."
"That is obvious."
Somin's voice came from behind him, careful and low.
"Jaehyuk?"
He did not turn.
"Go back to Mira," he said.
A pause.
"That sounds like you're about to do something stupid."
"I'm already doing it."
Her shoes scraped the tile. Not retreating. Just shifting position. Close enough that he could hear the tension in her breathing.
Good. She was listening.
The Broker's mouth curved again. "Your healer is learning discipline. That costs extra too, by the way."
Jaehyuk tightened his grip. Just enough to make the message clear.
"Talk."
The Broker gave a soft sigh, almost theatrical.
"Fine. On the original Floor 23 run, Somin did not die because the floor was fair. She died because the floor was designed to separate the party at phase three."
Jaehyuk's jaw went still.
The Lobby noise kept moving around them. Water in a vendor's jug sloshed. Someone laughed too loudly at a table farther down. The world kept pretending it was normal.
"Separate how?" he asked.
"By mechanic. A partition event. The boss reaches a threshold, the chamber fractures, and the party is split into isolated lanes. One side gets the main body. One side gets the adds."
Somin inhaled sharply.
Jaehyuk did not look at her.
He could feel her there. The scent of clean bandages and the faint medicinal bite that followed healers around, mixed with the Lobby's dust and cooking oil and old stone.
"And Somin ends up on the add side," he said.
"In the original sequence, yes."
"Because she's the healer."
The Broker spoke with exactness, each word placed like a coin on a table.
"Ahn Taeho was the party leader. Competent enough to look heroic. Not good enough to be generous. He made a clean decision. DPS on the boss. Healer on add control. When the adds overwhelmed her, he ordered retreat."
Jaehyuk felt something in his chest go very cold and very narrow.
Not rage. Rage was loud and messy. This was cleaner than rage. This was the feeling of a knife being set down on a table and then having the table itself explained.
"He left her there," Jaehyuk said.
"He left her there," the Broker repeated. "The floor did its part. He did his."
Somin's fingers touched the back of Jaehyuk's sleeve. Light pressure. Not enough to distract. Enough to remind him she was real.
"Partition event," she said quietly. "Like, split the room?"
"Like split the party," Jaehyuk said.
"That's not better."
"No. It isn't."
He let go of the Broker's collar.
Not because he trusted them. Because he wanted his hand free.
The Broker straightened their hood and brushed invisible dust from their shoulder. Their voice stayed calm. Measured. Transactional.
"You're thinking the wrong way," they said.
"Am I?"
"You're thinking like a man who can simply keep her near him. You can't. She's already in the party. The floor will still split the chamber."
Jaehyuk stared at them.
That was the problem. Not betrayal. Not distance. Not even strength.
Mechanic.
A floor rule. Harder than intention. Harder than loyalty. Something the Tower would enforce without emotion, because the Tower never needed emotion to kill people.
"What phase?" he asked.
"Third."
"What triggers it?"
"Boss health threshold. Sixty percent. Maybe lower if the Tower decides to be creative."
"And the adds?"
"Spawn in waves. Fast ones first. Then armored ones. Then the floor opens lanes that punish movement errors. A healer alone becomes a target. A healer with no lane access becomes a corpse."
Somin went very quiet beside him.
Too quiet.
He could hear her swallowing.
When she spoke, her voice came out thinner than usual. "Ahn Taeho. That's the guy you said in the ledger?"
Jaehyuk did not answer at once.
Because he was mapping.
He was already in the chamber. Already seeing the split. Already running lines through his head, trying to find the shape of a solution before the Tower had a chance to tighten around it.
Party separation. Add waves. Healer isolated.
He could keep her alive if he was in her lane.
But he wouldn't always be in her lane.
The boss forced separation.
That meant he needed one of three things.
Strength enough to wipe the add side before it became a problem.
A way to break the floor mechanic itself.
Or someone else who could reach Somin when the lanes split.
Jaehyuk hated all three.
The first was possible in theory and ugly in practice.
The second sounded like Tower mythology.
The third meant trusting another person with her life.
He had learned what that cost.
"Yes," he said to Somin. "That's the man."
She looked at the Broker. Then at him.
Her face had gone blank in that healer way, the way people looked when they were trying to keep panic from becoming movement.
"You knew this whole time," she said.
"No. Not the full shape."
"But enough."
"Enough to train you."
She blinked once.
That hit harder than anger would have.
Jaehyuk saw it in the tiny shift of her mouth. The hand that curled on her sleeve. The way her shoulders tightened and then stopped, because she was deciding what not to say.
He hated that he'd done this to her.
He hated more that he'd had reasons.
The Broker watched them with faint amusement, like the emotional cost was part of the fee schedule.
"You should tell her everything," they said. "It reduces future damage. Usually."
Jaehyuk's eyes snapped to them.
"You don't get to advise me on trust."
"I get to advise you on survival. Trust is often just a delayed survival problem."
Somin gave a short, humorless laugh.
"That's a disgusting thing to say."
"And yet, accurate," the Broker said.
Jaehyuk turned back to the Broker.
"Ahn Taeho. Where is he now?"
The Broker held his gaze.
"Alive."
"I figured that much."
"Floor 14."
That made Jaehyuk still.
Floor 14.
Close enough to matter. High enough to be dangerous. Still early enough for Vanguard to shape him into something useful if they wanted.
He heard Mira's blade scrape softly in its sheath behind them. She had moved without being told. Guarding the angle. Watching the Lobby's flow.
Listening, too.
Good.
The Broker continued, voice smooth as polished metal.
"Ahn Taeho is in Vanguard's orbit. Dohyun has been recruiting aggressively on mid-floors. Taeho isn't famous yet. But he has a clean record, a solid party history, and the right kind of ambition. The guild likes men like that."
"And Somin?" Jaehyuk asked.
"Not in the original sequence, no. There he found her later. Different floor, different party, same outcome. This time is already off script."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning he doesn't know she exists. Yet."
That should have been a relief.
It wasn't.
Jaehyuk felt the shape of the trap before the trap showed itself.
If Taeho didn't know Somin now, then the path had not closed.
It had merely moved.
The Broker let that sit for a beat, then added, almost casually, "But if Vanguard learns what she can do, if someone decides a healer that competent is worth reclaiming, Taeho may be assigned to her."
Somin made a small sound in her throat.
Not fear. Not exactly.
Recognition.
She understood the shape of being useful to the wrong people.
Jaehyuk did too.
He looked at the Broker. "Why tell me this?"
"Because you asked. Because you can afford the question now, and because you're going to need the answer later."
"That's not a reason."
"It's three reasons. The Tower prefers bundles."
Jaehyuk almost smiled.
Almost.
The Broker noticed. Of course they did.
"You're thinking about separation control," they said.
Jaehyuk said nothing.
"You are," the Broker continued. "Good. It means you've stopped pretending the problem is simply 'keep the healer alive.' It isn't. The problem is that the floor itself will split your resources away from her."
"I know."
"Do you?"
He did not answer.
Because now he was seeing it from the wrong end.
Not Somin in danger.
A chamber designed to make loyalty expensive.
The Tower didn't need to kill her directly. It just needed to make saving her inconvenient.
He had seen that before. On Floor 143. Different shape, same teeth.
He forced his breathing slower.
In. Out.
Cold air through the nose. Dust and stone in his mouth. The faint iron scent of old metal from the Lobby railings.
Control.
Not for calm.
For precision.
He spoke without looking away from the Broker.
"If I solo the adds, the split doesn't matter."
"If you can solo the adds. Yes."
"And if I can't?"
"Then you need someone who can cross lanes. Or a way to destroy the separation before it completes. Both are possible in theory. Both are expensive."
"Expensive how?"
The Broker's gloved hand tapped once against their sleeve.
Coin. Payment. Terms.
"Power. Contacts. Or a favor large enough to become a wound."
Jaehyuk filed the words away.
Power. Contacts. Wound.
The list was clean. That meant the problem was real.
Somin finally stepped forward. Her voice was steady, but only because she was forcing it.
"Can the floor mechanic be changed?"
The Broker looked at her, and for a moment there was something almost approving in their eyes.
"Interesting question," they said.
"Answer it."
"Not by ordinary means. The Tower's separation events are structural. You don't rewrite them with courage."
"So no."
"Not impossible," the Broker said. "Just priced beyond most climbers."
Somin huffed softly through her nose. "I hate merchants."
"You should. We're honest about being expensive."
Mira stepped closer at last, long enough for Jaehyuk to feel her presence at his left shoulder.
"What exactly are you not saying?" she asked.
The Broker's attention shifted to her.
Measured. Assessing.
"A great deal," they said. "That is my profession."
"How convenient."
"And profitable."
Jaehyuk cut in before Mira could keep going.
"Ahn Taeho. What kind of fighter?"
The Broker answered at once.
"Average strength. Good discipline. Excellent under someone else's flag. He follows efficient strategies because they make him feel competent. On his own, he's not exceptional. In a guild structure, he can become useful. Sometimes useful men become loyal. Sometimes they become cruel. Often both."
Jaehyuk's mouth went flat.
That kind of answer meant the Broker had watched him enough to know what mattered.
Not raw power.
The pattern.
The choice.
The moment a man stopped treating another person as human and started treating them as an acceptable loss.
Mira crossed her arms.
"And this Taeho is on Floor 14 now."
"Yes."
"Why bring him up to Jaehyuk?"
The Broker's head tilted.
"Because you're all acting as if the future is a straight line. It isn't. It's a market. Information changes value when people hear it."
Jaehyuk's finger tapped once against his thumb.
A habit. A warning.
He stopped it before it repeated.
"Someone told him about high-value healers," he said.
The Broker gave a tiny shrug.
"Someone spoke. Yes."
The Lobby seemed to narrow around that sentence.
Somin looked between them. "Who?"
Jaehyuk didn't answer her.
He was already on the next thread.
Vanguard's orbit. Floor 14. High-value healers.
Someone who knew.
Someone who had access to information they should not have had.
Someone who had already proven they were willing to push the future into new shapes.
Iteration 6.
The thought came in clean and cold.
Mira's eyes sharpened. She had caught the shift in him. She always caught the shift. Not the details. The direction.
"You know who it is," she said.
Jaehyuk kept his face empty.
"Maybe."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the one I have."
The Broker made a small sound that might have been a laugh if they were the sort of person who laughed.
"There it is," they said.
Jaehyuk turned his head a fraction.
"There what is?"
"The part where you realize your enemy is not the man on Floor 14. Not yet. It's whoever handed him the information."
Somin's voice dropped. "Do you know who?"
The Broker's pause was tiny.
Too tiny.
Which meant they knew and were deciding whether the answer was worth the next cost.
Jaehyuk saw it and went still in a different way.
He had seen men hesitate before swinging a blade. This was the same pause.
"Broker," he said quietly.
The hood turned.
Jaehyuk's voice got softer.
That was worse.
"Who?"
The Broker looked at him for a long time. Then, at last, they spoke.
"Who do you think?"
Jaehyuk did not move.
The Lobby noises rushed back in around the words, loud and ordinary and wrong. A chair leg scraped. Somewhere, a vendor called out a price. Somin drew one sharp breath beside him.
Mira went very still.
Jaehyuk's stomach tightened once, hard.
Iteration 6.
Vanguard.
Floor 14.
And someone had already sold Somin's value to the future.
He took one step forward.
The Broker's hand disappeared into their cloak.
"Careful," they said. "This part gets expensive."