Chapter 4: Floor 4 – The Garden of Teeth

They found the garden by accident.

Or rather, it found them.

After the mechanical horrors of Floor 3, the climb into the next level was eerily quiet. No more screeching metal. No buzzing lights. Just the rhythmic clunk of boots on stone and the breath of exhausted soldiers echoing in tight, spiraling halls.

Then, without warning, the cold metal walls gave way to soft earth.

Eren blinked.

Beyond the threshold, a vast chamber stretched far and wide, lit by a strange silver glow from above—no sun, just a pale, ever-shifting radiance bleeding from cracks in the vaulted ceiling. Trees—if they could be called that—twisted upward in impossible spirals. Their bark was bone-white, and their leaves shimmered like glass. Flowers bloomed in vibrant blues and sickly reds, their petals pulsing faintly like breathing lungs.

It was beautiful.

And wrong.

The scouts called it safe.

They were wrong.

The moment the group stepped into the glade, the ground shifted.

Roots slithered beneath the soil. Blossoms opened slowly, revealing rows of teeth. Petals gave way to tongues. Thorns pulsed like veins. The Garden of Teeth had awakened.

Eren stumbled back as a vine snapped toward a mercenary, coiling around his leg and dragging him screaming into a mound of crimson flowers. The petals closed over him like a coffin. The screaming stopped.

"Defensive line!" Rorik roared. "Nothing touches the porters!"

Too late. The flora struck with coordinated malice—no longer passive but predatory. Barbed vines lashed from the trees, snaring limbs and slicing armor. Some plants released clouds of golden pollen that caused those who breathed it to drop to their knees, clawing at their own faces.

Arrows worked, sometimes. Fire worked better.

But the garden fought back.

Eren ducked behind a collapsed trunk, shard in hand. Its pulsing had grown erratic, panicked. He felt nothing like the calm clarity of Floor 2 or the machine-interface of Floor 3. Here, the shard trembled like a trapped animal.

He risked a glance over the log—and locked eyes with something watching him from the garden's center.

It was tall. Thin. Dressed in something like robes made of woven vines and dead petals. Its face was a mask of thorns and hollow sockets, and from its fingers extended claws of bark and bone.

It didn't move.

It didn't need to.

The garden moved for it.

"Sentient flora network detected," whispered the shard in Eren's mind.

"Entity classified: Keeper of the Bloom."

"Warning: Malevolent intent. Mental corruption risk high."

The Keeper raised its hand. Roots exploded from the soil, aiming straight for Eren.

He dove aside just in time, rolling across a patch of soft moss that tried to bite. He gasped and scrambled back, heart pounding. The shard was pulsing wildly now, like it was fighting something.

"Corruption link… severing… severing…"

"Override attempt initiated."

Eren didn't know what he was doing—but he focused on the shard, on the strange connection he felt to the tower's systems. He thought of the roots, the vines, the glowing network beneath the soil. And he pulled.

For a second, the whole garden shuddered.

The vines froze. The flowers with teeth quivered.

The Keeper shrieked—a sound that pierced the mind more than the ears.

Then, silence.

The plants recoiled, writhing in agony as something—some ancient connection—was momentarily broken. The Royal Guard surged forward, weapons blazing, cutting down the now-aimless flora with fire and fury.

The Keeper stumbled, clutching its head as if disoriented. It turned to flee, vanishing into the trees like a wraith.

They didn't follow.

They wouldn't have survived if they had.

...

Later, when the flames died down and the wounded were counted, Rorik sat beside Eren beneath a black tree that wept sap like blood.

"You did something again," he said quietly.

Eren nodded. "I think… I disconnected it. Whatever the Keeper was, it was part of the tower."

Rorik stared at the shard now openly resting in Eren's palm. "You're changing. That thing's changing you."

"I know," Eren said. "And I think… the tower is letting me."

Rorik stood, brushing off blood and ash. "The others are starting to notice. Keep your secrets close. We've lost nearly half our number, and we're not even at Floor Ten."

He left without another word.

Eren remained under the black tree, watching the petals fall like ash.

The shard had quieted, but he could still feel something beneath the soil. Something alive. The Keeper wasn't dead. Not yet.

The Garden of Teeth would grow back.

And the tower would keep testing them.