Carl finishes preparing the ambush in the secret closet passage Astrid uses to move between floors. He plants a motion-detecting smoke trap and anti-NPC claymores aimed at the closet door, then heads upstairs to seed teleport trap beacons in a top-floor utility room so any guards who trigger the hallway traps will be displaced and delayed. He cues Samantha to start a bar fight as bait while Katia waits nearby with potions and her deck.

Upstairs, Carl tries to warn a small group of crawlers to leave before violence erupts, but a drunk crawler, Emir Akbas, attacks Carl and starts a brief fight. Zeynep, one of Emir’s teammates, mutes Emir to stop him escalating. During the distraction, Astrid unexpectedly flies out using the main stairs instead of the secret passage, immediately threatening Carl’s plan.

An emergency alarm announces a containment breach on the middle level and orders security to the Hunting Grounds Casino. Generated NPCs vanish, guards stampede downstairs, and Carl realizes the breach is tied to Samantha entering the casino and accidentally letting a demon out of the Nothing. A massive minor feral demon named Minge (level 225) appears in the restaurant area, killing guards and NPCs while screaming for Samantha (“Psamathe”). Katia refuses to abort, insisting she must still kill Astrid and secure her body for the Guild quest while the chaos provides cover.

Carl rushes down via the women’s-room secret stairwell and uses an invisibility potion plus a music-blaring alarm ball to create a distraction (“Material Girl”) so he can cross the demon’s killing ground into the kitchen. Astrid is already there directing defenses and admits she triggered the alarm and unleashed “vorpals,” warning they will kill everything on the floor. Meanwhile, guards blunder into Carl’s trapped secret hallway; teleport traps fire repeatedly, and then Carl’s IED detonates, confirming the ambush corridor is now lethal.

Katia arrives invisible and activates her deck: a strength-buffed troll totem and a skull-headed crow totem. Astrid instantly kills the troll with a blood-boiling spell, but the crow remains effective. Katia, shapeshifted into a spiked canine-humanoid monstrosity, grabs Astrid, but a spell freezes Katia mid-strike; Carl intervenes by ripping Astrid’s wings off, breaking the effect. The crow tears out Astrid’s eyes, and Katia finishes Astrid by skewering her through the head, then orders Carl to follow her into the bar and sell the kill as a “monster” attack so no one ties Astrid’s death to a crawler. Astrid’s last revelations linger: she claims her husband is Hamed, the Night Wyrm, and she was “almost done” and close to being free.