Carl and Princess Donut arrive on the eighth floor, “The Ghosts of Earth,” inside El Capitolio in Havana, Cuba. They discover the doors and windows are effectively sealed: exterior areas are “not yet unlocked,” and the stairwell exit requires a key they do not have.

As squad chats light up, other allies report similar lockdowns in their chosen regions (a Great Wolf Lodge water park in the western U.S., Iceland, Beijing, and Ecuador). The group realizes parties have been split into fixed squads of up to five, and everyone has to coordinate under the new constraints while they wait for the floor’s full explanation.

During the delay, Donut consults Mordecai about her forced class selection and rejects “Agony Urchin” in favor of “Master Telephone Psychic.” The choice upgrades her scouting and combat utility: her map expands to cover the whole building, and she gains spells like Brain Freeze, Bad Attitude, and Why Are You Hitting Yourself?, plus a substantial Intelligence boost.

Cascadia delivers the floor announcement: phase one lasts 14 days, during which crawlers are confined to a replica “memory” of Earth as of December 10. Human and animal “ghosts” are non-interactive, but the physical environment is real and can be looted or destroyed, though items taken from the memory will turn to dust when the floor collapses.

The central mechanic is squad-building. Each region contains folklore-based monsters; the squad leader receives 20 flags that can be planted in near-dead living entities (or noncorporeal monsters) to convert them into T’Ghee totems that become summonable squad minions. Squads must fill their extra slots with captured creatures or risk random assignment when phase two begins, and totems can be traded or stolen; only one T’Ghee card can be kept after the floor ends. After the announcement, Donut reports Prepotente is in the Bahamas and wants Carl to read him the lore book; Carl offers to do it in exchange for half of Prepotente’s Size-Up potions as a new saferoom door appears.