The cast have lives now. Between climbs the thirteen rise and fall in realm, earn names, carry wounds. The gallery and their sheet show where each of them stands and what they climb for, and they tell you themselves at the fire. What you did on the last climb has a hand in it: your standing with them, a word kept or broken, a spar won or lost.
The companion box is a scene, not a menu. Whoever walks beside you answers the floor after it happens: a fight won, a near thing survived, a fork taken, a curio picked up, the floor below a tribulation, an empty corridor. Under each line are two things you can say back. Every named cast member has their own voice on the road; generic allies speak by temperament.
They take a side before you choose. On a card or at a fork, your companion may say which way they'd go. Go with them and the bond warms. Go against them and it costs, and they say so once. Cross them three times on one walk and they stop offering. Cross a proud one on a matter of their own sect and they leave you on the next floor.
Ask them to open a fight. Once per stretch, they strike first and the foe's first blow lands on them.
At the fire, two seated cast members talk to each other before you tap anyone. Thirteen pairs so far.
A rival will walk a stretch with you under truce. They needle instead of advise, fight for themselves, and if you both reach the next fire alive, something shifts between you.
Also: Escape opens the menu at the fire, so you can quit from there.
Fights are unchanged unless you ask a companion to lead. Old saves load as they were.