Chapter 179: You Were There… And I Survived

Elias frowned as he did not recognize the shape that his Perception was showing him, but a faint hint of recognition was in his mind. Rather than think of where this memory was coming from, he padded to the door of the kitchen and opened it.

The kitchen was warm, the hearth burning with that fuel-less flame that formation arrays provided, and standing before it was a woman so short she barely reached the counter. She was stirring something in a pot, some kind of porridge, rich with what smelled like honey and nuts, while on a nearby stone slab, strips of meat sizzled next to slices of bread that had been browned to perfection.

She turned at the sound of the door, and Elias recognized her; it was the woman from the oasis. She had crawled through a mound of bodies to kneel at his feet.

Parts of his final memory of her were of her praying to him as if he were a god. Elias observed her for a moment; her face was still pale, and carrying the shadows of what she had endured, but her eyes were no longer empty; there was now a new focus and determination inside them.

“You’re awake,” she said. Her voice was soft, with an accent Elias did not recognize, rougher than Stormfall’s standard, but there was a lilt to her voice that made it sound as if she were singing. “You are awake, sit, the food is almost ready.”

Elias did not move. “How did you get in here?”

She gestured with the spoon toward a small table by the wall. On it lay a shard of crystal, no larger than his thumb, its surface catching the firelight and scattering it in tiny rainbows. Elias recognized it immediately. It was a piece of his key.

“The Commander gave it to me,” the woman said, turning back to her pot. “She said you would have questions, and she also said I should answer them while you eat, because in thirty minutes you will need to be on some sort of training.”

Elias crossed to the table and picked up the shard. It was warm, pulsing with the same faint amber light as the key itself. A fragment, deliberately broken from the whole. Enough to grant access to this floor, but not enough to control it. A part of him noted that it was not enough to be a threat.

“She gave you a piece of my key.”

“Yes.”

“And you just… walked in?”

“The door recognized it.” She shrugged, a small motion that did not interrupt her stirring. “I knocked first. You didn’t answer. So I came in and started cooking. You looked like you needed a good meal.”

Elias stared at her for a long moment. Then, slowly, he sat.

The woman finished her stirring, ladled the porridge into a bowl, and set it before him along with a strip of meat and a slice of the browned bread. She moved with the ease of someone who had done this a thousand times, her motions economical and precise.

“Eat,” she said. “We can talk after.”

Elias looked at the food. His body did not need it, not really, but the smell was irresistible. He took a bite of the porridge. It was perfect, creamy, sweet, warm in a way that spread through his chest and reminded him of things he had almost forgotten. Things like comfort and care.

The woman watched him eat for a moment, then busied herself with cleaning the few dishes she had used. When he had finished half the bowl, she spoke again.

“My name is Mira.” She did not turn from her work. “I was a cook at the… at Greensdale, although I think you know it as the oasis.” She gave a wistful smile, “I was not a good one, the head cook always said I had no talent for it. But I learned, and I watched, even though the only thing I wanted was to be a warrior and not be in the kitchen.”

” When they came…” She paused, her hands stilling on a pot she was scrubbing. “When they came, I ran and hid, and it was the head chef that I detested that stood like a warrior and died to protect me while I crawled through bodies and waited to die, even though I am a Fury Forge with a Talent.”

Elias set down his spoon. He thought he should have been the one talking and asking questions, but Mira just had a traumatic experience that he knew he could not fully understand, and he should allow her to air out her mind.

“You know, I think I saw you come down from the sky like a red comet.”

He said nothing.

“I don’t know how I was brought here, but I know without you saving me, I would be dead. I was also told how you killed the Flesh Mauler.” Mira finally turned to face him, and her eyes were wet. “You saved my life.”

Elias had killed hundreds in that forest, he had not kept count, but he knew that it was not enough, not after he had seen the full scale of what had been unleashed on the oasis, he had not been thinking of survivors at that time, and he did not think it was right that she was praising him for his actions when he was just there to slaughter.

“You don’t owe me anything,” he said, and what she said next made him look at her again with new eyes.

“I know.” Mira smiled, and it was a broken thing, a smile that had been through too much and come out the other side changed. “That’s why I’m not paying a debt. I’m making a choice.”

She set down the pot and dried her hands on her apron, then walked to stand before him. She was so short that even seated, Elias was nearly at eye level with her.

“I have nothing,” she said. “My home is gone. My people are dead. My family—” She stopped, swallowed, and continued. “My family is gone. The Commander offered me a place here, said I could work in the kitchens, help Orwin with the cooking. But I told her no.”

Elias raised an eyebrow.

“I told her I wanted to work for you.”

The silence stretched between them. Elias could hear her heartbeat, steady despite the emotion in her voice. Could see the set of her jaw, the determination in her eyes. She meant this. Every word.

“Why?”

“Because you came from the sky.” Mira’s voice was simple, certain. “Because you killed monsters while monsters killed everyone else. Because when I knelt at your feet and prayed, you didn’t laugh. You didn’t mock. You told me to go into the forest and not go far, and then you walked past me and killed them all.” She took a breath. “I don’t know what you are. An Angel, maybe. Something else. But I know that when the world ended, you were there. And I survived.”

Elias thought about the faces in his memory, the hundred and fifteen trophies before his ascension, the hundreds more since. He thought about the Passenger’s screaming chorus, the dead children’s voices that haunted his every moment. He thought about the four guards in the basement, arranged like pieces on a game board, their deaths a message he had left for whoever found them.

He was not a hero. He was not a savior. He was a hunter, and a monster, and a tool of forces he barely understood.

But Mira did not know that. And perhaps… perhaps, she did not need to.

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