"Eleanor Nadez," I said.
"Yes." She held my eyes without flinching. "Abram Nadez."
"Is he—"
"Yes. Ethan was your father."
I let go of her hands.
They slipped from mine and moved slowly through the water, fingers trailing ripples as she ran them back through her wet black hair, giving space. Droplets slid down her neck, over her collarbones, and back into the bath with soft plinks.
My whole life I had wondered. My mother had told he was taken by the infected, the way the plain eventually took everything, and I had accepted it because there was nothing else to do. I had stopped asking. I had kept running.
How did you survive the plain for twenty years, Abram?
Running.
But sitting here in this tub in white sand territory with my father’s sister naked across from , I finally understood that running had never been the full answer. Twenty years alone from the age of ten. Surviving things that should have killed dozens of tis. The system hadn’t awakened until the Life Layer, but sothing had been protecting long before that. Sothing inherited.
"Why am I here?" I asked.
She stayed quiet for a long mont, water lapping gently against her breasts with every small shift of her body.
You’ve mistaken the direction of the hunt.
What if all the charge I collected was leading here, I thought. What if every girl, every level, every skill was pointing straight to this mont.
[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]
[Eleanor. Immortal.]
[Extract from the source.]
"Now you understand why you’re here," she said.
"You’re my paternal aunt," I said, still turning the shape of it over in my mind.
"Yes."
I thought about Annabelle on the bathroom floor. Sherry threading her fingers through mine. Daphne’s open door. Azure’s single finger on the back of my hand. May. Harmione. All of them.
"Do the others not matter?" I asked.
"They matter," she said. "Mark as many as you can. But the system was made specifically for the primordial families. That’s your purpose, Abram. The others are part of the journey. This is the destination."
"What does extraction an exactly?" I asked.
She looked at directly, water beading on her lashes. "Making release. It is not as simple as it sounds."
"Considering you’re my aunt," I said.
She laughed, the first real, unguarded laugh I had heard from her. It broke across her face like sunlight cracking through clouds, dimples forming, shoulders shaking once and sending fresh ripples across the water between us.
"Not because of that," she said.
"What then?"
"It’ll surprise you," she said, eyes sparkling. "When you understand what I’ve been holding since the day Ethan made his decision."
I leaned back against the tub, water sloshing around my chest, and stared up at the canvas ceiling above us. Lantern light flickered across it in soft waves.
My father had built a system. Chosen a woman on the plain. Poured his life into . And left his sister waiting decades for the mont I would finally find her.
The system didn’t choose , I thought, the realization settling heavy and warm in my chest. My father did.
"Are you ready?" she asked.
"Yeah," I said, without thinking.
"No." Eleanor stood up in the bathtub. "You’re not."
Water cascaded down her naked body in rushing sheets, streaming over the curves of her breasts, tracing the dip of her waist, sliding down her thighs in glistening rivulets that caught the lantern light.
She stepped out onto the golden stones, feet leaving wet prints that darkened the warm rock. She grabbed a towel, dragged it across her skin in quick, efficient strokes, over her shoulders, down her back, across her hips, then pulled the light blue robe closed around herself, the fabric clinging where her skin was still damp.
"Think about a world where you grew up with your father present," she said, tying the robe at her waist. "Your mother. Your aunt. A family that existed instead of one that was taken from you before you could know it."
I stayed leaned back in the water, arms resting on the edges of the tub, and said nothing. The liquid lapped cool against my chest.
"Think about the children suffering because of decisions four families made in a forest centuries ago," she continued, voice steady. "Think about the people behind those walls who don’t know they’re being kept. Think about the infected." She paused, dark eyes locked on mine. "Those are the things that need to be in you when you’re ready. Not just willingness."
I closed my eyes.
The vision lingered behind my lids, Eleanor and Sophia and Monica and Riya naked in the moonlit leaves. Ethan kicking the tree down, wood splintering, the crash echoing. My father giving everything so I could sit here.
"I’ll be on the bed when you’re ready," Eleanor said. "And if you’re not, don’t force it. The world isn’t so large. We’ll find each other again when the ti is right."
Her bare feet padded softly across the golden stones, each step quiet and deliberate. The inner curtain whispered as she pushed it aside. Then the outer one. Then silence.
I sat alone in the cooling water. It lapped slower now against my ribs, growing colder with every passing second, raising gooseflesh along my arms and shoulders. Steam no longer rose. The golden stones beneath the tub seed duller. The distant sounds of the camp filtered in faintly, laughter, fire crackle, canvas flapping, but they felt miles away.
My father had built this system. Poured his life into it. Left his sister waiting decades.
I stared at the ripples on the water’s surface, watching them slowly die, and tried to decide if I was the person he had sacrificed everything to create.
I let it all arrive.
The Strays and the burnt-outs. The extraction cycle grinding ability users down to empty husks so the system could keep turning. Azure’s fingers brushing the back of my hand. Jenn, eight years old, parents dead. Richard surviving on raw instinct and fear, lies always ready.
The children in Eleanor’s camp, barefoot and laughing, darting between white tents, waving at strangers with open hands. Alive in a way the wall children never were and never knew they weren’t.
My mother. Her hands gripping the window ledge, knuckles white. Her voice cracking on the word run. She had loved a primordial man. Carried his son. Died on the plain without ever knowing what either of those things truly ant.
I know now.
I stood up in the tub.
"I’m ready," I said to the empty room, voice low and rough.
I walked toward the curtain.
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