The fire had burned down from a lively crackle to a steady, patient heat. Fat still hissed now and then as it dripped from the boar’s thigh onto the coals, sending up thin curls of smoke that slled like salt, grease, and survival. The river behind them kept talking, soft, constant, uncaring, washing away blood and washing away guilt like it knew neither mattered.
Kael sat with his back against the boulder, the stone cool through his spine even with the fire at his knees. The training rings on his wrists and ankles felt like polite shackles, present in every movent, heavy in a way you only notice when you stop moving. He’d eaten slower than her at first, not from manners, but from habit.
He watched her a mont longer than he ant to, mostly because he couldn’t stop counting the little tells. The way she held at like she expected it to be stolen. The way her shoulders didn’t fully relax even while chewing. The way her eyes kept checking the tree line without looking like she was checking.
Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, saring ash more than grease, and decided to poke the bear, politely.
"So," Kael said as he wiped his mouth, "What’s your story?" he asked.
The question wasn’t gentle, but he didn’t ask it like an interrogation either. More like he was tossing a rock into water just to see how deep it was.
She paused mid-bite. Chewed once. Twice. Her throat worked. Her eyes flicked from him to the food and back like she was weighing whether honesty would cost her more than hunger had.
She looked at Kael for a bit, then at the food, then back at him, "I guess I’ll owe you an explanation..."
He leaned his head back against the boulder with a small shrug, like he didn’t care. Like he wasn’t listening hard enough to morize her breathing.
"You don’t owe much, if you don’t feel like it, it’s fine." Kael shrugged.
He ant it, mostly. Debt turned into chains fast in the tower.
But she didn’t look relieved. If anything, the permission made her more cautious. Like she trusted the offer even less because it sounded reasonable.
"What’s your current floor?" she asked.
Kael blinked once, then frowned like the question had co from the wrong direction.
Kael frowned, "Two?" he tilted his head.
Her gaze sharpened a notch, the way it did when you found a crack in soone’s story and started pressing a thumb into it.
"No, I’m not talking about this floor, I an how high did you climb?" she asked.
Ah.
Kael let out a quiet breath through his nose, sowhere between a sigh and a laugh. He scraped a bit of char from the at with his knife, buying half a second to decide how much truth was worth.
"Two..." he said.
It landed heavy between them. Not because of the number, but because of how comfortably he said it. Like it didn’t matter if it sounded stupid.
She opened her mouth then closed it. "You really aren’t afraid..."
That wasn’t admiration. Not fully. It sounded like she couldn’t decide whether to respect it or treat it like a symptom.
Kael’s eyes drifted, not to her, but past her, toward open space, toward the river bend, toward nothing. Then he flicked his gaze down, like he was checking sothing only he could see.
"Ma’am, I told you, if I was afraid, I’d have not even allowed this whole thing to happen, not to ntion," Kael looked at his minimap, "Master is nearby."
He didn’t say it to brag. He said it like a warning label, don’t do anything stupid, because sothing worse than is in the vicinity.
Her head turned left, then right, quick little motions that tried to look casual and failed. Her fingers tightened around the skewer.
Kael watched her search the air, then shook his head once, almost tired.
"You won’t see him if he didn’t allow you, don’t bother. He isn’t close, but he definitely isn’t far. Trust , he already knows you’re here, and I already know I’ll get an ass whopping once I get back."
He said it the way a man talked about rain. Not if. Not maybe. Just an expected part of the day.
"You sound close," she said.
Her tone carried the wrong implication and she knew it as soon as she said it, her eyes flicked away, then returned, stubborn.
Kael stared at her a beat, then let out a long-suffering sigh like he’d just been handed more work.
"Woman, do you even hear yourself? I said I’ll get my ass kicked, he calls it sparring, how is sparing beating soone up so much they could barely sit or lay down." Kael sighed.
He shifted his shoulders as if rembering yesterday’s bruises, last week’s split lip, the month before where he’d tasted his own blood so often it stopped being alarming.
She only smiled.
It wasn’t mocking. It wasn’t sweet either. More like she’d found sothing familiar: a man complaining while already accepting his fate.
Kael coughed, the sound rougher than it should’ve been for soone who looked this healthy. He covered it with a quick breath and moved on before she could look too closely at that.
"Enough about , what about you?" Kael asked, "Lot of blood, looks like you’ve been through a war."
He said it lightly, but his eyes didn’t.
"A really long one," she said.
The answer didn’t co with drama. It ca with the flat weight of soone who’d run out of energy for dramatics a long ti ago.
Kael stared at the horizon as if it might cough up a reason. The wind up here tasted cleaner than the city air, less soot, less rot, but it still felt like the tower. Like an observer breathing down your neck.
"Haven’t head of a war in the tower going on, well," Kael said as he looked toward the horizon, "Not like I’ve visited the city in a while. And master isn’t much of conversation person..." Kael said.
He poked the coals with a stick, not because they needed it, but because his hands always needed sothing to do when the talk got too close to real.
"You look like you’ve been training well," she said.
Her eyes dropped to his hands again. Noticed the callouses. Noticed the micro-scars on his knuckles. Noticed the way his wrists sat, loose, ready. People who didn’t fight didn’t notice that kind of thing. People who fought for a living did.
"Yeah, a bit of that, gotta say," Kael relaxed against the large river boulder behind him, "It’s been a good change since floor one." He sighed.
The sigh carried more than the words. Floor one had been chaos and improvisation and luck so sharp it cut him every ti it helped. Now it was routine pain. Routine pain was almost comforting.
"I see... I’ve been, well, at a disagreent with a few... people."
She said "people" like it tasted bad. Like she wanted to call them sothing else and was choosing restraint.
Kael’s gaze flicked over her again, mud cleaned off, blood mostly washed, but the old stains in the seams remained. The kind that didn’t co out without ti.
"By the sight of you earlier, I say that that disagreent had ended."
He didn’t an it as a jab. He ant it as a fact. You didn’t look like that and call it a "disagreent" unless the other party was dead.
"Not even close. This is more... well, deeper than just that."
Kael’s hands lifted in a quick surrender gesture, palms out. He’d learned not to pull on threads that could turn into ropes around his throat.
Kale raised both hands, "Won’t ask more, feels like so revenge story that’ll only get more complicated."
He tried to say it like a joke, but the last word, complicated, ca out too honest. Revenge wasn’t clean. It never was.
"How about the normal tower, how many floors did you climb?" she asked.
Her eyes narrowed slightly as she said it, like she’d already decided she didn’t believe him and was just waiting to see how he’d lie.
Kael didn’t like lying to strangers. Not because it was wrong, because it was sloppy. But so truths painted targets on your chest.
"Ah, one..." Kael kept the lie.
She frowned.
Not a dramatic frown. A small one. Like the math wasn’t adding up and she didn’t like being handed bad numbers.
Kael clicked his tongue, then leaned forward a bit, suddenly animated like he could drown suspicion in words.
"Honest to god... didn’t lie, really, one, got unlucky, then got sent here, then, well the first floor happened, then I t master, really, boring story, noting too epic, no heroic sagas. Just a plane ol construction worker sent here, by mistake..." he said as he sighed. There was no bravery in his story, only bad luck.
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