Chapter 12: Nepheli Loux Enters
The sound of storm-blessed axes cleaving through armor echoed through Stormveil's halls before Gara saw her—a percussion of violence that spoke to professional skill and righteous fury in equal measure. Steel rang against steel with the rhythm of someone who'd learned to make music from combat, each strike precise as surgery and twice as final.
Gara followed the noise through twisting corridors that smelled of old blood and fresh terror, his enhanced senses tracking the battle's location while his enhanced paranoia reminded him that walking toward sounds of violence was generally contraindicated for continued existence. But ninety-seven deaths had taught him that curiosity killed more than cats, and satisfaction brought them back to try again.
He rounded a corner and found her.
Nepheli Loux stood in the center of a stone courtyard, surrounded by six Godrick knights who'd clearly underestimated the woman they'd chosen to corner. Her twin axes moved in patterns that defied physics—not through magic, but through the kind of skill that made physics optional. One knight lunged; she sidestepped and opened his throat with a backhand that never slowed her primary assault on his companion.
She fought with the certainty of someone who didn't need second chances.
The thought hit Gara like a physical blow. Here was someone operating at the peak of human capability through training, dedication, and natural talent—not through exploitation of supernatural resurrection mechanics. Every move she made carried weight because failure meant death. Every victory was earned through skill rather than accumulated through repetition.
She was everything he'd given up being.
"Need help?" he called out, already moving to flank the remaining knights.
"Stay back!" Nepheli's voice carried absolute authority. "I've got this handled!"
But authority didn't make her omniscient. A seventh knight emerged from concealment behind her, sword raised for a killing blow that her current positioning couldn't possibly counter. Gara saw the attack coming, calculated intervention strategies, and made a choice that would define the rest of his existence in this world.
He threw himself between them.
The knight's blade punched through his neck with surgical precision, severing his carotid artery and most of his voluntary motor functions. Blood painted Nepheli's armor as Gara collapsed, drowning in his own life while his enhanced Constitution fought a losing battle against basic anatomy.
Death #98: Godrick Knight. Neck wound. 2/10 - heroic gesture, poor execution.
He respawned around the corner, body whole but memory perfect. The sound of continued combat told him Nepheli was still fighting, still alive, still capable of handling the situation without his interference. But the knight who'd almost killed her was still there, still waiting for the next opening.
Gara charged back into the fray.
This time he approached from a better angle, using his knowledge of the knight's positioning to catch him off-guard. A quick thrust between armor plates dropped the threat permanently, while Nepheli finished the last of her original opponents with an overhead strike that split helm and skull in equal measure.
Silence fell over the courtyard like a shroud.
Nepheli turned toward him, her face flushed with exertion and painted with blood that wasn't her own. Storm-gray eyes studied him with an intensity that made his skin crawl—not hostile, exactly, but measuring. Cataloging. Trying to solve a puzzle that didn't quite fit the patterns she understood.
"How did you—" she started, then stopped. Her gaze sharpened, focusing on details that apparently troubled her. "You died. I saw you die. That knight opened your throat, you went down hard, and there was blood everywhere."
Gara's panic response activated with embarrassing enthusiasm. "Got better?"
The words hung in the air like a confession written in neon. Nepheli's stare could have melted steel, could have made glaciers confess their secret shames, could have extracted truth from politicians under oath.
"Got better," she repeated, her tone suggesting that better was the least accurate description possible for whatever she'd witnessed.
"Tarnished resilience?" Gara tried, aware that he was digging himself deeper with each word. "Grace's blessing? Exceptional constitution? Really good health insurance?"
Despite everything, Nepheli laughed—a sound like silver bells in a thunderstorm. "Health insurance. Right. Because that's definitely how divine resurrection works."
She sheathed her axes with movements that spoke to muscle memory carved from years of practice. Each gesture was economical, efficient, optimized through repetition but not obsession. The difference between mastery earned and mastery stolen was written in every line of her posture.
"Let me see you fight," she said. "Properly this time. I want to understand what I'm dealing with."
What followed was less combat assessment than psychological excavation. Nepheli tested his reflexes, his timing, his approach to tactical situations. Each exchange revealed more about how he'd learned to survive—not through traditional training, but through accumulated failure. His style was defensive, reactive, pattern-memorized. The fighting technique of someone who'd learned through dying repeatedly until muscle memory carried him through situations his conscious mind couldn't process.
"You're the weakest Tarnished I've ever seen," she said finally, wiping sweat from her brow. "But you kept coming back. Even after I saw you die, you returned to help. That's either bravery or stupidity."
Gara caught his breath while his enhanced Constitution slowly restored stamina he'd burned through trying to impress someone who was genuinely impressive. "Can't it be both?"
This time her laugh held warmth instead of incredulity. "You know what? It can. Most warriors I've met are either reckless fools or cowards pretending to be brave. You're..." She paused, searching for words that could encompass whatever she'd observed. "You're honest about being terrified. That's refreshing."
Something in his chest unclenched—tension he hadn't realized he'd been carrying since awakening in Limgrave. For the first time in ninety-eight deaths, someone was looking at him without calculating his value as resource or threat. Nepheli saw fear and acknowledged it without judgment, saw weakness and offered partnership anyway.
"Why are you here?" he asked, genuinely curious about motivations that didn't involve resurrection mechanics or statistical optimization.
"Godrick," she said simply. The name carried weight in her voice—not fear, but recognition of necessary confrontation. "His grafting is an abomination. A perversion of everything strength should represent. Someone has to stop him."
"And that someone is you?"
"That someone is anyone with the capability and the conscience to act. Which apparently includes weak Tarnished who throw themselves at swords to save strangers."
She studied him with renewed intensity, measuring something beyond combat capability. "I could use allies. This castle... what Godrick's done to it, to the people trapped here... it's not something anyone should face alone."
She needs allies. I know her questline, know she'll struggle with her father's identity later, know she needs support for the challenges ahead. I could help. Actually help, not just exploit her knowledge for personal gain.
"I'll help," he offered, surprising himself with how much he meant it.
Nepheli eyed his mismatched armor, his sword with its ridiculous name etched into the pommel, the haunted expression he probably wore like a second skin. "Why? You don't know me, don't know my cause, don't know if I'm worth the risk."
The question deserved honesty. "Because no one should face monsters alone. Trust me—I've tried. It doesn't end well."
She nodded slowly, acceptance replacing suspicion in her storm-gray eyes. "Alright then. Partnership. But I need to understand what you are. That wasn't normal Tarnished resurrection—too fast, too clean. And the way you fight..." She shook her head. "You move like someone who's learned through dying repeatedly. Like failure is just education with extra pain."
Perceptive. Dangerous perceptive. But she's offering trust despite the mysteries. That's worth something.
"My family's training methods were... unconventional," Gara said carefully. "We believed in learning from defeat, in analyzing failure until success became inevitable. It left marks."
"Training," Nepheli repeated. "Right. And your family's training methods involved resurrection from fatal wounds?"
"Among other things."
POV: Nepheli Loux
This Tarnished was wrong somehow, but wrong in ways that made him fascinating rather than frightening. He moved with the coordination of a warrior who'd fought for decades, but his technique screamed amateur—like someone who'd learned to fight by watching others die and memorizing their mistakes.
Those eyes haunted her most. They held the depth of someone who'd seen too much, suffered too much, remembered too much. Warriors who'd survived impossible odds developed that look eventually, but usually after years of campaigns and countless close calls.
This man looked like he'd been born with it.
He threw himself between me and that blade, she thought while they moved deeper into Stormveil together. Didn't hesitate, didn't calculate odds, just acted. Then he was back somehow, alive and whole and fighting like the death had never happened.
Nepheli had trained for years to earn her strength. She'd studied under the greatest warriors of her generation, had pushed her body and mind to their limits through discipline and determination. Every skill she possessed had been paid for in sweat, blood, and time.
This man looked like he'd had strength beaten into him. Like the world had hammered him into shape through repeated trauma until he'd learned to survive things that should have killed him permanently.
The question was whether that made him an ally worth trusting or a danger too broken to predict.
But when he'd thrown himself at that sword to save her, something in his eyes had blazed with desperate humanity. Whatever he'd become through his unconventional training, whatever mysteries surrounded his impossible resilience, he'd chosen to risk himself for a stranger.
That counted for something. Maybe everything.
POV: Gara Smith
They moved deeper into Stormveil together, and Gara experienced something he'd almost forgotten existed: genuine human companionship. Nepheli guarded his flanks without knowing he'd just come back if things went wrong. She shared tactical insights based on real experience rather than accumulated failure. She treated him like an equal despite obvious disparities in capability.
For the first time since transmigrating, Gara found himself not wanting to die.
The sensation was disturbing in its novelty. Resurrection had become so routine, so mechanically useful, that he'd stopped considering death as loss. It was just reset button, learning opportunity, tactical tool for gathering information at the cost of temporary pain.
But with Nepheli watching his back, with someone to protect and be protected by, death suddenly felt like failure again. Not educational failure, but genuine failure—letting down someone who'd chosen to trust him despite mysteries she couldn't solve.
"It's the first time resurrection has felt like a curse instead of a crutch," he realized as they approached Stormveil's inner sanctums. "Having something to lose makes immortality feel like cheating."
The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it filled him with dread. Because he knew himself well enough by now to understand this truth: when the choice came between preserving his humanity and achieving his goals, which would he choose?
And more importantly—when that choice arrived, would there be enough of him left to make it matter?
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