The night was calm, yet strangely eerie.
A faint wind drifted through the empty streets, brushing past Axiros and making his tangled hair sway gently. Dim lantern light flickered in the distance, casting long, distorted shadows across cracked stone roads. The Light Bloom Inn was already within sight now, its faint outline standing quietly against the dark horizon.
He could have avoided the inn entirely.
That choice existed, however thin and unpleasant it was. He could have wandered the streets through the night, hidden himself in an alley, or taken shelter beneath some half-collapsed structure on the city's outskirts. None of those options were safe, but neither was the Light Bloom Inn.
Yet safety was a luxury he simply could not afford.
Axiros was broke, painfully so. The few coins left in his possession wouldn't even buy him a night in any other establishment, let alone food or proper rest. This inn was the only place that would take someone like him — someone who looked half-dead and carried nothing of value.
He had to choose.
If he were any other soul, if he still thought like a normal person, he would have trusted his instincts and stayed far away from the Light Bloom Inn. Every sign pointed toward danger. Too many people recommended it. Too few questions were asked. Even the way its name was spoken carried an unspoken weight.
Every person spoke the same thing — it was affordable, the expenditure only a few coins, very minimal.
But Axiros was not any other soul.
He had endured the void itself. Compared to that, whatever waited inside those walls was merely another obstacle. Another test. Another blade waiting to be dodged or broken. He concluded that whatever was at the inn, it would be at the others in the city too.
If there was some elite conspiracy, it would truly not limit itself to a single inn. In fact, it would stretch far and wide beyond its walls. And by the looks of it, it had stretched its bounds to the entirety of the city.
He asked a few more questions to strangers, probing their answers. He asked for hotels with different price ranges. His suspicions were confirmed. There were very few hotels in the city. And they were contaminated with whatever was hiding at the Light Bloom Inn.
Whoever was inhabiting those hotels were far more powerful than the ones at the cheapest inn. More wealth in your pockets meant more danger at your door.
With no other option left, he continued forward, his hand resting lightly near the worn hilt of his sword, his gaze fixed on the dimly lit building ahead.
Whatever awaited him there, he would face it head-on.
'Damn it. I need money. Immediately.'
The thought surfaced with surprising clarity, cutting through the fatigue weighing down his body. Coins weren't just convenience anymore — they were survival. Without them, every step forward would become heavier, every option narrower.
But as that urgency settled in, another thought followed, colder and far more deliberate.
'If what I think is about to happen actually happens… then this place won't be an inn at all.'
His gaze lingered on the structure ahead, eyes narrowing slightly.
His desire for money surged — not out of greed, but necessity. In this world, strength could wait. Power could be rebuilt. But without currency, even breathing freely was a privilege he couldn't take for granted.
His body, however, was barely holding itself together.
Every step sent waves of pain through his muscles and bones. Hunger, exhaustion, old wounds and untreated injuries all piled onto him at once, forming a constant, crushing weight. For an ordinary person, this alone would have been enough to bring them to their knees. For an ordinary person, this walk would have ended long ago, somewhere in the dirt between here and the city gate.
But Axiros had endured far worse.
Compared to the eternity of isolation, decay, and torment he had suffered in the void, this pain was insignificant. A whisper. A draft through a cracked window. His tolerance had long since surpassed human limits — not by training, not by discipline, but by sheer accumulated time. He simply acknowledged the pain, noted it the way one might note weather, and kept moving.
'Hmm… surprising,' he thought quietly. 'I haven't been attacked yet. Looks like whatever's planned… it's going to happen at the inn.'
Earlier, he had finished every scrap of food and every drop of water he had bought. Not because he was greedy, but because he had no choice. This body had gone far too long without proper nourishment. If he didn't stabilize it now, it might collapse at the worst possible moment — mid-fight, mid-step, mid-breath.
A mortal vessel was fragile.
And right now, his was on the verge of breaking.
---
The city itself felt… wrong.
The more Axiros observed, the more uncomfortable he became.
Half of the people he passed moved stiffly, their expressions blank, their reactions delayed. When they spoke, their words sounded rehearsed, as if recited from memory rather than formed by thought. Even their laughter felt artificial — hollow, empty, landing a half-beat off from where genuine laughter should.
Like puppets following invisible strings.
A faint sense of unease settled in his chest. Not fear — he had nothing left in him that resembled fear — but the particular discomfort of encountering something that didn't fit cleanly into any pattern he recognized. Something new, or at least something wearing a mask he hadn't seen before.
'Some form of mental interference… or large-scale mind control,' he concluded. 'But I can't confirm it yet.'
Investigating would require time. Careful observation. Controlled experimentation.
All things he could not afford right now.
So he chose caution instead, and kept his awareness spread wide and quiet.
From the moment he entered the city, he never fully relaxed. His senses remained sharp, constantly scanning his surroundings. Every alley, every rooftop, every shadow was noted and filed away. He built a map in the back of his mind — not of streets, but of threats. Of angles. Of places a person could disappear from or disappear into.
At one point, using what little money he had left, he stopped at a small, poorly lit stall and bargained for an old sword. He had to account for inn expenses too, in case his suspicions turned out to be wrong. The transaction was brief. The seller didn't ask questions, which suited him fine.
The weapon was far from impressive.
Its blade was chipped, its handle worn smooth from years of other people's hands. Rust clung stubbornly to its edges. By any measure, it was a cheap, secondhand tool — the kind of thing sold to desperate people at the end of desperate nights.
Which suited him perfectly.
It was light enough for his weakened body to manage without straining joints that were already complaining. Sharp enough to open a throat or split something vital if the angle was right. And inconspicuous enough that no one would look at it twice, which was its most useful quality.
For now, that was all he needed.
With the sword secured at his side, Axiros continued toward the distant silhouette of the inn, his steps steady despite the pain, his eyes cold and alert. His sword hung on his back, wrapped in a small cloth. He kept his pace even — not hurried, not slow. The gait of someone who had somewhere to be but wasn't running from anything. He rapidly approached the inn.
His clothes were tattered and torn, unwashed for maybe weeks, maybe longer. Grime had worked itself into the fabric and settled there. He could care less if he looked like a beggar right now.
He just wanted to rest. One night. That was it. He wasn't looking for a fight, wasn't looking for anything beyond a horizontal surface and a few hours of stillness.
But fate itself forced battle upon him. It always had. Every lifetime, every body, every world — something always found him. Something always decided that whatever he was resting in deserved to be shaken loose.
He was tired of it. He just never let that exhaustion show.
---
"Huh…" Axiros let out a slow breath as he pushed open the front door of the inn. 'It's time to do this.'
The first thing that greeted him was the tavern. The inn itself rested above it, but the ground floor was alive with noise, warmth, and the scent of alcohol and grilled meat and bodies pressed too close together. At a single glance, Axiros took in more than most people would notice in an hour.
The wood used for the walls and counters wasn't ordinary — it was dense, treated, the kind that didn't warp under heat or humidity. The lighting was warm and deliberate, placed to make people comfortable and slow. The tavern itself was far from empty. Patrons filled every table, some talking loudly over one another, others sitting quietly and drowning themselves in drink, staring at nothing with the focus of people trying very hard to think about less.
Someone had elaborately made a plan, quite a subtle yet serious one at that.
"Did you hear?" someone muttered from a nearby table. "The war's reached even this planet. That almost never happens."
"Yeah…" a drunk woman slurred in response, lifting her mug without much energy behind it. "Scary, isn't it? What if our town gets wiped out in the middle of all this? Just — gone. One morning."
Axiros said nothing. He moved quietly to an empty chair and sat, absorbing the conversations around him the way still water absorbs rain — taking everything in, giving nothing back. Every word, every reaction, every subtle shift in tone was noted, sorted, filed. People talked more honestly when they were drinking and didn't think anyone was paying attention.
After a moment, a waitress appeared. Her steps were practiced, her posture straight, her voice smooth and rehearsed when she opened her mouth.
"Greetings, sir. What are you going to—"
She froze mid-sentence.
Her eyes dropped to his face. Widened.
"Wait, aren't you a child?" she blurted out, her voice rising despite herself, cutting clean through the surrounding noise. "What are you doing here? This place is for adults."
The effect was immediate. Conversations stopped. Chairs creaked. Heads turned in unison toward Axiros, drawn by the sudden silence the way people always were. Within seconds, the entire tavern had found him.
"Lower your voice," Axiros said calmly, his tone steady and unbothered.
The waitress blinked, realizing what she had done. She took a breath, visibly reeling herself back in.
"I'm sorry," she said, quieter now. "I didn't mean it like that. It's just… it's not normal to see a child in a place like this."
Axiros remained seated, his expression unreadable, as the tavern slowly exhaled and returned to itself. Conversations resumed. Eyes drifted back to drinks and table companions. The moment passed — or appeared to.
"I'm here to rent a room for the night," Axiros said, letting out a quiet sigh. "Not to order alcohol."
"Ohhhh, I see," the waitress replied quickly, recovering herself with a practiced ease. "My apologies for the disruption. Would you like something to eat instead?"
"No," Axiros answered simply.
"Alright then. I'll take my leave. Have a pleasant night," she said, offering a polite smile before stepping away.
What unsettled Axiros wasn't what she said. It was what she didn't.
She hadn't asked about his parents. Hadn't questioned why a child was alone, seeking a room in an inn in a city bleeding toward war. In any era, any civilization he could pull from the vast archive of his memory, that question always came. It was reflex. It was basic human instinct — someone always asked.
She hadn't even come close to it.
Perhaps this world normalized it. Perhaps children traveling alone was unremarkable here. He doubted it. He doubted it the same way he doubted every convenient explanation — with the practiced suspicion of someone who had been lied to across more lifetimes than this world had years.
As the minutes passed, her behavior only deepened his unease. She appeared kind on the surface, composed and professional, the picture of an ordinary inn worker on an ordinary night. But her movements were too precise — each one arriving exactly when it should, nothing wasted, nothing improvised. And from time to time, her gaze drifted back toward his table.
Brief. Casual enough that most wouldn't notice. But she had done it enough times now that it was a pattern, and patterns were what they were regardless of how small each individual piece looked.
He remained seated, posture relaxed, watching the tavern without appearing to.
Gradually, a shape emerged.
The patrons could be divided into two distinct groups. The first talked like people — arguments spilling over, complaints about prices and the war and sore joints, laughter that came at the wrong moment or too loud, everything messy and human and real. The second group was different. Their conversations ran too smoothly. Expressions that shifted on cue rather than by feeling. Gestures arriving slightly too deliberate, like movements chosen rather than made.
That second group was watching him.
Not openly — nothing so careless as a stare. Their eyes just returned to his table too often, following small movements. The way he shifted his weight. The angle of his head. He'd noticed them long ago, and in response he'd softened everything — loosened his posture, let his eyelids drop a fraction, made himself look like someone held together by stubbornness and not much else.
Inside, he was perfectly awake.
He had felt it earlier, too — someone attempting to capture his image. Whatever method they'd used, it had returned nothing. His nature had absorbed it without effort, the way a void absorbed light, leaving no trace that anything had been attempted at all.
'They don't know what I am,' he thought. 'Good. Let them keep guessing.'
Whatever was waiting for him in the Light Bloom Inn, it was already closing in. He could feel the shape of it tightening, the way a noose tightens before anyone pulls the rope.
He sat, and waited, and let it come.
Author's note: Tonight, there will be a mass released as promised.