Chapter Seven — The Chef and the Crowned Omega
Thomas Hale hated funerals.
Not because of death itself — he had learned, through the quiet cruelty of kitchens, that endings were inevitable — but because of the way people behaved around them. Voices dropped into false reverence. Silences stretched until they felt performative. Grief became something people wore rather than felt.
This funeral felt worse.
The booking had come through as "private memorial catering," which usually meant understated food and very careful behaviour. Thomas had agreed on instinct. He always did. Feeding people during their worst moments felt like the closest thing he knew to mercy.
The chapel was old stone and older secrets.
Thomas arrived early, setting trays of food along long tables at the back of the hall. Simple fare. Bread. Soup. Something warm enough to hold in both hands. He worked methodically, grounding himself in the familiar rhythm.
Elara moved through the space differently.
She wore black, but not mourning black. Operational black. Her posture was straight, her movements economical, eyes tracking exits without seeming to look at them. To Thomas, she looked beautiful. To anyone else who knew what to see, she looked lethal.
"Strange crowd," Thomas murmured as guests began to arrive.
"They always are," Elara replied.
The attendees did not cry.
That was the first sign.
They stood in small clusters, murmuring softly, faces composed in a way that suggested rehearsal rather than emotion. Some did not blink often enough. Others blinked too much. A few avoided the coffin entirely.
Thomas noticed because he noticed everything.
"Is it just me," he whispered, "or does no one seem… sad?"
Elara's jaw tightened. "Grief looks different on different people."
That was true.
It was also a lie.
The coffin sat at the front of the chapel, polished to a dull sheen. Thomas passed it twice while carrying trays and felt, each time, the faintest pressure behind his eyes — the sensation of standing too close to an industrial fridge, the hum just below hearing.
Inside the coffin, something waited.
Elara knew it.
She had read the file three days earlier. Asset compromised. Status: terminated. Retrieval authorised under cover of memorial service. A neat solution, if one ignored the risk.
The service began.
Words were spoken. Names that did not exist were read aloud. Thomas bowed his head at the appropriate moments, hands folded, thinking only that the acoustics were terrible and the officiant needed water.
Then the coffin moved.
Not visibly. Not yet.
Ellie, seated beside Thomas in a borrowed black coat, stiffened.
"Daddy," she whispered, fingers tightening around his sleeve. "He's cold."
Thomas smiled gently. "That's why we say goodbye, love."
"That's not goodbye," she said.
Elara stood. The timing was exquisite.
The coffin lid shattered inward with a sound like stone breaking bone.
People screamed — some in fear, some in relief.
Elara crossed the space in three steps.
Thomas pulled Ellie back instinctively, heart pounding, mind scrambling for logic that would fit.
"This is part of the service," someone shouted, unconvincing even to themselves.
It was not.
The thing that rose from the coffin was wrong in small, precise ways. Skin too pale. Breath unnecessary. Eyes tracking heat rather than faces.
Elara ended it before it fully stood.
One strike. One word spoken too softly for Thomas to hear.
The chapel went silent.
No one ran.
That was the second sign.
Later, as the body was removed — carefully, respectfully, definitively — Thomas ladled soup into shaking hands.
"Are they going to be okay?" he asked Elara quietly.
"Yes," she said. "They'll recover."
He believed her.
That night, Ellie drew a picture of a box opening and closing again.
"This one goes back to sleep," she explained.
Elara watched the drawing burn itself into her memory.
The funeral had not been for the dead.
It had been for containment.