Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

Oliver arrives when the table already looks like a logistical defeat.

The private room’s door opens with the discreet weight of a man trying not to interrupt something serious, but his face changes the instant he sees the plates stacked near Rhayne. Tide dumplings, black salt bread, two empty soup bowls, half a crispy fish, and a Lunaria honey shell she guards with one hand as if anyone in the room had the nerve to steal it.

He looks at the table, then at Rhayne. "I see. Someone nearly died and decided to collect damages in food."

Rhayne goes red to the ears but doesn’t let go of the shell. "I was hungry."

"You opened an emotional hole in the whole room. Seems fair to open one in the kitchen’s stock too. And in the boss’s pocket, of course."

The line doesn’t erase the weight of the conversation with Freya. Nothing would, that fast. But it helps. Freya is still too pale for someone pretending to be comfortable, and Mira stays quiet, more watchful than hostile. Even so, Oliver has that irritating talent for walking into broken places carrying the sense that someone still needs to shut the door, sit down, and eat.

He pulls out a chair without asking for too much permission, greets Zhang Xi with respect, and accepts the plate Rhayne pushes toward him before she can regret it.

"That was my second fish," she says.

Oliver stops with the fork in the air. "Want it back?"

Rhayne looks at the fish. Looks at him. Suffers a silent battle that almost seems harder than the fight against Mira. "No. You can eat it."

"The generosity of a champion."

She tries to look dignified. Fails when the honey shell reaches her mouth.

After that, the night finds a less dangerous rhythm. No one pretends at full friendship. Freya doesn’t turn warm, Mira doesn’t drop every wall, and I don’t start believing a table and good food solve debt, pride, blood, and secrets. But for a few hours, everyone eats without measuring where they’d slip a blade if the conversation turned. That alone is progress.

When the night ends, there’s no dramatic goodbye. Freya and Mira head back to the academy. Zhang Xi decides to walk Rhayne to the Bear Pelt for "preventive observation," and I have neither the nerve nor the stupidity to argue with a monk who just reorganized a punctured lung. Oliver walks part of the way with us, talking about the factory in short, tired sentences.

The next morning, Veric beeps before breakfast.

’The bastard sent me a message instead of using the comm.’

[Garen needs me at the castle. Don’t expect me at the factory.]

Right below it, another.

[And don’t let Oliver call any alchemy vessel a "pot." It weakens the company’s image and reminds me of the little one.]

Oliver reads over my shoulder and lets out a sound through his nose. "Expensive pot is still a pot."

Rhayne, across the table, looks better. There’s still care in how she moves her torso, a body-memory where the arrow went in, but Zhang Xi didn’t lie. The body is stable. The rest is another matter.

"Let’s go to the factory," I say.

The building sits in a less pretty, more useful part of the city. From outside, it still looks like a reinforced warehouse. Inside, it’s starting to look like an operation.

The air carries cooked Lunaria, damp metal, alchemical alcohol, and condensed OXI. Rows of tables divide the stages of production. At one end, Drowneds wash thick vials in heated water. At another, two mix the mineral base from the bone with the clear stabilizer extract, following volume marks etched into the glass. At the back, a large alchemy kit works inside a protected circle, pulling OXI residue in cloudy threads and compressing it into the amber liquid that runs into sealed containers. That’s where the distillation happens.

Nothing here is pretty.

When we enter, the conversations thin out. They don’t stop all at once, but they lose body. Some workers look at Oliver first, the familiar presence. Then they look at me and remember what I am. Diver. Boss. The person who can pay, fire, protect, or destroy.

I don’t like that last thought, maybe because it’s too true.

Oliver claps once, not loud. "Keep going. If everything stops every time he walks in, production turns into a ceremony."

The work resumes, with less ease.

I walk the first line slowly, touching nothing before I understand the rhythm. This isn’t a stroll. Every name I take, every question I ask, is me building a map of who keeps this place alive and who might be bleeding it. A middle-aged woman holds a wooden clipboard with marked batches. Dark hair tied low, hands stained by reagent, her shoulders set the way they do when you’ve spent years answering for mistakes that aren’t always yours.

"Name?" I ask.

She straightens. "Maela, sir."

"How old?"

"Forty-two."

"Worked with alchemy before?"

"Lab cleaning and simple prep. Never a full line."

"Who taught you the batch marking?"

She glances quickly at Oliver. "He showed me. I organized it in a way I found easier to check."

I take the clipboard. The notes are clean: batch, time, ratio, loss, person responsible. Better than I expected. "Keep using this model. If anyone tries to simplify it too much, tell me."

Maela blinks, as if she expected a correction and got something else. "Yes, sir."

"Dryden will do."

She doesn’t seem to believe it does. Still, she nods.

Further down, a thin boy seals vial caps with exaggerated care. Sixteen or seventeen, maybe less if hunger lied about his frame. When I approach, he nearly drops the cap.

"Easy," I say. "If you break a vial out of fear of me, I’ll count it as a management error."

He swallows. "Jori, sir."

"I haven’t asked yet."

"Sorry."

Rhayne stands beside me without interfering. Her presence helps. Maybe because she seems less threatening. Maybe because some of them already know she nearly died in the plaza and is still standing.

"How many hours did you work yesterday, Jori?"

"Eight."

I look at Oliver. He raises his hands. "As agreed. A break in the middle, a meal, clean water."

"Eating right?" I ask the boy.

"Yes, sir. Better than before."

The answer comes too fast to be comfortable. I’m not testing whether Oliver did right. I’m getting to know my own people. So I ask the question I actually came down this line for.

"Did anyone charge you a fee to get in here? A referral, protection, anything like that?"

His face loses color. Maela, a few steps back, goes still.

There it is. Not necessarily their fault. Fear, always.

"Jori," I say, keeping my voice low. "I’m not hunting an excuse to punish a worker. I’m asking if someone used my name to take Scales from you."

He tightens the cap between his fingers. "A man on the dock said he could guarantee a spot. He asked for five Scales."

"Name?"

"I don’t know. Red beard. Scar on the chin."

I look at Oliver. He’s already serious. "I’ll handle it."

"Not alone," I say. "No spectacle. Find out if more people are paying to work here."

Jori looks ready to apologize for being robbed. I cut it off. "You did nothing wrong. If anyone charges again, talk to Maela or Oliver. If you’re afraid, write it on paper and leave it in the glass-discard box. I’ll have it checked."

The boy nods without quite looking at me. Good enough for the first day.

We go down the line. I ask small questions, about names, jobs, hours, food, housing, who can read a ratio, who needs better gloves, who coughs near the bone-powder reagent. I don’t promise to save lives in a pretty voice. I just fix concrete things. More ventilation near the boiling. Two high stools for the ones who seal vials. Damp cloth masks until we manage something better. A simple marking book for Maela to train replacements with.

Rhayne watches it all in silence. At one point she takes a cloth and helps a girl clean a tray without making a scene of it. The girl almost refuses, startled to get help from a Diver. Rhayne only smiles and keeps going until the girl understands there’s no hidden test.

In the storage room, the first finished crates are stacked in three rows. Oliver opens one. Amber vials, sealed, labeled with batch and date. Nothing luxurious. Functional. Pretty in the right way.

"How many?" I ask.

"Four hundred forty-three ready. Another four hundred-something by day’s end, if nothing clogs, catches fire, or decides to become philosophy."

"Price."

Oliver crosses his arms. "I was thinking thirty."

"High for early adoption."

"Low for what it does."

"Two OXI Candies recover four hundred OXI, and the going cost runs near that. LDP recovers six to seven hundred, no wrecked stomach, and it works on Drowneds with no system. Set it too high and it becomes an emergency product for the rich. I want a habit."

"Twenty-five?"

I nod. "Twenty-five Scales. Enough not to look cheap. Low enough to be the obvious choice the moment they compare it to a candy."

Oliver thinks for a few seconds, looking at the crates as if each vial carried political weight. "Volume."

"Volume, dependence, and trust."

"You know how to turn a potion into an economic threat."

When we finish the notes, the sun has already passed its peak. Oliver stays to close the supply count and chase the dock-fee problem. Rhayne walks me out.

The docks are full enough not to look empty, but wide enough that no one needs to hear us. The ocean stretches until it meets the aquatic sky of Thirstfall, forming that impossible line where water and blue abyss blur together. Too beautiful for such a bad world.

Rhayne sits beside me on a stone mooring. Her fingers are quiet over the Battle Ribbon.

"Is it now?" she asks.

"It is."

She looks at the water, not smiling. "About Void Monarch?"

"About Void Monarch. About yesterday. About why I got so afraid."

Rhayne breathes slowly. "I’m listening."

I look at the ocean before I look at her.

"Then I have to start with the part you don’t remember."

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