Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

I don’t know if I did the right thing, telling Rhayne everything.

The doubt walks back with me on the way to the factory. Thirstfall’s ocean sky is too clean for the kind of truth I just dropped into her hands, and maybe that’s why the world feels wrong. Clean on the outside. Heavy on the inside.

Still, my chest is lighter.

Not enough to call it peace. Peace is too rare a thing for someone like me. But for the first time since I woke at the start, the weight isn’t entirely locked inside my own head. Someone knows. Someone listened. Someone chose to stay.

Rhayne walks beside me differently. Sometimes her steps go almost light, small hops she doesn’t seem to notice. Other times she goes blank for a second, touches the Battle Ribbon, and returns to the present without a word. I don’t try to fill that silence. I told her a truth too large. Now she needs room to breathe around it.

The morning passes fast at the factory.

Oliver is still there when we arrive, arguing with two workers about the correct order for storing sealed vials. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t need to. His size does half the work, and his short patience does the rest.

I spend the next hours reviewing what’s been produced, checking crates, shifts, names, breaks, and losses. Maela has improved the batch markings. Jori works with less fear than before, though he still speaks to me too carefully. Senna suggests a simple change to the initial wash area to keep chemical contamination off the vial necks. Tovik, an older Drowned, points out that the ventilation near the blue boiling is still bad when the wind comes off the docks.

I listen, and I write it down.

There’s nothing heroic in it. It’s just administration. Even so, I feel something important starting here. The Drowneds still treat me as a Diver before they treat me as a boss, and as a boss before they treat me as a person. It makes sense. To them, a mistake in front of someone like me can cost a job, protection, or a life. I don’t try to force trust. Forced trust is just fear with a prettier name.

Near the end of the morning, I close the last sample crate and look at Oliver. "Big guy. Rhayne. Let’s head to training."

Oliver wipes his hands on a cloth. "I’m ready."

Rhayne appears with a small clipboard Maela lent her. She’s separated names by job and marked two rejected vials for disposal. She probably started helping out of distraction and ended up organizing half a workbench. "I’m ready too."

Before we leave, my HUD message chimes. The sound is low, but it cuts through my thoughts.

I didn’t expect it this soon. Less than two days.

I open the message. Richard.

**\[Dear Premium Latrine Cleaner, we’ve decided to accept your job offer in Azure Prime. Zoe had trouble again last night. Her wounds from the last few days had barely closed. Please come visit so we can settle the business.\]**

I read it once and understand enough.

Richard is asking for help the only way he can: without kneeling, without writing the word *rescue*, without fully handing over his pride.

I close the message. "Change of plans."

Oliver reads it on my face. "The man from Red Squid?"

"Yes."

"Bad?"

"Yes."

Rhayne steps closer. "I’m coming with you."

"Not this time. You and Oliver go to the academy. Start the training without me and leave my fight for last."

Her face shows she doesn’t like it, but she doesn’t push. After the conversation on the docks, there’s a new care in her. I need to keep that care from turning into obedience born of fear, or of rejection.

"Rhayne, draw the names today and send me the result. If anyone complains, tell them I’ll sort it out when I arrive."

She nods. "All right."

Oliver grabs his coat. "Call if you need me."

I nod that I will.

I split off from them near the Oathmark and head alone for the Red Squid Slums.

The difference between Azure Prime and Red Squid always hits the body before it becomes a thought. Here, poverty isn’t scenery. It’s the system itself.

I go straight to the Central Tavern.

The sign is still crooked. The door has a new crack, wide, running across the wood. Inside, the hall is empty. Not slow-morning empty. The kind that settles after a place has driven its customers out before they could decide to leave on their own.

Broken tables lean against one wall. Shattered bottles litter the floor, and deep scratches mar the counter. Dark marks were wiped away in a hurry near two toppled chairs. I don’t have to look long to understand the night was ugly.

Richard stands behind the counter, breathing hard.

It isn’t ordinary tiredness. His chest rises too fast, his skin is damp with cold sweat, and his eyes stay focused out of pure stubbornness. Zoe comes out from behind the back door soon after. She’s wearing an eye patch. Her lips are bruised. She doesn’t speak to me. She only stays close to her father.

Richard tries to straighten up. "It got impossible to live here with her, boy. Help me."

I look at him a moment before answering. "OXI Bleeding?"

He nods. "Twenty-five per second, for twenty-four hours."

The math comes at once.

Twenty-five OXI per second is already heavy enough to drop someone without preparation. But the cost in Scales is even more absurd. One Scale per second to keep the penalty running without collapsing outright. Eighty-six thousand four hundred over twenty-four hours.

That isn’t a fine. It’s a way to bleed a Diver until he remembers who’s in charge.

"Do you have enough stock to hold out?"

Richard breathes deep. "I do."

"Are you sure?"

"I’m sure. That’s not what’ll break me."

The answer is true. Richard survived too long in Red Squid not to have hidden reserves. Even so, paying that penalty means losing a large part of the life he scraped together out of a counter, drink, brawls, and silence.

I look at his hands. The knuckles are swollen. "How many?"

Richard takes a moment to answer. "I didn’t count."

"Richard."

He looks at Zoe, then at me. "Enough for Ocean’s Law to mark twenty-five per second."

So it was a lot of people.

Not a short brawl. Not a drunk shoved out the door. Richard hit enough men for Ocean’s Law to turn his response into a high-tier punishment. The reason is too obvious for me to pretend I need it spelled out. Zoe had trouble again. Richard protected his daughter. The law didn’t care whether he was right. It only measured damage, aggression, and consequence.

"Will they come back?" I ask.

"Not today."

"Later?"

"Some, maybe."

Zoe lowers her face. I don’t push the conversation. Some things don’t need to be said to be understood, and others shouldn’t be demanded from someone who just survived them.

I open the small box in my inventory.

Eleven amber vials. After the three I gave Zhang Xi and the six handed out in the arena, that’s what’s left of the first twenty LDP. I take five and set them in front of Richard. Then I take one more and leave it near Zoe.

"Five for you. One for her."

Richard looks at the vials. "What is this?"

"LDP. Recovers around seven hundred OXI at once. The penalty keeps draining, so do the math before you drink. Don’t waste one while you’re still high."

He picks up a vial and turns it between his fingers. "A trench potion in this state will tear my stomach open."

"This one isn’t from the trenches."

"Boy, I know that kind of promise."

"Drink."

He stares at me. "Are you ordering me?"

"I’m asking the way that works on you."

Richard lets the air out through his nose, rips off the cap, and drinks.

He waits for the pain. The pain doesn’t come.

The effect doesn’t cure the OXI Bleeding, but it fills part of the hole the punishment keeps tearing open. His breathing stays heavy, only less ragged. The hand on the counter stops trembling. His eyes go to the empty vial with a new kind of suspicion.

"This is yours?"

"From my factory."

It takes him a few seconds to fit the answer together. "You opened a factory."

"Yes."

"And like you said before, you want me to work in it."

"I want you to manage it."

Richard goes quiet.

"You know Drowneds, trade, and Red Squid. You know how to handle desperate people without believing every lie or crushing every truth. And you’re a Diver. If someone tries to intimidate a worker of mine, you understand the kind of trouble before it turns into a fire."

He looks at Zoe. "And her?"

"If she wants, she works there too. Stock, records, packaging, internal service. Something safe. No one touches her inside my factory."

Zoe doesn’t answer. Her visible eye stays on the vial I left on the counter.

Richard breathes slowly. The wrecked hall seems smaller around him, as if the tavern had shrunk after failing to protect the one it should have.

"I’m going to sell this place."

"When?"

"As soon as I sort out the basics and find someone stupid enough to buy it."

"I’ll help with the move."

"I know. That’s why I sent the message."

For the first time since I walked in, he looks genuinely tired, not just drained. The kind of tiredness that comes when a person stops fighting a decision already made.

"Are you ready for Azure Prime?" I ask.

Richard looks at Zoe before answering. "No. But anything’s better than the Red Squid Slums."

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