Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

Richard tries to stand the moment I finish setting the LDP vials out on the counter.

I grip his shoulder before the old man has time to turn pride into stupidity. "Stay down."

He looks at my hand, then at me. There’s still strength in his eyes, but his body is paying the bill before his mind agrees to it. OXI Bleeding makes no spectacle. It just keeps going. Twenty-five per second. No pause, no negotiation, no mercy.

"I’ve got things to do," he says.

"You do. Staying alive is the first of them."

Richard breathes through his nose, irritated, but he doesn’t try to rise again. The first LDP gave back enough OXI to keep his body running better, not to erase the punishment. The difference matters. He looks less close to falling, but every movement is still an idiotic way to burn more than he needs to.

"You’re going to sit, drink when you have to, and let me finish the basics here."

"This tavern is mine."

"Which is exactly why you should want it whole enough to sell faster."

He shuts his mouth. Not because he agrees willingly. Richard doesn’t look like the kind to agree willingly to anything. But he understands. The wrecked hall around him says the same thing I do: leaving it like this only adds a fresh stain and another reason to scare off future buyers.

Zoe comes out from behind the counter with a short broom. The eye patch covers half her face, and her bruised lips shrink any expression below what it should be. She doesn’t ask permission to help. She just starts pushing the shards of glass clear of the walkway, slowly, choosing where to step like someone used to making no noise. She reminds me of Rhayne in the early days, and that puts a knot in my throat.

*’At least Rhayne could defend herself...’*

I grab one of the broken tables by the top and drag it to the corner. "Can this one still be fixed?"

Zoe looks for a second, judges the crooked legs, and shakes her head. "Not worth the wood," she says.

Her voice is low. Hoarse, maybe from speaking little. Maybe from learning to speak little.

"Then scrap it."

She nods and keeps sweeping.

We work like that for a while. Not much in the way of conversation. Zoe points me to where to throw broken wood and glass, and which crates not to move because they were already finished before I arrived. They won’t be deleted into Richard’s inventory. They’ll be recycled into money. Because Zoe is a Drowned, they have that option.

Sometimes Zoe seems to forget for a few seconds that I’m a strange Diver inside the wrecked tavern. Once, when I try to stack two crooked-legged chairs and one topples sideways, she lets out a small smile before hiding it.

It isn’t joy. It feels like something older and sadder. Maybe a good reflex that hasn’t died yet.

That bothers me more than the violence in the hall. The blow to Zoe’s face is visible. The eye patch is visible. The way she apologizes with her body for taking up space is worse. Red Squid does this to people like her. It doesn’t need to hit every day. It only needs to teach that any look, any word, any wrong shade of skin or blood can become a reason for someone to test how far they can go.

Racism in Thirstfall isn’t only insult. It’s architecture too.

Near the end of the cleanup, my HUD comm buzzes. Rhayne.

"The draw’s done, and the fights are already over."

"Yeah?" I wipe my hand on my coat and answer.

"You’re against Veric."

For some reason, that almost makes me smile. Veric had been needing a fight with me since before he’d admit he wanted one, even before the battle royale.

"What were the results?"

Her answer comes in short lines, no flourish. "Oliver against Mira. Mira won. He couldn’t keep up with her agility."

That makes sense. Oliver is a wall with a hammer, but Mira isn’t the kind of enemy who asks permission to trade blows head-on. She comes in at angles, drops out of perception, returns where brute force still has to turn to reach her.

"I drew Kellan. Kellan won." Her voice thins, as if unsure of the weight of the rest. "I didn’t use Void Monarch."

I sit with what she said a moment longer than I should. That matters to me more than the loss. She had the dark crown right there, the easy answer waiting under her skin, and she chose to lose instead of opening that door without me. After yesterday, that’s the bravest thing she could have told me.

"Good," I answer. "Very good."

Rhayne takes a few seconds before the last part. "Zhang Xi drew Freya. Zhang Xi won." Then the bomb. "Freya used Permafrost, and Zhang Xi still won easily."

I stop and set the crate I’m carrying on the counter, which wasn’t its final destination.

Richard catches my pause with a sharp look but doesn’t ask.

Freya using Permafrost isn’t light training. She doesn’t pull that layer of deep ice on a whim, least of all after last night’s conversation. If Zhang Xi beat that easily, then I still haven’t seen even the real edge of what that monk can do.

In the other life, some names grew like storms. Others stayed quiet until the day the world noticed it had already been raining for years. Zhang Xi is starting to look like the second kind, and I’m the one who put her inside my circle without knowing where the bottom was.

"Tell everyone to heal up, even the smallest wound. I’ll be there in ten minutes to fight."

I close the comm and turn back to the hall.

"Problem?" Richard asks.

"Training."

"By your face, bad training."

"Interesting training."

He doesn’t push.

We finish clearing a path between the broken tables and the counter. The tavern doesn’t end up clean. Clean is a lying word for that place on that day. But it ends up passable. The shattered bottles are off the floor, the broken chairs stacked, and the door can shut without catching on fallen wood.

Zoe sets the broom against the wall and looks at the door like it might decide to open on its own.

I follow her eyes. The crack across the wood is wide enough to let a strip of gray light through. Anyone outside could see movement in here if they wanted to. That alone tells me the night isn’t over, only paused.

When Zoe steps back from the entrance, I turn to Richard.

"Before I go to the academy, we settle one thing. You’re not leaving this tavern tonight."

His head comes up slowly. "Say that again."

"You and Zoe stay. Doors locked. I come back for you after the penalty runs out."

The chair creaks under him as he leans forward, and for the first time since I walked in, the tiredness drains out of his face and leaves something harder behind.

"Boy," he says, very quietly, "I have buried people for telling me what I do inside my own walls."

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