Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

The sixteen Divers looked at Freya the way you do when, for an instant, you’ve forgotten where you are.

It didn’t last.

Red Squid always picks its own filth back up too fast.

The man in the stained coat was the first to smile. A narrow, crooked smile, mistaking numbers for courage. He let his picking tool tap lightly against his palm, believing his attempt at breaking in would somehow turn into an earned right.

"Problem with the door?" he repeated. "None, princess. We’re just trying to get in for a chat. But if you want company afterward, I’m sure we can open something else... like... your legs."

A few laughed.

Freya took a step.

The air around her changed before her face did. It was subtle, but I felt it on my skin. The temperature dropped a few degrees. As if a cold blade had passed between her and the group. Her hand hadn’t even moved toward her weapon, but her body was already making the decision.

I cut into the path before she produced the day’s first administrative corpse along with an OXI debt to the system.

I didn’t touch her. Freya would probably tear off my fingers on reflex, and I wasn’t in the emotional shape to debate containment etiquette with an irritated Rank C. I just took the line in front of her, sideways, close enough to break the advance and far enough for her to know I wasn’t trying to command her body.

"Easy."

"Did you hear what he said?"

"I did."

"Then get out of the way."

"I’m trying to avoid a fight."

Her smile turned dangerous. "You? Avoiding one?"

"Yeah, I know... strange day."

The man in the coat looked from Freya to me, seeming to weigh whether the interruption was courage, stupidity, or both. Behind him, the Rank E held a crowbar and stayed near the door, pale and still. The others kept a loose formation, but no one had taken the final step.

That was when I heard the line they didn’t want reaching me.

"Boss," one of them murmured, low, leaning close to the man in the coat. "Less than two hours until the mark lifts. We need to move fast."

The urgency changed flavor.

They weren’t here only out of anger. They were racing the clock on Ocean’s Law. Richard still carried the punishment, still bled OXI, still made the easiest side to break. Once the mark lifted, the math would change. So those worms had come early.

Good.

The part of me that still ached from the fight against Veric woke up a little more.

Behind me, footsteps approached. Veric arrived first, half pale but on his feet. Rhayne came at his side, staring at the door as if she could see Zoe through the wood. Oliver stopped to my left, big enough to turn the narrow street into a killing corridor. Zhang Xi stood a little back, hands hidden in the sleeves of her gray tunic, hood low over her shaved head.

The Divers saw the group for the first time.

Some still didn’t understand.

That was common. A new Diver thinks strength is written on the face or screams through the aura like an enraged monster. In practice, measuring someone’s rank takes years of error, fright, and survival. You have to learn the difference between theater and threat. Between OXI leaking to impress and OXI compressed to kill.

Those men couldn’t measure what stood in front of them.

I decided to simplify.

"Freya."

She was still watching the man in the coat. "What?"

"It’s hot here." I tipped my head toward the damp street, the puddles, the heavy Red Squid air. "Can’t you arrange some air-conditioning?"

For a second, she went still.

Then she laughed.

A real laugh, short and far too lovely for that alley. It didn’t come from softness. It came from the pure pleasure of understanding a permission without needing to hear the word.

"Got it."

Freya let her aura loose with everything.

The cold fell over the street like an approaching blizzard. The mud near her feet hardened into uneven plates. Small crystals were born in the air, suspended, turning around her red hair and shoulders like fragments of a contained storm. The men’s breath became vapor. The metal tools began to hiss with cold in their hands.

The Rank E near the door backed up so fast he hit his spine against the wood.

"What the hell..."

"Rank C," another whispered.

The man in the coat tried to keep his face in place. "We’re still sixteen. You really going to buy this fight over an old tavern?"

Zhang Xi walked until she stood at my other side.

She didn’t look at me. Didn’t ask if I wanted it. She just understood the picture forming and finished the painting.

Her aura opened.

Even I was surprised.

It didn’t come as raw pressure. It came as a stillness so deep the street seemed to forget its own noises. The OXI around Zhang Xi arranged itself in slow patterns, circles and lines like mandalas made of water and light. Colored sparks surfaced for an instant, forming small kaleidoscopes in the air before vanishing. The beauty of it was too serene to be reassuring.

Peak Rank C. Maybe close enough to Rank B that some would judge it wrong.

Two Divers dropped to sit in the mud. One let go of his tool and started crawling backward before getting up. The Rank E ran first, which always helped the others remember that fleeing was an option. Three more followed right after. The formation that had looked like a gang became a group of men hunting an excuse not to be the last.

The coated boss tried to say something. The voice didn’t come.

Veric, behind me, let out a tired sigh. "Sands, you have an aggressive talent for arranging social settings."

"Thank you."

He sighed again.

The man in the coat stepped back, then again. His eyes moved over Freya, Zhang Xi, Oliver, Veric, Rhayne, and finally me. There was no calculation that saved this. Sixteen were only sixteen while they believed they were a group.

"This isn’t over," he said.

"Almost nothing ends when it should," I answered. "But for today, go."

He swallowed dry, turned, and walked off too fast to look dignified. The few who remained trailed behind. In seconds, the front of the Central Tavern stood empty, except for the marks in the mud, the dropped tools, and a door that still hadn’t given.

Freya let part of the aura fade, but the crystals stayed in the air a few moments longer.

She looked at me. "And the proof of what you told me, the thing you said I’d see?"

I didn’t answer right away.

I went to the door and knocked three times, slow. Then I brought my mouth close to the wood. "Maela needs more clean vial necks."

There was silence on the other side.

A lock moved. Then another. The wood creaked a little, just enough to open a crack.

Zoe appeared first.

The eye patch still covered half her face. The bruised lip looked worse under the cold light Freya had left in the street. She looked at me, then at Rhayne, Oliver, Zhang Xi.

Then her eyes found Freya.

Zoe forgot to be afraid for a second.

"Wow..." Her voice came out small, marveling. "Those are the most beautiful frozen eyes I’ve ever seen."

Freya, who had stared down sixteen Divers without blinking, seemed to lose her grip for an instant. The red reached her ears first, then her cheeks.

And a small smile was born on her lips.

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