Kael worried.

The worry didn’t show on his face. His body reacted instead, shoulders subtly tightening, stance shifting a fraction to keep his center ready. The kind of micro-adjustment that came from being tossed off cliffs for "training" until reflex replaced thought.

He might look intimidating and all, with his stature, especially with how short the person looked, the fragile weak woman who’s wounded and hungry might look like easy prey.

But he knew far too well to never judge by appearance. After all, this is the tower, prey and hunter switch role almost all the time.

If she was able to kill that many people, then Kael was nothing more than a flick of effort for her. He was level 1 after all, never leveled up his stats, and was currently not wearing his leather armor, nor had his gauntlets on him.

He was wet, half-naked, and standing in front of someone who smelled like she’d been near too much human blood for comfort. Kael didn’t like any of those variables.

He liked clean math. This wasn’t clean.

"Fine, fine," Kael said, "But you gotta season that, I doubt you have any on you," Kael said.

It was a pivot, fast, deliberate. He gave her an exit that didn’t involve her dagger. Food calmed people. Food also kept them seated, occupied, predictable. If she was dangerous, starving her wasn’t going to make her less so.

"You’ll let me have it? I can just cook it on fire, its fine, I just need to stop this... hunger." She said.

She spoke the last word like it had weight. Like it wasn’t just her stomach. Like something else inside her was keeping score, and she was losing.

"You know, you’re the first one in this tower that I met, that gets hungry... most just... ignore it."

Kael’s tone dipped toward genuine curiosity despite himself. In his experience, the tower rewired people. It taught them to swallow discomfort until it became background noise. Hunger was usually one of the first things people "got used to."

"Yeah, the dead don’t need food after all, but I’m different."

Kael frowned, "You’re alive?"

That question slipped out before he could stop it.

"? No, of course not, what kind of foolish question is that, I’m dead. It’s... something else. I need food for it."

Kael held her gaze for a beat longer than comfortable, looking for the lie.

The tower made liars out of everyone. Some just got better at it. But her answer didn’t feel like a trick meant to bait him.

It felt like a reluctant truth she didn’t enjoy admitting.

"Fine," Kael said, "Have a seat, I’ll make you something to eat..."

He didn’t soften when he said it. He didn’t offer comfort. He offered a practical solution, sit, shut up, wait. His eyes flicked briefly toward his saber in the grass, then back to her hands, then to the dagger.

He kept her in his peripheral while he moved, because turning your back on blood-smelling strangers was how you learned regret.

Kael stepped closer, eyes narrowing slightly as he looked her over again. Up close, the smell was worse. Blood, sweat... and something else. Faint, but there.

Kael did.

He reached out without much thought.

His hand moved.

For him, it was nothing. A simple motion.

For her, in her current state, it was something else entirely.

Her shoulders tensed. The dagger lifted, ready to stab on instinct more than intention. But she was late, slow in a way that didn’t match the violence in her eyes. That mismatch bothered Kael more than the dagger itself.

By the time her eyes widened and her body tried to react, his fingers had already brushed through strands of her matted red hair.

Something small shifted.

Kael’s hand closed.

He pulled back, holding a squirming bundle of red fur between his fingers.

"...What the hell?" he muttered, lifting it slightly.

The creature was small, no bigger than his forearm, its body compact and tense, sharp little claws scratching uselessly against his grip the callouses from his hand was thicker and harder than stone.

Its fur was a deep crimson, almost blending with her hair, and its eyes, far too aware for something like this, locked onto him with unmistakable hostility.

It didn’t thrash like an animal. It fought like it understood leverage and failed because Kael’s grip didn’t care. The claws found skin and slid off, unable to dig through the roughened callouses that were basically armor by now.

Kael frowned.

"You need to take a dip," he said flatly. "You stink so much you’ve got rodents living in your hair."

The bluntness landed like a slap.

The creature froze for half a second. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Then it bared its teeth.

"Unhand me, you oversized brute."

The voice did not fit.

It was too... heavy. Too deliberate. Like something old trying to force itself through a body that wasn’t built for it.

Kael blinked once.

"...It talks."

The woman moved then, quick despite the exhaustion clinging to her. A step forward, weight shifting like she’d forgotten pain for a second. There was a flicker in her expression, something sharp, protective, irritated, gone almost as soon as it appeared.

"Let it go," she said, tone steady, but not quite matching the calm she was trying to project. "It’s... mine."

Kael held the creature up for a second longer, not to taunt her, but to read it. The eyes were too intelligent. The stillness was too controlled. It didn’t feel like a normal animal and it didn’t feel like a monster either.

Kael glanced between her and the thing in his hand.

The creature continued to glare at him, its small body tense, eyes burning with something far sharper than simple irritation.

"...Your pet?" he asked.

A pause.

"...Yes."

Kael looked at it again.

It looked back.

For a brief moment, something about it felt... off. Not dangerous, not in any way he could immediately define, but wrong. Like a small detail that didn’t fit the rest of the picture.

The kind of wrong you noticed right before something went sideways.

Then it wriggled again, claws scratching at his fingers.

Kael sighed.

"Yeah, no," he said, lowering his hand and letting it drop back onto her shoulder. "You really need that bath."

The creature landed lightly, climbing back up into her hair with practiced ease, disappearing beneath the crimson strands as if it had never been there.

Its eyes lingered on Kael for a second longer before vanishing. It felt like it cursed at him too.

Kael turned away, already losing interest.

He didn’t want to dig into whatever that was. Digging into mysteries in the tower had a habit of ending in blood. His life was already complicated enough with one insane master and a body that could be turned into a weapon by sheer inconvenience.

He turned to the lake, "You could take a quick dip while the food is getting ready, I won’t peek, promise," he added.

He made it sound casual, even joking, but he angled his head just enough to keep her in sight without fully facing her. The river behind him was cold and clear, good for washing, bad for hiding a knife.

She frowned, but looked down and realized she was covered in blood everywhere.

The realization hit her like a delayed shame. Her shoulders tightened. She looked away, jaw clenching, like the sight of herself was more offensive than Kael calling her a thief.

"You don’t seem too afraid..." she said. Changing subject.

Kael snorted, he couldn’t even hold it, he laughed out loud and long.

"Afraid? Of you? HAHAH!"

The laugh was sharp and ugly and too loud for the quiet riverbank. It wasn’t only mockery, it was release, the kind you get when you’ve spent a year being thrown at the ground and told to "endure. And you’re late, and you’re not good enough..." Compared to that, a hungry woman with a dagger felt almost normal.

She frowned more, ego bruised even.

"Don’t worry, my master is far scarier than any monster I’ve seen, or I think I might see, compared to him, you’re like a cute little white rabbit with blood on it. Nothing to be afraid of..." Kael sighed.

He said it like an observation, not a comfort. He’d seen monsters. He’d lived under one. This comparison was, in his mind, generous.

"Who’s your master?" she asked.

Her eyes sharpened with the question. Not curiosity the way people ask for gossip, more like someone listening for a name that might mean danger.

"Now, that’s rude, I can’t be saying that if you don’t tell me your name first." Kael smiled.

The smile didn’t reach his eyes. It was the kind of grin you used to keep control without showing teeth.

"I’m... Gisele."

The pause before the name was telling. Kael heard it, filed it, didn’t comment.

"Sure, and I’m Arnold, by the way, mine is a fake name."

He delivered it with shameless ease, letting her know he didn’t buy her honesty and wasn’t offering his own. Fair trade. The tower respected that kind of blunt transaction more than kindness.

She frowned...

Kael lifted his hands slightly, palms out, the universal gesture for relax, I’m not here to pry. Then he let the gesture drop, because he wasn’t actually trying to soothe her. He was trying to keep the situation from becoming annoying.

"I get it, I get it, if you don’t feel like telling me your real name I won’t blame you, who’d trust a half-naked guy they met for the first time. Just sit back, relax, and wait for your meal, I’m also hungry."

He moved as he spoke, starting to gather what he needed with the rhythm of someone who had done this too many times: stones for a fire ring, dry branches, bits of deadwood that snapped clean. His wet skin started to dry in the air, leaving a chill that bit at his shoulders. He didn’t seem bothered by it.

"You also have a condition?" she asked.

There it was again, that careful phrasing. Not "you’re hungry too?" but condition. Like she was trying to figure out what kind of monster he was before she decided whether to fear him properly.

"Yeah, it’s called being hungry," Kael smiled and began lighting up the fire.

The flame took quickly, catching on dry tinder with a soft crackle. Warmth spread across the riverbank in a small, controlled circle, light, heat, and the thin promise of food.

Kael kept his back turned just enough to work, but not enough to be blind.

And Gisele, whatever her name really was, sat where she was, dagger still in hand, hunger still gnawing, the red-furred "pet" buried somewhere in her hair like a secret that didn’t want to be seen.