Clink. Clink. Clink.
Their footsteps echoed up the winding obsidian stairs, the sound bouncing between cracked walls and scorched stone as Renna limped a little beside Alaric, who—despite clearly being only half-alive—was managing a surprisingly steady pace.
"You know," Renna said, glancing up at the collapsing ceiling overhead, "I still haven't forgiven this world for stealing my junk."
Alaric nearly missed a step.
"I—what?" he asked, slow blink engaged.
Renna threw her arms out dramatically. "I mean—rude, right?! One minute I'm vibing with my music, minding my own dude-business, then BAM! isekai'd. I wake up with long hair, high-pitched voice, and nothing down there except... air conditioning."
Alaric coughed. Or choked. Possibly both. "We've been walking for thirty seconds. Why are we talking about this now?"
Renna just kept going, like she'd been waiting for this. "Because! My gender identity got snapped across universes! I had to relearn how to pee, Alaric! Peeing is a process now!"
He stared ahead, expression stuck between neutral soldier face and mental screaming. "...Renna. Everyone already knows."
"Exactly! But no one ever asks how I'm coping! Like hello? Gender crisis in aisle three?"
"You cope by bringing it up every time we're alone near a staircase."
"And yet you never run."
"Because you usually trip and fall down three steps halfway through your speech."
Renna gasped. "You monster!"
Alaric smirked. "You landed on your face last time."
"It was majestic."
"It was loud."
"You're just mad the stairs fell in love with me."
Alaric exhaled through his nose. That rare kind of laugh he did when he was trying very hard to pretend he wasn't amused.
Renna looked at him for a moment, her voice softening just a little.
"I'm serious though. It freaked me out. Like... really freaked me out at first."
He looked at her, silent, but listening.
Renna shrugged, trying to keep her tone light. "I thought I'd feel like I wasn't me anymore. Like I lost something essential. But the longer I stuck around you guys, the more I realized... maybe what I was wasn't as important as who I get to be with."
Alaric glanced at her again.
"…You're still you, Renna."
She smiled sideways at him. "Yeah. Just with better hair now."
He didn't argue that.
They stepped out onto the cracked upper hall of the fortress, sunlight bleeding through smoke and ash.
Above them, the sky was clearing.
And despite the scent of fire and ruin, for a fleeting moment, it felt like air.
Like freedom.
"Also," Renna added, "if I ever get a chance to make demands from a god, I'm asking for my original junk back."
Alaric groaned. "Please don't."
"Don't worry. I'll make it detachable. For convenience."
"…Renna."
"What? It's practical!"
He kept walking.
She followed, grinning.
The cracked stone stairs groaned underfoot, but neither of them seemed to care. Alaric walked with his hands in his pockets now, bruises fading thanks to Renna's emergency potion barrage and… possibly stubbornness. Renna marched beside him, a skip in her step despite the fresh bruises on her butt from the fall.
"So," Renna said, eyes bright, "if you had to pick between fighting a hundred chicken-sized demons or one demon-sized chicken, which would you choose?"
"…Are the chickens on fire?"
"Of course. This is Overmorrowland."
Alaric tilted his head like he was genuinely considering it. "One demon-sized chicken. Less screaming. Probably."
"You'd take on a kaiju bird over a swarm of hellchicklets?"
"Renna, I literally got thrown underground by a demon general. My bar for chaos is off the charts."
"Fair. But also, imagine trying to look heroic while getting pecked by a hundred screeching flaming poultry."
Alaric raised an eyebrow. "You thought of this before, didn't you?"
"I have a chart."
"Of course you do."
She snorted. "Okay, okay, next one—if everyone in our party were turned into food, what would they be?"
Alaric groaned. "Renna…"
"Too late! I'm assigning roles." She spun on her heel and pointed dramatically. "Thorne's spicy ramen—fast, dramatic, and possibly a fire hazard."
Alaric snorted. "He'd eat himself out of pride."
"Exactly. Lys is sorbet. Cool, elegant, possibly judging you. Cael's a black coffee milkshake. Somehow anxious and hyper."
"…That's actually accurate."
She turned to him, finger wagging. "You? You're—wait for it—crème brûlée."
He blinked. "I'm what now?"
"Stoic outside. Torch underneath. Deep emotional layers. Also, sugar."
Alaric rolled his eyes but looked faintly flustered.
"You're deflecting," he muttered.
Renna grinned. "Always."
The two of them walked in step now, dust rising with each footfall. The broken fortress sighed around them, the old stone feeling lighter somehow—less like ruin and more like something survived.
There was laughter echoing between the halls now. Real laughter. Something warm, despite the chaos.
"You're not bad at this," Alaric said, almost too quiet.
"At what?"
"…Making the silence less heavy."
Renna slowed just a touch, but her grin didn't falter. "That's what I'm here for. That and stabbing things."
Alaric smirked. "Crème brûlée with a blade."
She winked. "Exactly. The full gourmet experience."
And just like that, another echo of laughter followed them up the stairs, chaotic and bright as the world tried to settle from the blaze behind.
The laughter faded when they reached the top of the staircase.
A heavy iron door greeted them—partially melted from the chaos below, hanging crooked on broken hinges. The corridor beyond was silent. Too silent.
Alaric stepped through first, eyes narrowing. Renna followed, her earlier grin fading as the stale, metallic air hit her.
"…Damn," she whispered.
Rows of rusted iron bars stretched down both sides. Inside the cells—corpses. Some barely more than bones chained to the wall. Some… not as old. Their clothes tattered, their faces still twisted in frozen screams. Renna pressed a hand over her mouth.
It only got worse the deeper they walked.
One room held an iron maiden, crusted shut. Another, a rack still slick with dried blood. Hooks. Spikes. Branding irons. So many things meant not for war—but for cruelty.
Renna didn't say a word now.
Alaric stopped in the center of the torture chamber. His eyes, once steely blue, now reflected nothing but white—like the flames inside him were staring outward through them.
"This place…" he muttered. "It shouldn't exist."
He took a deep breath, pulling out his sword again. The white flame crawled across the blade like a waking serpent. Then—fwssh—the crown of white fire bloomed back onto his head, silent and solemn this time.
"Let them rest," he said softly.
Renna didn't stop him.
He plunged the blade into the stone floor, and from that single strike, white flames erupted—quiet at first, like embers whispered into the air, then spreading, climbing, licking up walls, devouring the iron and rot and filth. But they didn't scream. No crackling. No raging inferno. This fire was gentle—cleansing.
The air shimmered, not from heat, but from something else. Like something old was sighing in relief.
Renna stepped back, watching in awe. "Alaric…"
He stood still, the flames reflecting off his silver-blond hair like a ghost's halo. For a long moment, he didn't speak. Then—
"I don't know if souls really pass on here," he murmured. "But if they do… I want this to be the last thing they see. Not chains. Not cruelty."
The white flame didn't just flicker—it surged.
Like it had heard Alaric's vow and was now answering in full.
It roared upward, slipping through every crack and crevice in the stone like a predator unshackled.
The walls groaned. The pillars split.
The very heart of the fortress began to melt from the inside out, not with heat, but with sheer hate.
A flame forged from grief. From pain.
From the need to never let such a place exist again.
Alaric turned without a word.
Renna followed beside him, the fire reflecting in her eyes—not fear, but a strange pride.
Together, they walked the path back up, back toward the open air, as behind them the fortress began to collapse in on itself, slowly being devoured by the flame that showed no mercy.
Once outside, the ruined sky greeted them, scorched and heavy with smoke. But it was brighter than before.
The fire behind them lit up the world like a second sun. A cruel one. A necessary one.
"Hey!" Renna called, waving as she spotted movement on the field.
There, a few steps ahead—
Cael was lying face-first in the dirt, twitching slightly.
"He's not dead, right?" Alaric asked, walking over.
Renna crouched beside him. "Cael. You good?"
"Mmmmfgh… I saw everything," Cael groaned. "The enemy strategies… the terrain… the probability curves… the trajectory of my own doom… my back hurts."
"He's fine," Renna confirmed. "Just overclocked his paranoia again."
A gust of wind hit them, carrying the stench of burned corpses and—
"Oh gods," Renna muttered, pointing.
Thorne stood atop a mountain of corpses—orc, harpy, demon, even a few goblins for extra flair—posing like a statue carved by someone who really loved themselves.
His golden armor glinted in the light of the fire. "Behold! The Champion of Overmorrowland stands undefeated!"
"No one was watching, Thorne," Renna yelled.
"I watched," Thorne said proudly. "And that is enough."
A few paces away, Lys rummaged through what used to be a scholar's tent. She popped out of the rubble holding a dusty tome nearly as big as her own torso. Her glasses flared ominously.
"Knowledge," she whispered with reverence.
"…She's gonna build a death laser," Cael mumbled from the ground.
Alaric stood in the center of it all.
Fire behind. Friends ahead.
His deep blue eyes wandered from one of them to the next, and something deep in his chest stirred—
Not pain. Not fury.
But something else.
The world had taken his home. His family.
But this group? These chaotic, stubborn, ridiculous people?
This was the one thing in the world he could never, ever hate.
And for now, that was enough.
"Wait, wait, wait—back up," Renna said, squinting at Lys as she marched by with the giant tome cradled in her arms like a baby. "What is that? Is it cursed? Is it haunted? Will it explode if someone with a pure heart reads it?"
"I hope so," Lys replied, adjusting her glasses, which glowed with even more intensity. "It's a demonic grimoire containing diagrams for long-lost rituals, forbidden enchantments, and a recipe for soup."
"...Soup?" Cael wheezed from the dirt.
"Yeah. Demon Bone Broth. Boosts magical defense and gastrointestinal trauma. I think."
Alaric blinked. "Wait, trauma?"
Before anyone could question further, Thorne stomped over, spear slung across his shoulder and a fierce pout forming beneath his perfectly windswept hair. "Why is no one talking about the ten thousand enemies I soloed without help? Or the speech I gave before I slayed the harpy? I even rhymed it."
"I was busy having a breakdown," Cael said from the ground.
"I was falling from the ceiling!" Renna added.
"I was fighting a demon general that literally regenerated organs to kill me," Alaric said, exasperated.
Thorne squinted. "Okay, sure, but mine rhymed."
Suddenly, Renna elbowed Alaric with a grin. "You're smiling."
"What?" Alaric blinked. "No I'm not."
"Dude, you are totally smiling," Renna teased. "You got all soft ever since I fell on my butt and found you smoldering in a crater like a tragic anime boy."
Alaric turned away, ears slightly red. "Shut up."
"I knew you cared," she added with a victorious smirk.
The ground rumbled slightly as the fortress behind them finally collapsed in on itself, the white flames still licking at the air as smoke curled into the heavens.
Amid the destruction, the chaos, the scars they all carried—
There they stood.
Bickering. Bantering.
Alive.
A group of idiots.
Chaotic and loud.
But impossible to hate.