The scalding water slammed against his skin, hot enough to burn.
It wasn't the gentle, relaxing warmth of a bath. It was sudden, violent, and searing, as if trying to boil the flesh right off his bones. When that first heavy stream struck his shoulder, Erika flinched. His back slammed against the freezing marble wall with a sharp gasp.
But he didn't step away.
Instead, he leaned closer into the downpour. He let the scalding torrent batter his chest, his face, and every inch of skin that had been steeped in the filth of Darenz.
It hurt.
Good. The pain meant it was real.
Erika leaned against the intricately carved marble, letting the water ruthlessly scour his body. The agonizing heat eventually bled into a dull, creeping numbness, and finally, into a strange, sluggish comfort.
The water cascaded down his long, tangled hair. He couldn't remember the last time it was actually clean. It had been matted with training camp mud, choked with the ash of the streets, smoked in that warehouse, and splattered with Darren's vomit. Now, the strands clung to his face and spine, slowly softening, finally revealing their true color.
It washed away the crusted mud. It washed away Darren's sour bile. It washed away the dark, tacky stains of blood that didn't even belong to him.
The filth peeled from his body, turning the water at his feet into a murky, rust-colored swirl. Erika stared down at the drain, watching the tiny red vortex spin and spin until the darkness swallowed it whole.
He watched it for a long time.
—
The air in the bathroom was thick with an absurdly expensive, sickeningly sweet incense.
It was too dense. It didn't smell like a room fragrance; it smelled like something was being preserved in syrup. Sweet. Cloying. Heavy. Like a suffocating blanket of wet cotton pressed over his face.
It was too clean.
So unnervingly clean that Erika's stomach—accustomed to the stench of open sewers, rotting corpses, and cheap, burning lye—began to violently spasm.
He doubled over, gripping his knees, and dry-heaved over the polished floor.
Nothing came up. His stomach was completely empty. There was only that nauseating sweetness swirling in his throat and nasal cavity. It reminded him of a poisonous wild berry he had eaten as a child: a fleeting burst of sugar, followed by a gut-wrenching urge to vomit.
Panting, he raised his remaining left hand and wiped the soaked hair from his face. It felt soft and slippery against his palm, like some strange aquatic weed.
He looked up.
A massive bronze mirror loomed before him, large enough to reflect his entire body. The polished surface was fogged with thick steam, its edges framed by intricate vine engravings that gleamed a sickly, dim yellow in the candlelight.
Erika reached out and wiped a streak through the condensation.
The fog parted, revealing the reflection of the thing standing there.
A gaunt, deathly pale frame shivering from sheer exhaustion. And there, on his right shoulder, the grotesque, freshly scabbed stump of his missing arm. The hot water drummed against the mutilated flesh, sending phantom throbs and a biting, agonizing tingle deep into his nerves.
It was entirely absurd.
Barely half an hour ago, he had been sitting in the freezing mud like a dying dog, watching two monsters howl with laughter as they drenched each other in ice water.
Now, he was standing inside the most luxurious bathroom of a sprawling estate, surrounded by pristine marble.
He looked down at his left hand. He was gripping a bar of white soap. It smelled faintly of milk—a single bar that a trench worker couldn't afford with a lifetime of wages. And now, it was smeared with his mud.
Erika shut his eyes. He forced himself to stop thinking.
He looked back down and continued scrubbing his skin. The scalding water kept falling. The red vortex kept spinning down the drain. The phantom pain in his severed arm kept throbbing.
He stood before the mirror, looking at the pale, one-armed creature staring back. He didn't know if he could even call it Erika anymore.
But at least, for now, it was clean.
—
The water stopped.
Erika wrenched the massive brass valve shut. He stood perfectly still, letting the water drip onto the marble floor.
Plink. Plink. Plink.
The bathroom fell dead silent. The only things left were the suffocating scent of the incense and his own ragged breathing.
On a gilded rack nearby sat a folded set of clean clothes. It wasn't his ruined white robe. It was something else—grey linen, neatly pressed, waiting for someone to put it on.
Erika stared at the garments. He didn't move.
He didn't know who those clothes were meant for. He didn't know what would happen once he put them on. He had no idea what those two bastards were doing outside.
He just stood there naked, letting the water drip from his hair onto the spotless stone.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Three even, unhurried knocks on the bathroom door.
"You done in there?"
It was Cole's voice.
—
Muffled by the heavy wooden door and the dense, lingering steam, the voice sounded distant. Like it was drifting in from far away, or speaking through a thick wall of water.
Erika didn't answer.
He simply stood there, barefoot against the freezing marble. Drops of water fell from his hair, his shoulders, and the jagged scar of his severed arm, hitting the stone floor with a faint plink, plink.
One step. Two steps. He walked to the door.
He made no sound. His wet feet peeled off the stone with a faint, sticky whisper, swallowed by the dripping water. He raised his left hand and rested it on the doorknob. The brass was cold, engraved with the same intricate vines as the walls.
He gripped it, pausing for a single heartbeat.
Then, he didn't pull the door wide. He merely twisted the handle and opened a narrow crack, barely wide enough for an arm.
The dense white fog that had been trapped inside the bathroom instantly found its escape. It surged out through the crack like a desperate, caged animal, violently shoving its way into the freezing air of the corridor. The white mist churned and twisted, forming swirling vortexes at the gap before dissolving into the dim light of the hall.
And then—
A hand pierced through the white fog, reaching in from the other side.
It was clutching a wad of fabric.
The material was dark, its texture impossible to make out, crumpled together like something grabbed in a hurry.
"Put this on."
Cole's voice filtered through the steam. It was still muffled, but the tone had changed. It was completely stripped of emotion. It wasn't his usual, airy mockery. It wasn't the exasperated coaxing he used with Linglong. It wasn't the hushed intensity of his earlier warning.
It was just calm. A dead, eerie, skin-crawling calm.
"The grey set on the rack isn't for you." A brief pause. "That's Liz's coarse linen for chores."
Erika frowned. His gaze shifted from the hand in the mist to the neatly folded grey clothes behind him.
Liz's.
The maid who had rolled her eyes, hammered her heels against the floor, and violently hurled the water buckets at the steps.
Erika didn't let himself think about it any further. He reached his only remaining hand into the mist and took the wad of fabric.
The moment it touched his palm, Erika's muscles instinctively coiled tight.
It was too soft.
It wasn't the coarse burlap he was used to. It wasn't the stiff, cold cotton of the training camp. This fabric was different.
Slippery. Impossibly thin. Like the cold, shed skin of a snake. Like a spool of silk freshly dredged from a freezing river. It slipped through his fingers, so frictionless that even the slightest pressure threatened to let it spill to the floor.
Erika gripped it tighter.
The slick, decadent texture fought a bizarre war against the rough, hardened calluses of his palm. It didn't feel like he was holding a piece of clothing; it felt like he was choking something alive that was desperate to slither away.
Cole's hand withdrew. The retreating fingers churned the mist for a second before the white fog slowly stitched itself back together.
Erika waited for the door to be pulled shut.
But just before the crack closed, the movement stopped.
Cole's blurred silhouette pressed slightly closer to the gap. His voice slipped through—dropped so dangerously low that only Erika could hear it. So low it sounded like a forbidden secret terrified of being overheard:
"...Linglong picked it out himself."
Click.
The door was pulled shut from the outside.
The bathroom was once again left with nothing but the sound of dripping water.
Plink. Plink. Plink.
A monotonous, agonizingly slow rhythm, like a timer ticking down to something terrible.
Erika stood frozen in place. He stood there completely naked, gripping the slippery wad of fabric, his bare feet numb against the marble. The phantom tingling in his severed arm throbbed relentlessly as water continued to drip from his hair.
The fog slowly gathered around him once more.
It coiled around his gaunt, pale frame. It wrapped around the hideous scar of his missing arm. It slithered over the hand clutching the fabric. The mist was wet and warm, like countless invisible hands trailing over his skin, inspecting him, confirming what he was.
In the dim candlelight. In the swirling steam. Erika shook out the garment, just enough to discern the top from the bottom, the front from the back.
And then, he carelessly shoved his battered body into it.
The fabric slid over his skin. Over his shoulder. Over the grotesque, scabbed ruin of his right arm. It was too soft. So impossibly soft that it felt like he was wearing nothing at all.
Whatever.
He turned his back to the mirror, and walked toward the door.