Dust and stone-grit coat my tongue. The three figures crouched in the rubble aren't soldiers; they're silhouettes of efficiency. They wear charcoal-colored suits of articulated leather and reinforced ceramic plates, goggles reflecting the violet firelight like beetle eyes. Millie recognizes the silhouette—it's too close to home. It looks like Earth tactical gear, but as she squinted, she sees the humming runes etched into the breastplates.
They are Marcus Vale's "Invisibles," the shadow-merc squad that operates in the vacuum where law and outlaw meet.
"Who invited the clean-up crew?" I spit the grit from my mouth and stand up. My knees are trembling, a physical protest against the adrenaline-induced burnout looming at the edge of my mind.
"Lord Vale does not enjoy losing investments," the leader says. His voice is distorted through a brass-and-leather mask, sounding like gravel in a grinder. "Target is the girl. Sector is hostile. Move!"
The Invisibles don't wait for permission. One of them hurls a metallic orb at the shifting feet of the mineral titan. The orb detonates, not with fire, but with a sudden, localized burst of freezing mist. The Great-Eater's liquid-stone legs seize up, the minerals calcifying instantly in the frost.
The titan lets out a roar that shatters the remaining windows in the foyer. The vibration rattles my skull, a deep, resonant hum that threatens to shake the teeth from my gums.
Ravenna Thorne isn't impressed. She raises her Bone-Flower staff, and the ground beneath the frozen titan glows with a sickly white heat.
"Fools," Ravenna screams, her voice cracking with religious mania. "The Purity cannot be frozen! It is the constant! It is the end!"
The Great-Eater shatters its frozen skin, its body glowing with white-hot light. It lunges for the Invisibles, each footstep leaving a molten crater in the obsidian floor.
"Dorian, get to the vault!" I grab Elian's brother's arm, hauling him toward the high dais where the King's throne sits. "The Invisibles can buy us a minute, but that thing is fueled by Ravenna's staff. We need to kill the signal!"
We scramble over piles of collapsed ceiling. Finn is a ghost, darting between shadows, his small fingers already fumbling for his picking tools.
The throne of Valdris is a mountain of carved obsidian and white gold. It looms over the foyer, cold and indifferent to the destruction below. Beneath it, hidden by the velvet drapes of the King's house, is the small, silver hatch Elian mentioned.
"Out of the way," Elian bellows, slamming his boot into the velvet. He hacks at the stones with his heavy blade, but the blade bounces off with a high-pitched ring.
"There are no physical locks," the Prince says, his violet eyes flashing. "It's a resonance lock. It only opens when the King is satiated. But the King is... unconscious."
I look at the hatch. My fingers are still coated in the silver-blood and marrow-film from the King's bedside. I feel the 'primal mana' from the Earth-salt I used earlier still tingling in the tips of my fingers.
"Let me," I say.
I press my palms onto the silver seal. The metal is freezing, a sharp, biting cold that travels up my arms. I close my eyes. I don't pray. I don't chant. I think about the marrow consommé. I think about the weight of the salt, the sharp acidity of the grape foam, the specific, rich frequency of a meal that anchors a soul.
The hatch vibrates.
*Clack.*
The silver seal rotates, blooming open like a metal flower. Inside, resting on a bed of blue silk, is a single, glass canister. Inside the glass is a handful of grain, but it doesn't look like the other silver grain. This stuff is dark—almost black, but with a golden center that pulses with the steady beat of a human heart.
***
*Food Item 1: Pure Heart-Grain. Scent: Intense dark cocoa, freshly roasted coffee, and an undercurrent of warm copper. Appearance: Oily, obsidian grains with a luminous, golden core that radiates a low-frequency hum. Tactile: It's heavy, weighing nearly as much as a small bag of lead, and the glass is warm to the touch.*
"Is that it?" Dorian asks, watching the foyer as the Great-Eater smashes an Invisible through a support pillar. "That's the core?"
"It's not grain," I whisper, the chef in my head connecting the dots. "It's the seed-mana of the entire system. It's the source."
The Invisibles are falling. Two are down, their gear smoking. Ravenna is winning. She begins the final incantation, her staff drawing all the mana in the room into the Great-Eater's chest. The titan grows larger, its skin becoming translucent and white, revealing a swirling vortex of energy within its gut.
"I need the silver wine press!" I bark.
Finn arrives, dragging the massive device from the royal sideboard. It's a work of art—solid silver, intended for crushing the delicate *Cloud-Grapes* for the royal cellar.
"This is madness," Elian says, even as he helps Finn position the press. "You can't eat that stuff raw. It'll petrify you in seconds."
"I'm not going to eat it," I say. I dump the obsidian grains into the press. "I'm going to make a reduction."
***
*Food Item 2: The Heart-Grain Essence. Process: Extreme mechanical pressure applied to the Heart-Grain. As the press turns, the grains resist, shrieking like small birds. The liquid that emerges isn't juice; it's a golden, viscous oil that smokes on contact with the silver. Scent: Smells of a dying forest after a lightning strike.*
I crank the handle of the press. The muscles in my arms scream. I can feel the 'vacuum' of the magical grain trying to pull the warmth from my blood. I lean into it, using my body weight, my teeth gritted until my jaw aches.
The first drop of the golden oil hits the catch-pan.
"Now," I say, pulling the last jar of Earth chilies from my bag. They're dry, wrinkled, and angry-red.
I crumble the chilies directly into the golden oil.
The reaction is terrifying. The 'Heat' from the Earth-side capsaicin—an evolution of survival in another world—clashes with the 'Hollow' mana of the Heart-Grain. The liquid in the pan begins to turn a violent, boiling amber.
"Dorian, get me the King's wine," I say.
I pour a bottle of hundred-year-old vintage into the mix. The alcohol acts as the emulsifier. I use the burner Finn kept lit, the blue fire hitting the pan.
A thick, dark reduction begins to form. It's the most complex scent I've ever created. It smells like life and death, spice and salt, the West and the Palace.
"Up!" I command Elian. "Launch it at the Great-Eater's chest. The center. Where the vortex is."
Elian looks at the steaming pan of sauce. "With what? I'm not a mage!"
One of the Invisibles, his goggles shattered and blood on his chin, hobbles over. He holds out a compressed-air launcher—a piece of 'West-front' technology. He fits a small glass vial into the chamber.
"Fill it," he wheezes.
I pour the hot amber reduction into the vial. It's glowing now, a sun-bright liquid that makes the air around it shimmer.
***
*Food Item 3: The Salt-Anchor Reduction. Property: This is the culinary equivalent of an anti-matter bomb. The Earth-spice creates a permanent anchor, while the concentrated Heart-Grain essence seeks its original mana-source. When combined, they don't nourish; they 'congeal' the target.*
The Invisible takes aim. The Great-Eater is fifteen feet away, its fist raised to obliterate the throne. Ravenna is chanting, her voice a screeching crescendo.
"Fire," I whisper.
*Fump.*
The glass vial streaks through the air. It's a tiny speck of amber in a world of white light. It hits the Great-Eater's chest right above the vortex.
The vial shatters.
The amber liquid spreads instantly over the stone skin. It doesn't dissolve the rock. It doesn't break the joints.
It starts to *cook* the titan.
A deep, savory sizzle echoes in the room. The smell is sudden and overwhelming—roasted minerals, salt-baked clay, and charred caramel. The white-hot vortex in the creature's chest begins to turn a dark, grounding amber. The liquid rock slows down, the high-mana energy being absorbed and anchored by the salt and spice in my reduction.
The titan freezes. It isn't the frozen of ice, but the setting of a glaze.
Ravenna's scream of triumph turns into a shriek of horror. "No! The purity! What have you done to the purity?"
The Great-Eater turns from white light back into solid, dead obsidian. But it's changed. The jagged edges are smooth now, glistening like a dark, chocolate-colored glass. It doesn't move. It's just a twenty-foot statue of polished, anchored mineral.
The connection to Ravenna's staff shatters. The backlash sends the High Inquisitor flying across the foyer, her bone-staff splintering into a thousand pieces.
The silence that follows is thick. Heavier than the stone.
The palace foyer is a ruin, but the hunger is gone. The oppressive, hollow vacuum in the air has been replaced by a lingering scent of spice and beef-stock.
"Did we... did we win?" Finn asks, his voice trembling as he steps out from behind the press.
Elian looks at the massive, obsidian-glazed statue of the Great-Eater. He reaches out and touches it. It's warm. It smells like a well-seasoned hearth.
"You didn't destroy it, Millie," the Prince says, looking at me with a frightening new reverence. "You... you satiated it."
"I anchored it," I say, sliding my cleaver back into its leather wrap. I can't stop my hands from shaking. "It won't move again. The mana has been processed."
Dorian is at my side in an instant. He sees the state I'm in—the cold sweat on my forehead, the pallor of my skin. My 'magic' cooking has taken its toll. I feel like my heart is beat-skipping, and my vision is tunneling.
"Easy, Chef," Dorian says, his voice a low, steady anchor of its own. He wraps his cloak around my shoulders.
I look at the Invisibles. They're already gathering their wounded. They don't speak to me. They look at the statue, then at Elian, and then they vanish back into the smoke and shadows. Marcus Vale's men don't stay for the applause.
Ravenna Thorne is being dragged away by the remains of the Violet Guard. She's sobbing, her golden nails scratching at the floor, but she doesn't look at me. She looks at the obsidian statue with a broken, terrified expression.
"Take her to the Deep Vaults," Elian commands. He turns back to the hall, to the nobles who are beginning to crawl out from the corners.
He stands on the dais, blood-stained and brilliant. "The Blight is broken! The Inquisitor's grain is dead, but the Salt-Witch has given us a new feast!"
The crowd cheers, a desperate, hollow sound that I want nothing to do with. I lean into Dorian's side.
"Get me out of here," I whisper. "Before they realize I'm just a girl with a jar of salt."
"We can't go to the forest, Millie," he says softly. "But I have a friend. A man named Marcus Vale knows when a debt is owed."
We slip through the back exit as the palace begins to descend into the chaos of a victory celebration. I look back one last time at the Great-Eater statue.
I've changed this world. I've introduced flavor to a place built on hunger. And I realize, with a sudden, sinking dread, that they won't just be grateful.
They're going to be even hungrier tomorrow.
***
Three Days Later.
Millie wakes up not in a dungeon, but in a lavish bed of green silk. The smell of frying eggs—Earth eggs—drifts into the room. She walks to the balcony. Below her isn't the city of Valdris. It's a vast, mist-shrouded valley she doesn't recognize.
In the garden below, the 'tactical' leader of the Invisibles is unmasking. As he looks up, Millie feels her world tilt.
"I told you the portal wouldn't be the only way back, Millie," her father says, wiping a smudge of engine grease from his cheek. "But we've got a problem. The restaurant chain I built on Earth? It's started growing silver-flowers in the kitchen. We need a chef."
The secret isn't hers to keep anymore. And the portal? It just opened on both ends.