Kaos stood in front of the dining hall doors and took a moment to look around.
The ceiling arched high enough that he had to tilt his head back to find the top of it, the stone pillars holding it up were wider than he was tall, and the table running down the center was covered in more food than he'd seen in one place in either of his lives.
The smell hit him before he'd made it three steps inside, and his stomach reminded him that he hadn't eaten in five years.
His mother sat at the far end watching him with the patient expression of someone who had been waiting a long time and had learned not to show it, and he still didn't know her name.
"Are you going to join me or just stare?"
Kaos scratched the back of his neck and walked forward. "Sorry."
"You don't have to apologize to us for anything," she said, and the words landed differently than he expected.
Don't get attached.
He repeated it in his head like a rule, which would've worked better if she wasn't still smiling at him like that. He looked at the table, then at her, and she watched him back unbothered, like she had all the time in the world. He walked to the right side where the biggest piece of meat sat, which put him right beside her, and the food really did look good there so that counted for something.
She watched him staring at the food and smiled. "You don't have to wait for me."
Kaos broke off a piece of the meat and held it to his lips, the steam still rolling off it, carrying a smell that reminded him of chicken but richer. He took a bite.
"This is so good."
He didn't put it down after that. He worked through the plate and then the next one, moving down the table without thinking, and she watched him the entire time with that fixed smile like she was seeing something she'd been waiting five years to see.
By the time he stopped there wasn't a dish left untouched.
Kaos sat back and looked at the empty table. He hadn't even noticed he was still eating. Then he remembered the woman sitting beside him and straightened up.
"So—uh."
She laughed softly, and the sound was pleasant enough that he wanted to hear it again. "I'm glad you liked it," she said, shaking her head. "Though your father might be a little hungry."
Father. That was going to take some getting used to. "Where is he?"
"He had to take care of some business in the kingdom. He should be back by morning." She paused. "But enough about him. I'm due some mother and son bonding time."
He didn't answer right away, and she read the silence wrong, her expression shifting from warmth into something careful and uncertain.
"We don't have to. You can go back to your room and—"
"I would love to."
He had questions anyway.
Her face opened back up. "So what do you want to know?"
"Your names."
"So you don't want to call me mom?" Her tone turned teasing.
Kaos looked at her and said nothing.
"Right. My name is Valera, and your father's name is James. We're the Eldric family, the royal family of Planet 146."
He raised an eyebrow. "Why is it called Planet 146? Why doesn't it have a name?"
She gave him a strange look. "How do you know about planet names?"
"I don't know," he said slowly.
"Right. Well, it's simple enough. There are eight universes, each ruled by its own sovereign. Universe Eight's ruler came up with a tournament between all the worlds, and the winner gets named permanently."
Kaos tilted his head. That sounded pointless.
"What's so good about being named?"
"When your planet gets named by your ruler, the planet and everyone on it evolves. We've never won, hence the number."
"Is that low?" He wanted to know where they actually stood.
"No. The universe has about fifty thousand planets, so we do quite well. We just can't break the top hundred."
"So why is my name Kaos?"
Her entire demeanor shifted, the warmth pulling back into something quieter, and he found himself wanting to take the question back.
"It's quite a long story."
"We have time," he said, not letting her move past it.
She sighed. "When you were born, you came out healthy and we waited to find a name for you, but nothing seemed right. The problems didn't start until a week later, when your element awakened, which wasn't supposed to happen for five years."
He focused back on her, which he hadn't realized he'd stopped doing.
"Your element is Chaos and Destruction. The moment it awakened, the whole castle was destroyed."
He went still.
"Nobody was inside at the time," she said quickly. "Just me and your father, and we were strong enough to withstand it. When we went looking through the rubble, we found you wrapped in orange light, floating, and as we reached you, you drifted into my arms." She took a slow breath. "We tried to wake you up. But you didn't. Not the next day, not the day after, not after a month, not after a year. At one point you stopped breathing altogether and you looked so pale, like you'd lost every drop of blood in your body."
He understood why his body had been empty, and the thing he hadn't let himself think about directly was whether he'd taken over someone else's life, stolen someone else's parents, but the timeline didn't work that way and he was glad for it. They'd looked at the wreckage their infant son left behind and named him Kaos.
Valera stood abruptly. "Let's talk and walk. All this sitting is boring."
Honestly same. He pushed back his chair.