Chapter 1085: Just Different

The words came out quietly enough that the legal aide leaned closer, but he wasn’t speaking to her.

They had been so far ahead of him. While he congratulated himself on keeping America’s most troublesome young guild within reach, they had secured a world he couldn’t enter and protections that stopped him treating its people as invaders.

"I stood there and sold this to the country," he said. "I smiled for the cameras."

Nobody offered to remind him what Eclipse had promised in return.

Vespera’s voice returned to him with horrible clarity. She was ready to declare war on his nation. She had told him to do his worst, then gone through his donors’ properties while he listened to their pleas for help over his private phone.

Now her son was offering his citizens somewhere else to live.

The President wiped the sweat from his neck. He wanted to believe that people would recoil from the price, that giving up their humanity would make them close the broadcast in disgust.

Across the table, his domestic policy adviser was still watching. When she noticed him looking, she lowered her eyes and returned to her tablet.

He had seen the hope on her face.

In the President’s interface, Kaiden leaned forward to read another group of comments.

"I can see people saying they’d agree to anything. Please hear the rest first. Wanting to live longer won’t necessarily mean the dungeon can accept you."

...

At an evacuation hostel outside Manila, Nora watched Kaiden through the interface summoned into her vision. Across the table, her daughter had the same live feed open and hadn’t touched her breakfast since he said they would have to give up being human.

"Mama?"

Nora looked at Ellie, whose spoon hovered above her bowl of rice. The girl was waiting for an explanation her mother didn’t have.

Around them, conversations had broken out among the other families watching the broadcast through their own interfaces. A man near the serving counter swore at Kaiden. Someone told him to be quiet so they could hear.

"Let’s listen," Nora said, reaching across to hold her daughter’s hand.

She had been imagining a kitchen.

While Kaiden showed the houses, Nora had pictured a table where they could leave things overnight, a stove she could use whenever Ellie was hungry, and a door she could close when her daughter needed to sleep.

She wanted those ordinary things with an intensity that hurt. Every meal here reminded her of feeding Ellie at their own table, asking about school while she checked the pot on the stove.

Now she was being asked whether she wanted to leave the world that home had belonged to.

"Only unawakened people can become Dungeon-Born," Kaiden was explaining. "But that alone isn’t enough. The dungeon must recognize that your bond to Earth no longer anchors you there. You have to be ready to accept another world as your own."

"That isn’t something I can decide for you, or something you can prove by making me a promise," he continued. "My dungeon recognized Taigi’s people after they entered it. They received individual invitations and chose whether to accept. Anyone who declined would have remained a visitor."

The man at the serving counter spoke again.

"So it’s not even guaranteed?"

"Please," a woman beside him said. "I’m trying to focus."

Nora barely noticed them. Her thoughts had gone to the street where their apartment building used to stand. She knew which shop belonged on the corner, which neighbor would call down from a balcony, and where Ellie would drag her to look at something in a window.

She still wanted that life back.

Some mornings, wanting it was what got her out of bed. She would check the reconstruction notices, read the messages from other former residents, and imagine recognizing their faces when the street had buildings again.

Giving up on that hope frightened her almost as much as remaining in this hostel.

"I’d still be me, wouldn’t I?" Ellie asked.

Nora opened her mouth, then looked helplessly toward the broadcast.

"Taigi?" Nyx spoke from behind the view. "MoonlitSinner is asking whether you still feel like yourself. What happened to your memories, the people you cared about?"

The bronze-skinned warrior faced Nyx, keeping one hand on the saber at her hip.

"I remember my father. I remember the things he taught me, and I still miss him dearly."

Her voice softened, and Nora felt Ellie’s fingers tighten around hers. The woman in her feed had survived being beaten to death. She still sounded sad when she spoke about her father.

"And the elders... When I heard them in that recording, I wanted to lower my eyes again for a moment on instinct that survived my race change." Taigi looked toward Kaiden. "Even standing beside you, my lord. I was angry with myself for it."

"You stood up to them while you were afraid," he replied. "I remember that part too."

She smiled at him before returning her attention to Nyx.

"They frightened me for a long time. Becoming Dungeon-Born left me with those memories and instincts. I am still the woman you saw in that hall, just... different."

Nora brushed her thumb across Ellie’s fingers. The girl leaned closer to her mother, her breakfast forgotten between them.

Taigi lifted her forearm, showing the luminous marks on it.

"These came with the path I chose. My body is stronger, and I can feel the core sustaining me. But you can see that I still look like I did as a human. Our children still look like our children. We still have to feed them, teach them, and worry about them."

Another question reached her through Nyx.

"Old Awakener wants to know whether you still consider Earth your home."

"No."

Nora had begun to relax. The certainty in that answer hurt; she couldn’t imagine saying it about the world where her daughter had been born.

"My home is my lord’s dungeon," Taigi continued. "I chose to become part of it, and I chose to serve him. One cannot have two homes, just as one cannot serve two masters."

Her hand returned to the saber at her hip.

"But Earth is full of people who are frightened the way I was. I still want to fight the monsters hurting them. I still want to see Earth and its people thriving. My loyalties have changed, but my human emotions have not. That is what I believe with all my heart."

Nora could hear someone crying near the serving counter.

Beside that person, another voice insisted the offer was madness. The disagreement spread down the line, families talking across one another while Taigi finished speaking and turned her attention back to Kaiden.

"Do you want to go?" Ellie asked.

Nora looked at the girl, at the hair she had tied before breakfast and the shirt growing tight across her shoulders. She wanted so much more for her than this crowded room and the repeated promise that things would get better.

The homes in the recording had children playing outside and adults strong enough to defend them. There, even Nora’s own work could give her the strength to look after Ellie, instead of merely getting them through another day.

She wanted to be brave enough to accept it.

But her longing for the street they had lost remained, painfully alive, and she couldn’t make herself pretend otherwise.

"I want to know more," she answered. "I don’t know whether I could do what he’s asking yet."

Ellie considered that, then pushed her bowl toward the middle of the table.

"Could you sit next to me?"

Nora moved her chair around to sit beside her daughter.

"Of course, sweetheart."