Chapter 206: Better Than This Morning

"Calista," Evren asked in a low, gentle voice. "What are you doing awake at this hour?"

Calista touched the joystick on her armrest, the small electric motor humming as the chair turned toward him.

"I tried sleeping," she said with a tired smile. "I lay in bed staring at the ceiling for two hours. My body wants to rest, but my head won’t stop spinning."

Evren walked across the polished wood floor and stepped up beside her, looking out through the massive glass pane at District One.

Down below, the capital was quiet. Yellow streetlights ran along the avenues, cutting through the dark. Occasional cars moved at an easy pace, and the red emergency beacons were gone. No sirens echoed, and no armored patrol trucks roamed the streets.

"It looks peaceful down there," Evren remarked with his hands in his sweatpant pockets. "Hard to believe forty hunters were fighting for their lives in the sky twelve hours ago."

"That’s part of why I can’t sleep," Calista said quietly, resting her head against the padded backrest. "All day, I sat in front of the television watching the news anchors panic. When the cameras cut out after you entered the rift, they had nothing to show except empty smoke. Every half hour, someone reported another tremor from the outer wall."

She looked down at her lap, her fingers resting on the wool blanket.

"I sat right here, gripping these armrests until my fingers went numb. I kept telling myself you’d handle it, but when minutes turn into hours... it gets heavy."

Evren understood that feeling. Waiting for news while locked in a room was often harder than being in the fight.

Evren understood that feeling all too well. Waiting for news while stuck in a room was often harder than being in the fight.

Months ago, before the system, he had spent weeks sitting in the plastic chairs of a municipal clinic hallway.

He had taken on crushing debts, worked double shifts, and hoped with everything he had while staring at the swinging doors of an emergency ward, and in the end, his mother still hadn’t come out of it.

He knew the hollow ache of watching a clock tick when someone’s life was on the line.

He reached out, giving her cold fingers a brief, reassuring squeeze on the armrest.

"I know," he said softly. "It’s the worst kind of silence. The radio silence was rough on our end, too. The void fog jammed all comms the second the ground broke apart, and we couldn’t even reach our scouts."

He stepped to the stone windowsill beside the glass and sat down, rolling his neck until a dull pop broke the silence.

A low groan slipped past his teeth. Even with the healing draughts and hot springs, three days of swinging heavy blades and taking hits had left his shoulders tight as steel cables.

Calista watched him rubbing his neck, a small smile touching her mouth. "Still sore?"

"A little," Evren admitted with a dry laugh. "The ribs and shoulder reset fine, but the muscles feel like someone beat them with an iron bar."

"I could tell the second you walked through the door," Calista said. She lifted her right hand, watching her fingers open and close smoothly in the moonlight. "Back at the academy, after field trials, I used to do restorative pressure therapy for my teammates. I knew all the pressure points to clear trapped mana and loosen knotted tissue. I had good hands for it."

She looked down at her thin legs, then glanced back up with a rueful look.

"If I had any balance right now, I’d tell you to sit on the floor and let me work on those shoulders. But as weak as my legs still are, I’d lose my footing and take us both down."

Evren let out an easy, genuine laugh that broke the room’s lingering quiet. Her dry honesty was refreshing, completely free of self-pity.

"Then that’s a deal," Evren told her, leaning back against the window frame. "You focus on getting those legs solid, and the moment you’re standing on your own two feet without wobbling, I’m holding you to that massage."

Calista’s chin lifted, a spark of determination showing in her eyes. "Don’t joke about that. I keep my word. Once I’m steady, you won’t even have to ask."

"I’ll count on it," Evren replied with a grin. "Speaking of getting steady, Dr. Elena is coming by first thing in the morning."

Calista sat up straighter. "Around what time?"

"Around nine," Evren said. "I called her office after we got back. I’m doubling her retainer and asking for two sessions a day instead of one. One in the morning for mobility, and one in the afternoon down on Floor Seventy-Five for strength training."

Calista gave a nod.

"Two sessions sounds right," she said. "When I held onto the parallel bars yesterday, my legs shook, but the pain wasn’t that sharp, freezing burn anymore. It just felt like tired muscle. That’s a completely different kind of tired."

"Don’t rush into an injury," Evren cautioned gently. "Rebuilding two years of lost muscle takes time."

"I know," Calista said, looking out at the city lights. "Two weeks ago, standing up seemed impossible. Now, it’s just hard work. And after two years in an underground cell with steel on my ankles, hard work is a luxury."

Her tone was practical and focused, the mindset of someone who had survived the worst and had no intention of wasting whatever came next.

Evren watched her for a moment before shifting to the other thing on his mind.

"Once the Defense Board debrief wraps up tomorrow morning, my schedule is clear," he said. "The next thing on my list is getting your lab set up. Whatever equipment you need to brew properly, just tell me. We’ll order it directly."

The moment the word ’lab’ left his mouth, Calista’s face changed completely.

The fatigue vanished, replaced by unmistakable focus. For a second, she looked ready to spill a dozen thoughts at once, her hand gripping the armrest from excitement.

Then, just as quickly, she caught herself.

She took a slow breath, smoothed down her blanket, and looked away with a small, secretive smile.

"What is it?" Evren asked, catching the shift. "Did you already have something specific in mind?"

"Maybe," Calista said, keeping her voice light. "A few ideas have been rattling around while I was waiting for you guys. But let’s not rush into it tonight."

"You don’t want to talk about it now?"

"Not yet," she answered, turning back to meet his gaze. "Tomorrow evening, after your military meeting and my exercises with Elena, let’s sit down at dinner. I want to present everything properly. With numbers, timelines, and actual formulas."

Evren chuckled, shaking his head. "You sound like you’re preparing a corporate board proposal."

"I am an alchemist, Chairman Crawford," Calista replied with a teasing tilt of her head. "We don’t do sloppy work. If we’re going to build a proper facility, I intend to do it right from day one."

"Fair enough," Evren said, pushing himself up from the windowsill and stretching. "Tomorrow night, then. I’ll listen to the full pitch."

He walked over to her wheelchair and offered a hand. "Come on. It’s past midnight, and Elena isn’t going to go easy on you just because you stayed up late staring at streetlights."

Calista sighed in mock defeat, but she didn’t argue. She turned the chair around and steered it down the hallway toward her bedroom.

Evren walked alongside her, keeping a steady pace. When they reached her room, she brought the chair to a stop and locked the wheel brakes with two sharp clicks.

Instead of asking him to push her inside, she gripped the dark wood of the doorframe with her right hand.

"Watch this," she murmured softly.

She leaned her weight forward, engaged her core, and pushed herself straight up onto her feet.

Her knees trembled for a fraction of a second, but her back remained straight. She found her center of gravity, adjusted her footing on the hardwood floor, and took one clear, unassisted step across the doorway into the bedroom.

She kept her balance the entire way. With her hand lightly tracing the wood of the nearby dresser, she reached the edge of her bed and sat down smoothly onto the mattress.

She let out a long breath, a quiet grin spreading across her face as she looked back up at him. "See?" she said, a little out of breath but very pleased with herself. "Better than this morning."

"Much better," Evren said, genuinely impressed by how much control she kept during that single step. "Keep that up, and you’ll be walking around the terrace by the weekend."

"That’s the plan," Calista replied, pulling the quilt over her legs. "Goodnight, Evren. Get some sleep yourself. You look like you need it more than I do."

"Goodnight, Calista. Rest well."

Evren pulled the door shut until the latch clicked into place.

The hallway fell back into quiet shadows. The soft hum of the air circulation and the faint sound of wind against the heavy exterior glass were the only noises left on the eightieth floor.

Evren turned and walked toward the kitchen island to grab a glass of cold water before heading to bed. As he stepped past the dining table, something on the dark wood caught the spill of moonlight from the balcony glass.

Sitting beside an empty ceramic teacup was a thick, leather-bound notebook.

Calista must have been sitting here working late into the night before wheeling herself over to the window to clear her head.

Evren stopped in his tracks, his eyes drawn to the open paper.

He didn’t touch it, but even from two feet away, he could clearly see what was written. The page was filled with neat handwriting... clean columns of alchemical equations, temperature charts, exact mixture ratios, and a well-planned production schedule.

Several ingredient names were circled in bold red ink. Near the bottom of the page, detailed margin notes outlined bulk storage requirements, supply bottlenecks, and estimated batch yields.

This wasn’t just a handful of casual ideas.

This was a fully drafted industrial roadmap, planned down to the smallest detail by someone who had spent every spare second preparing to rebuild her life.

Evren stood in the quiet room, looking down at the notebook under the moonlight. A faint, knowing smile touched his lips.

She said she had ’a few ideas,’ he thought to himself, shaking his head.

He poured himself a glass of water, drank it down, and left the notebook exactly where she had placed it.

Tomorrow’s dinner was going to be very interesting.