"The Consortium won’t stop looking for her. They’ve invested too much to just let her go."
"Let them look." Her eyes hardened, the Grand General reasserting herself beneath the exhausted woman. "I’ll be ready for them. And next time, I won’t be satisfied with just escaping. I’ll burn that fortress to the ground and everyone in it."
Nacho believed her. He’d seen what she could do when she was fighting for something she cared about.
"Get some sleep," he said. "I’ll take first watch."
She looked at him for a long moment, and he could see the gratitude in her eyes, the acknowledgment of everything he’d done to help her reach this point.
"Thank you, Nacho. For everything."
"Don’t mention it."
She lay down beside Vael, curling around her like she was trying to protect her from the world even in sleep. Within minutes, her breathing had evened out, and she was finally getting the rest she’d been denying herself for weeks.
Nacho watched them sleep, these two women who’d somehow become important to him despite every effort he’d made to stay detached. The Grand General who’d outmaneuvered him in that first conversation and then chose to trust him anyway. The prisoner who’d survived six months of hell through sheer force of will.
They’d found each other again. Against all odds, against everything the world had thrown at them, they’d found their way back.
And Nacho had helped make it happen.
He turned to look out the window, watching the sun rise over the village rooftops. The sky was painted in shades of pink and gold, and for a moment, just a moment, the world seemed almost peaceful.
He dismissed the notifications with a thought, filing them away for later examination. Right now, the numbers didn’t matter. What mattered was that they’d done it. They’d actually done it.
The massage parlor felt like a lifetime ago. Lumen felt like a lifetime ago. Everything before this moment felt like the prelude to a story that was only now beginning to take shape.
He’d started this journey as a monster pretending to be a man, collecting Talents and power with no goal beyond his own survival. Now he was something else. Something that didn’t fit neatly into the categories he’d built for himself.
Not a hero. He still wasn’t that. Heroes didn’t use charm-amplified tentacles to extract information from people, didn’t manipulate their way through societies and organizations, didn’t treat morality as more of a guideline than a rule.
But maybe not entirely a monster either.
The sun climbed higher, warming the window glass beneath his fingers. Somewhere in the distance, a bird started singing, its melody drifting through the morning air like a promise of better things to come.
Nacho let himself smile.
Whatever came next, whatever challenges awaited them in the days and weeks ahead, they would face them together. The three of them. The Grand General, the prisoner, and the tentacle monster who’d somehow stumbled into caring about both of them.
It was a strange team, he had to admit. But strange had a way of working out when you least expected it.
He settled into his post by the window, watching over his sleeping companions, and waited for whatever the new day would bring.
***
Vael woke screaming.
The sound ripped through the small room like a blade, raw and animal and terrible. Nacho was on his feet before his brain caught up with his body, tentacles manifesting in a defensive spread, daggers appearing in his hands.
But there was no enemy. No Consortium soldiers bursting through the door. Just a woman sitting bolt upright in bed, her eyes wild and unseeing, her hands clawing at invisible restraints.
Sera was already there, wrapping her arms around Vael from behind, pulling her close despite the thrashing.
"You’re safe. You’re safe. I’m here. It’s over."
The words came out in a steady stream, the same phrases repeated over and over like a prayer or a promise. Vael’s screams dissolved into sobs, her whole body shaking as the nightmare released its grip.
Nacho dismissed his weapons and stood by the window, giving them space while keeping watch on the street below. The village was still quiet, the early morning foot traffic too sparse to have noticed the commotion. Small mercies.
"I was back there." Vael’s voice came out broken, barely above a whisper. "They had me in the chair again. They were asking questions and I couldn’t remember the answers and they kept..."
"Shh. It wasn’t real. You’re here with me. You’re safe."
"It felt real. It always feels real."
Nacho had seen this before. Not often, but enough to recognize it. Some of the people who owed money to the cartel had that same haunted look, that same way of flinching at shadows and waking in cold sweats. Trauma didn’t care how strong you were. It found the cracks and worked its way inside like water freezing in stone.
Sera held Vael until the shaking stopped, until her breathing evened out into something approaching calm. When she finally pulled back, her face was wet with tears she hadn’t bothered to wipe away.
"How long was I asleep?"
"A few hours," Nacho said. "Sun’s been up for maybe thirty minutes."
Vael’s eyes found him, really seeing him for the first time since they’d escaped. She took in the silver hair, the crimson eyes, the casual way he leaned against the wall despite the tentacles still coiled invisibly around his shoulders.
"You’re the one who carried me out."
"Part of the way, yeah."
"Thank you." The words came out formal, stilted, like she wasn’t sure how to express gratitude anymore. "Sera told me about you. On the way here. About your abilities. About what you’ve done for our people."
"She probably exaggerated."
"She said you run a massage parlor that steals Talents from women through lewd acts."
Nacho blinked. "Okay, maybe she didn’t exaggerate."
Vael’s lips twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was close. The first hint that the woman underneath all that trauma was still alive, still capable of finding humor in the absurdity of the world.
"I also heard you charmed your way past half the Consortium’s security network using nothing but tentacles and creative interpretations of consent."
"That’s... also technically accurate."
"Interesting methods." She turned to look at Sera, something passing between them that Nacho couldn’t quite read. "You trust him?"
"With my life." No hesitation. No qualification. Just simple certainty.
Vael nodded slowly, processing this information. Then she swung her legs over the side of the bed and tried to stand.
Her knees buckled immediately.
Sera caught her before she could fall, lowering her back onto the mattress with a gentleness that seemed at odds with the warrior Nacho had watched fight a monster the night before.
"You need more rest."