Liora stirred slowly, the weight of exhaustion still pressing down on her limbs like wet cloth. Her breath ca shallow and uneven, her body aching in strange, scattered places. It wasn’t the sharp, blistering pain from before—more like a dull echo of it.
The scent of crushed herbs and faint smoke filled my nose, and sothing soft cradled my back.
This... wasn’t the base. Nor the cave.
Liora’s fingers brushed against moss. Real moss, soft and damp. A blanket—thick, scratchy wool—and another laid over her legs. The air slled clean, like pine and earth, with a hint of dicinal leaves.
She blinked up at the wooden beams overhead, the faint dapple of filtered sunlight slipping through small cracks in the roof.
A forest hut.
"Where did this forest hut co from?" she wondered. Her mind felt groggy from yesterday—she still felt weak and exhausted. After Xu Kai rescued her, she had fallen asleep.
She didn’t know how long she laid there before she heard the sound—footsteps, deliberate and quiet, crunching softly against the mossy floor outside. her heart picked up instinctively, but the door creaked open with no rush, no violence.
Xu Kai stepped in.
He was dressed in a simple tunic, slightly damp at the collar, with sleeves rolled up to the elbows. In his hands, he carried a small bowl, steam rising gently from its surface. It was soup. Xu Kai didn’t speak a word. He didn’t even show a flicker of surprise upon seeing her awake. He simply walked over, placed the bowl on a low wooden stool beside the bed, and knelt beside her.
With careful hands, he slid one arm behind her shoulders and lifted her gently. Liora’s breath caught—not from pain this ti, but from sothing else. Sothing unfamiliar yet comforting. Her head rested briefly against his chest, and the steady thump of his heartbeat soothed the trembling that lingered in her spine.
Xu Kai brought the bowl to her lips, tilting it just enough for her to sip. The broth was warm and simple, but it spread through her chest like sothing sacred, sothing kind.
She tried to speak. "Where...?"
But her throat cracked, raw and dry. The word barely ca out.
His expression didn’t change. His eyes t hers—dark, quiet, unreadable. Then he lifted a single finger to his lips, silencing her with a soft command.
"You’re safe," he murmured, his voice low and breathless. "No need to speak yet."
Liora didn’t argue.
When she’d finished as much of the soup as she could manage, he set the bowl aside and reached for a basin of water. A folded cloth floated within. He wrung it out with practiced ease and began tending to her wounds.
His hands were steady and precise. He didn’t flinch as he pulled the blanket away, revealing the bruises along her wrists and the bandages covering healing cuts. With gentle care, he dabbed at her wounds, cleaned the scrapes, and pressed salve into swollen skin. There was no hesitation in his touch.
Only quiet patience, as if this act of caring was sothing he considered sacred.
Liora watched him. His hands—so calloused and rough—moved with a surprising tenderness. He didn’t speak, and neither did she. The silence between them wasn’t cold or awkward. It wrapped around them like soft fog—quiet and full of unspoken aning.
He had seen everything.
Bits and pieces of mory floated back to her, those final monts before she’d passed out yesterday. Her body had been filthy, broken, defenseless. Yet now... she was clean. Her skin washed, her wounds wrapped. She wore a fresh shirt and loose trousers that clearly weren’t hers.
She swallowed hard.
But she didn’t ask.
Sothing in his deanor told her she didn’t need to. Maybe it was the way he avoided her eyes when he rinsed the cloth again. Or how his hands never lingered, even when brushing across areas that might’ve made her shrink away with sha. His touch was never intrusive.
It was just care.
She turned her gaze to him as he crouched near the basin again, his back slightly turned. His shoulders were tense, jaw tight, as if he was holding sothing in.
Xu Kai—once the silent warrior of the battlefield, the cold figure patrolling the base with distant eyes—now looked utterly human. Gentle, even. There was a reverence in the way he touched her, as if tending to sothing fragile, sothing precious.
He had clearly changed her clothes.
He had wiped her down, cleaned every inch of her battered body, and changed her clothes without a hint of hesitation. But now, seeing her eyes open, he looked more anxious than she felt. Like he feared what she might say. Like he thought she’d pull away, accuse him, curse him for daring to touch her.
But Liora didn’t.
Because it was Xu Kai.
And even though she didn’t know what they had been to each other before... sothing in her heart told her he wasn’t a man who would ever take advantage of the broken. Maybe he was just a quiet man doing what he thought was right. Maybe she didn’t need to dwell on it.
Their eyes t, and he looked startled. Then, slowly, his breath left him in one long, trembling exhale—like he’d been holding it for hours.
Relief passed across his face.
He understood. She wasn’t going to ask. Wasn’t going to bla him.
And in that brief, still mont, sothing shifted in his eyes.
When he gently tucked the blanket up to her collarbone and reached out with the warm cloth, brushing it softly across her forehead, Liora didn’t flinch. His fingers hovered just a mont too long—trembling faintly—before he pulled away.
"The base..." she whispered, her voice weak and scratchy. "Is it okay?"
Xu Kai nodded. "Yeah! Everything is alright," he said softly.
"You only need to rest now."
As her eyes closed again, Liora felt the steady presence of him beside her. There was no promise in his words but she felt her secured around him.
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