Ashkar knew the route by muscle mory now.
It wasn’t a road the way humans used to an it. It was a path they had forced into existence through repetition, the jungle bending only because it had learned that resisting them was a waste of effort.
Sera had woken up around midmorning like she always did lately, not groggy or disoriented, just... done with sleep and ready to go sothing.
She ca downstairs barefoot, her hair loose, wearing one of the shirts she’d stolen from her own space weeks ago and never returned, and the whole house adjusted around the fact that she was awake.
Psycho was already in the kitchen, because Psycho believed breakfast was a personality trait. He had sothing sizzling in a pan that slled like salt and fat and the kind of satisfaction humans used to call comfort.
Aerenyx didn’t ask what it was.
He rarely did.
Caerwyn leaned against the counter with his arms crossed in front of him, watching Sera more than the food, and pretending that wasn’t exactly what he was doing. The storm under his skin was quiet, but it never fully slept, not when she was moving around the room.
Sera walked straight to Ashkar and tilted her head up.
He lowered his face without thinking, and she kissed him once, slow and easy, like it was part of the morning the way breathing was. When she pulled back, her mouth curved, and she didn’t say good morning because she didn’t need to.
"Let’s go to the Ruined City today," she said, as if she were announcing a picnic.
Psycho looked offended. "So we’re doing cri again."
Sera’s eyes flicked to him. "We’re doing shopping without money."
"That is cri," Psycho replied solemnly. "Just prettier."
Ashkar watched her as she crossed to the shelf where they kept the things she’d brought out of her space. Not the weapons. Not the practical supplies. The nesting things that humans never understood mattered until they had nothing.
Blankets that slled like laundry soap that didn’t exist anymore. Pillows too soft to be real. Candles she’d hoarded like they could stop the end of the world.
She paused with her fingertips on the edge of a basket, then pulled her hand back like she’d caught herself.
She didn’t look at anyone.
But Ashkar saw the decision settle in her anyway, quiet and deep, the kind that didn’t announce itself but changed everything.
Aerenyx’s gaze tracked her with the sa calm attention he used on threats. He didn’t comnt. He didn’t smile.
He simply registered the shift and accepted it like it was always going to happen.
Caerwyn cleared his throat like he had sothing to say, then chose silence instead, because he was learning. Psycho noticed and smirked, because Psycho noticed everything.
Ashkar leaned against the table and let his heat rest in the room the way a hearth belonged in a ho. He didn’t flare. He didn’t push.
He just existed.
"You want books," he said, because she didn’t have to ask for sothing he already understood.
Sera’s eyes flicked to his and softened. "Books. Puzzles. Candles. Anything that makes less bored."
Psycho made a dramatic sound. "The queen requests enrichnt."
Sera pointed at him. "Correct. And if you bring one more romance novel with a shirtless man on the cover, I’m throwing you into the lake. There needs to be a minimum of two shirtless n on my covers."
Psycho’s grin widened. "You say that like it’s a punishnt."
Caerwyn snorted once, quick and involuntary, then caught himself and went back to his usual expression like it hadn’t happened. Sera noticed anyway.
She always noticed.
They left an hour later, not rushed, not stressed, and not acting like this was a supply run that could kill them. They had already done the desperate version of survival.
This one was almost... dostic.
Sera walked in the center like she belonged there, because she did, and the n fell into formation without making it obvious. Ashkar stayed closest, because that was his nature now, and because the human echo inside him still calibrated safety around her.
He felt Zubair’s agreent in the back of his skull like a quiet pulse.
Not words.
Not emotion.
A truth that didn’t need translation.
Two hours through the jungle was nothing to them.
The heat pressed in the closer it got to noon, and the air turned wet and heavy, but none of it slowed them. They moved through the green like the jungle was nothing more than a new type of highway, stepping over roots, brushing aside leaves, walking through sections that would have been impassable to humans without hacking tools and panic.
Sera kept touching them as she walked.
A brush of her hand against Psycho’s wrist as she passed him. A lazy shoulder bump into Caerwyn that made the storm lord’s spine straighten like he’d been struck by lightning. A brief clasp of Aerenyx’s fingers that he didn’t deserve but still received like it was oxygen.
When she reached for Ashkar, she didn’t do it like she was asking.
She did it like she was rembering he was real.
Psycho leaned in close as they walked and murmured, "I’ll take you to my favorite bookstore in the city and I’m stealing you a whole shelf of books."
Sera didn’t look at him. "If you steal a whole shelf, I’m making you carry it."
He laughed. "Worth it."
Caerwyn’s voice ca from her other side, calm and flat. "He’ll complain the entire way ho."
"I’ll complain poetically," Psycho corrected. "It will be art."
Aerenyx’s gaze stayed on the canopy and the ground alternately, scanning without anxiety. When a large shadow moved across the leaves above them, he didn’t stop.
He simply adjusted his path two degrees to the left.
The jungle gave them space.
It always did.
When the green began to thin, the air changed.
It wasn’t cooler. It wasn’t cleaner.
It was... old and stale.
Stone and old tal and the lingering scent of sothing that had once been a million humans breathing in one place and now wasn’t.
Sera slowed at the edge of the Ruined City, not because she was hesitant, but because she was choosing how to enter. The skyline was half-hidden by vines and towering growth, buildings fractured and wrapped in green like the jungle had decided to wear the city as decoration.
Psycho let out a low whistle. "Still ugly."
Sera’s mouth curved. "It’s not here to impress you."
Ashkar felt the first eyes on them before he saw anyone.
Humans always watched first.
A ripple of movent on a broken upper level. A flash of skin and cloth. The glint of sharpened tal.
The people in the Ruined City did not co out and greet them.
They waited behind the bones of old civilization and stared at the monsters that kept stealing what they thought belonged to them.
Psycho waved at an empty window with exaggerated cheer.
Sera sighed. "Stop that."
He lowered his hand slowly. "I’m being polite and neighborly," he protested.
"You’re being irritating."
"Sa thing," he replied, unrepentant.
Ashkar stepped forward, not leading, but positioning himself as the nearest shield without making it look like protection. Sera moved with him, because she didn’t like being blocked from her own view of the world.
They entered the city like they had done a dozen tis now.
Only today, Sera was with them, and the air sharpened accordingly.
The first group approached from the left, erging from a collapsed storefront like they’d been waiting for the right mont. There were eight of them, lean and sun-darkened, hair cut with knives, clothes pieced together from scavenged fabric and hide.
They carried crude weapons made from the old world: rebar spears, broken axes, blades made from saws.
Not skilled.
Not useless either.
The leader stepped forward, jaw set, eyes hard with the kind of stubbornness that ca from living through the impossible. His gaze hit Ashkar, flicked to Psycho, then landed on Sera and froze.
It wasn’t like he recognized her so much as he was confused.
She looked like she just stepped out of a story book with her Victorian style gown that she decided to wear with her knee-high brown leather boots and her hair flowing around her.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that she moved like soone who had never once been afraid of them.
"You again," the leader said, voice rough, accent flattened by ti and survival.
Psycho brightened. "Hi! Miss us? We missed you!"
Caerwyn didn’t move, but the wind around him shifted, and the leader’s grip tightened on his spear.
Sera lifted her hand, palm out, mirroring the gesture she’d used the first ti she’d ever walked into a town that wanted to own her. It wasn’t peace.
It was control.
"We’re not here for you," she said evenly. "We’re here for things you aren’t using."
The leader’s face twisted. "We use everything."
Sera’s eyebrows rose slightly. "Then why are you still living like cave people?" she asked, her head cocked to the side.
The insult landed clean and the humans stiffened.
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