"'If I want sothing, the world adjusts itself to it.'"
After those words, the old man stared at Natalia in open shock. For a split second, sothing he hadn't seen in a very long ti flashed behind his eyes, so vivid it felt like he'd been yanked out of the present by the throat.
A sixteen-year-old girl.
Long, pale-blonde hair falling down her back. A young face, not fully grown into itself yet, but already wearing that sa expression of absolute certainty, those sa eyes that looked down on everyone, the sa posture of soone who'd believed since childhood that the world existed to move out of her way.
And that voice.
"If I want sothing, then the world has to adjust."
The image vanished as suddenly as it ca, dissolving like fog in a gust of wind. The old man was looking at Natalia again, grown, powerful, ice-calm, and for a mont he simply stood there, silent, as if trying to organize what had just crawled out of his mory.
Then he started laughing.
At first it was low and ragged, then louder and louder until it echoed off the frozen buildings, sounding oddly hollow in this ice-locked world.
"Aren't you a little too arrogant?" he finally asked, peering at her through narrowed lids.
Natalia answered with a look of faint contempt, as if the question wasn't just obvious, it was childish.
"There's nothing wrong with being arrogant," she said evenly, "as long as you have the ability to back it up."
The old man went still.
He stared at her in silence, like he couldn't quite believe she was saying that seriously, without a hint of irony or exaggeration. But her face remained calm, certain of every word.
She wasn't performing.
She ant it.
"I guess…" he said at last, slower, "I really underestimated young people these days."
Natalia gave a quiet snort, like that realization was a few decades late.
The old man twitched. When he spoke again, his voice was noticeably weaker.
"C-could you cancel this magic already?" he asked, not even trying to hide the strain. "At this rate, I'll freeze right here in a minute or two."
Natalia looked at him more closely.
At his increasingly washed-out, wrinkled skin. At his bluish fingers. At the tremor he couldn't suppress anymore. It wasn't a bluff.
She nodded slowly, like the decision had been made a long ti ago and this conversation was just paperwork. Her voice, in the ice-heavy silence, sounded almost too clear.
"I can let you go," she said. "But on one condition."
The old man glared up from under his brow, visibly irritated, but also painfully aware that ti wasn't on his side. The cold kept forcing itself into him, rciless and steady. He swallowed and asked curtly:
"What condition."
"You'll join our shelter," Natalia replied without hesitation.
It wasn't a spur-of-the-mont offer.
It had been her plan from the start.
From the mont she'd seen how the old man moved in a fight, how he vanished and reappeared in fractions of a second, how he endured temperatures and impacts that would've killed an ordinary person almost instantly, she'd been sure his Agility and Vitality were absurdly high, no matter how frail his body looked at first glance. The fact that he'd killed a level twenty-three creature alone only confird it.
And compared to the state of their shelter, people paralyzed by fear, people who refused to fight or risk anything, people who just waited for soone else to handle it, getting a man like this was priceless.
Natalia was willing to do a lot to secure him.
For a mont, the old man just stared at her with wide eyes, completely thrown by the proposal. Then he shook his head hard.
"No."
Natalia didn't even blink.
"With us, you won't have to worry about food or dicine," she continued, as if his refusal hadn't happened. "You'll have a safe place to rest and reco...."
"No thanks," the old man said flatly. "Not interested."
A familiar vein pulsed on Natalia's forehead.
What the hell is wrong with man in this world…? she thought.
Do they all really wake up just to get on my nerves?
The air beside her shivered as an ice sword ford in her hand.
Without hesitation, Natalia aid the blade straight at his neck.
"What are you doing?!" the old man shouted, trying to pull back, but the ice held him like a vise.
Natalia stopped the tip at the last possible mont, close enough that he felt the blade's frost kiss his skin. Then she spoke in a voice stripped of emotion.
"If you won't join us, you leave no choice. Then I have to kill you."
"What kind of logic is that?!" he burst out, staring at her like she'd lost her mind.
"Very simple," Natalia replied calmly. "I don't know you. I don't know what you'll do later. You might hold a grudge. You might co back and attack our base one day. And you're strong enough to be a real threat."
She leaned in slightly. A cold glint flickered in her eyes.
"So it's better to crush that danger before it grows. And as a bonus, I'll get a decent amount of stats."
The old man looked at her like she was sothing inhuman wearing a person's skin.
Natalia smiled faintly, this ti colder than before.
"So?" she asked softly. "Will you join our shelter… or will you die here?"
***
Most of the people in the café had already finished eating and were slowly moving inside the gym, drifting onto the basketball court without any real purpose, more because they needed to be together than because they had a plan. Leon, eating quietly off to the side, felt that unpleasant tension building again, the one that always surfaced whenever there were too many people around him.
His thoughts were interrupted by Adam, standing a few steps away and nervously turning a wooden bow in his hands, the sa one Leon had given him earlier. Sothing was eating at him. His eyes kept flicking toward the tal doors leading outside.
"Don't you think Natalia should've been back a long ti ago?" Adam finally asked, and the worry in his voice was unmistakable.
Marek glanced at him and snorted, like the question was pointless.
"Co on," he said with a shrug. "You saw what she can do. She's got enough power to handle herself, even if she runs into sothing bigger."
Adam didn't look reassured. If anything, he started talking faster, spinning heavier and heavier scenarios where sothing went wrong, where Natalia got surrounded, where she ran into sothing even she couldn't stop, until Marek stared at him like he was an idiot and let out a tired sigh, clearly not in the mood.
Nearby, Patrycja wasn't calm either. She kept adjusting her short blonde hair, fidgeting with it. She didn't say anything, but her face made it clear she was just as worried as Adam, she simply kept it inside.
Elena sat a bit off to the side, silently stroking the black cat curled into a ball. It looked like it couldn't care less about the tension in the air.
Then, right in the middle of Adam's increasingly nervous ramble, the hall was cut by the distinctive sound of the tal doors opening.
A harsh scrape.
Leon, Marek, Adam, Patrycja, and Elena all looked up almost at the sa ti. A mont later they saw Natalia walking in with the sa calm pace she always had, like she'd just stepped out for a short walk, not gone to clear the area alone.
Relief hit instantly.
Patrycja and Adam exhaled at nearly the sa ti, and quiet sighs rippled through the gym from other students and survivors who only now realized they'd been waiting for her return the entire ti.
But then the looks shifted.
Walking beside Natalia was an old man, leaning on a wooden cane. He moved slowly, but with confidence. Frost still clung to his hair, like he'd just co from a place where the cold refused to let go.
For a mont, the gym fell silent as everyone stared at him.
Adam couldn't even hold the silence. The second Natalia crossed the threshold, he hurried toward her, still gripping the bow like he'd forgotten it was in his hand. The strain in his voice was sharp and exposed.
"Natalia… are you okay?" he asked imdiately, anxious. "Did anything happen to you?"
Natalia stopped and gave him a short look, then nodded as if it should've been obvious and didn't deserve further explanation.
"I'm fine," she said coolly. "I finished what I went out to do."
The old man, still feeling that ice-deep cold in his bones, studied Adam from head to toe. He watched how close Adam stood to Natalia, how instinctively he tried to shield her with his body. Then he snorted and looked back at her.
"I didn't expect," he rasped, "that soone as arrogant as you would keep such a protective boyfriend."
The word boyfriend hung in the air.
Natalia went still for a fraction of a second, almost imperceptibly. Adam, on the other hand, turned red instantly, eyes going wide.
"W-what?!" he blurted. "No! It's not like that! We're not, I an, we're just friends!"
As he said it, he nervously adjusted his grip on the bow and flicked a glance at Natalia like he was trying to read her reaction.
Her face gave him nothing.
"Friends…" the old man repeated with mild mockery, about to say more…
"Oooh, would you look at that," Marek cut in, laughing loudly as he stepped closer. "Adam, I didn't know you had ambitions like that."
He slapped Adam hard on the back.
"You? A doormat like you?" Marek added, shaking his head in amused disbelief. "You've got basically zero chance with any woman, especially not her."
Adam whipped around, clearly pissed.
"What did you just say?!" he snapped.
"If you want, I can say the sa thing using simpler words," Marek replied with an even wider grin, obviously enjoying the provocation.
That was when Leon, Elena, and Patrycja joined them. Patrycja didn't hesitate, she went straight to Natalia and hugged her tightly.
"I was scared," she whispered. "I'm glad you're back."
Natalia allowed it, nodded, and returned the hug for a brief mont, without a word.
Leon and Elena stayed a little off to the side. Elena held the sleeping black cat in her arms. It didn't even twitch despite the noise. Leon just watched in silence, arms hanging loose at his sides.
When the emotions settled a little and Adam and Marek finally stopped growling at each other, everyone's attention drifted back to the old man, especially with the frost still dusting his hair and clothes.
"Who is he?" Adam asked, frowning. "And… why does he look like he just walked out of a freezer?"
Natalia glanced at the old man, then at the group. A faint, almost amused smile touched her lips.
"Him?" she said calmly, looking at the old man. "He's soone who was trying to kill a mont ago."
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