Kiana grabbed the rough stone wall and forced herself to stand. Black spots danced across her vision. The blood drained from her head, leaving her dizzy and nauseous.

Brogan spun around and sprinted out the door before she even fully stood up.

Alfred followed right behind him. His steps were uneven, limping heavily, but he moved fast.

Kiana dragged her aching body out of the stone room. The blinding sun of the Wilderlands hit her face.

A small crowd of tribal members had gathered in the dirt clearing. They were pointing and whispering.

In the center of the crowd, two guards lowered a crude wooden stretcher to the ground.

Gunner Hayden lay on the branches. His skin, usually pale, was a horrifying shade of purplish-black.

A massive, jagged tear ripped straight across his abdomen. The wound was so deep the white of his bones peeked through the shredded muscle. Dark, thick blood poured onto the dirt.

Brogan dropped to his knees beside the stretcher. His eyes turned red. A raw, animalistic growl of pure grief ripped from his throat.

Alfred fell to his knees on the other side. He pressed his hands over the wound, trying to use his Ice Aetheric Signature to freeze the bleeding. But the purple toxin in Gunner's blood instantly melted the ice. His power was useless.

The tribe's elderly Shaman stood over them. He shook his head slowly. "The poison has reached his heart. He is dead."

The females in the crowd began to whisper louder. One of them let out a sharp, mocking laugh. "Looks like the wicked matriarch is finally going to lose a consort."

Kiana shoved her way through the crowd. She dragged her weak legs forward until she reached the stretcher.

Brogan lunged up. He blocked her path like a rabid dog protecting its pup.

"Get the hell away from him!" Brogan roared, spit flying from his lips.

He thought she was here to mock them. Or worse, to finish Gunner off.

Kiana's eyes turned to ice.

"Move," she snapped, her voice cracking like a whip. "Unless you want him to die."

The sheer, dominant authority in her voice hit Brogan like a physical blow. He flinched, his brain failing to process the command.

Kiana didn't wait for him to recover. She shoved past his frozen body and dropped to her knees beside Gunner.

She grabbed Gunner's chin, forcing his eyes open to check his pupils. She pressed two fingers to his neck. The pulse was a faint, erratic flutter. The poison was seconds away from stopping his heart.

Kiana took a deep breath. She closed her eyes and reached deep into her soul, pulling on the Viridian Healing Aetheric Signature she had brought with her from the apocalypse.

A faint, pure emerald-green light sparked to life in the palm of her hand.

The crowd gasped. A collective intake of breath sucked the air from the clearing. No one in the Wilderlands had ever seen an Aetheric light that color.

Kiana slammed her glowing palm directly onto Gunner's ruined, bloody abdomen.

The viridian energy shot into his body like glowing vines. The green light wrapped around the purplish-black toxin in his veins.

Right before their eyes, the black rot around the edges of the wound began to recede. The heavy flow of blood stopped instantly.

The shredded edges of his flesh twitched. Tiny pink muscle fibers began to knit together, slowly closing the fatal gap. As the purplish-black toxin receded from his veins, the faint, erratic pulsing of the beast-mark on his collarbone finally settled into a dim, dormant state.

Dead silence fell over the clearing. The Shaman's cloudy eyes bulged out of his head.

Gunner's chest, which had been perfectly still, suddenly rose. He took a deep, steady breath.

Cold sweat poured down Kiana's face. Her skin turned the color of ash.

The second she knew Gunner's heart was stable, she ripped her hand away.

The backlash of draining her energy hit her nervous system like a freight train. The world went pitch black.

Kiana's body went entirely limp. She collapsed onto the dirt right beside the stretcher, completely unconscious.

Kiana's consciousness fought through a thick layer of darkness. Low, muffled male voices drifted into her ears.

She forced her eyes open. She was lying on a hard wooden plank bed inside the stone room.

The dried blood and dirt had been wiped from her skin with a rough cloth. A relatively clean animal skin was draped over her shivering body.

Kiana turned her head. Through the half-open wooden door, she saw Alfred and Brogan standing outside in the dirt.

"Why did she save him?" Brogan whispered. His voice was tight, thick with confusion and lingering anger.

Alfred was quiet for a long moment. "Whatever her game is," his voice was like cracked ice, "she saved his life."

Brogan let out a frustrated breath and ran a hand through his fiery red hair. "I don't buy it. That psycho doesn't just change overnight."

"The tribe's food rations are gone," Alfred said, cutting off the argument. "We have to hunt. Gunner won't survive the recovery without meat."

Brogan grunted in agreement. They grabbed their crude bone knives and prepared to leave.

Before walking away, Brogan shot a complicated, heavy look at the half-open door. Then, he turned and walked into the wasteland.

The crunch of their footsteps faded. Kiana threw off the animal skin and forced herself to sit up.

Her muscles screamed. Her energy veins throbbed with a dull, burning ache from overusing her Aetheric Signature. However, she could feel the lingering traces of her Viridian energy slowly and methodically repairing her exhausted cells. It was agonizing, but it gave her just enough baseline mobility. Furthermore, her ingrained apocalyptic survival instincts made it impossible for her to simply lie down and rot in a filthy, unsecured environment; she had to establish a safe zone.

She dragged her feet across the dirt floor and walked over to a large clay water vat in the corner of the room. She leaned over to look at her reflection.

The face staring back at her from the still water was horrifying.

Dark purple, bruised-looking spots covered her cheeks and forehead. Her skin was sallow, her features twisted and gaunt.

Kiana frowned. The original host hadn't just been ugly. She had been poisoned.

Kiana pushed a tiny sliver of her recovering Viridian energy into her own bloodstream to scan the damage.

It was a chronic toxin. A fragmented memory from the original host suddenly flashed through her mind, supplying a name: Bone-Rot Powder. It meant she had been secretly poisoned for a long time. It destroyed physical beauty and caused severe, uncontrollable bursts of violent rage.

Kiana let out a cold, humorless laugh. The original host's exile to the Wilderlands wasn't a punishment for bad behavior. It was a calculated political assassination by someone in the Imperial Citadel.

She pushed the thought away. Revenge required power. Right now, she just needed to survive.

Kiana looked around the stone room. It was a filthy, chaotic mess of dust, rotting straw, and scattered rocks.

Her apocalypse survival instincts took over. She couldn't live in this filth.

She started moving. She dragged the moldy straw out the door. She stacked the loose stones neatly against the wall.

While clearing a dark corner, her foot hit something hard. She pulled out an old, rusted iron pot covered in a thick layer of grime, and a pair of flint stones.

Kiana's eyes lit up. This was exactly what she needed to break the ice with her consorts.

She dug through a pile of the original host's discarded belongings. At the bottom, she found a few shriveled tomatoes and three speckled bird eggs.

The tribe gave these to females as special rations, but the original host had thrown them in the corner, complaining they tasted like dirt.

Kiana grabbed the iron pot and walked outside. She knelt in the dirt and used coarse sand to scrub the rust and grime off the metal until it shined.

She struck the flint stones together. A spark caught the dry grass, and soon a small, crackling fire was burning.

She sliced the shriveled tomatoes with a small bone knife. She was going to make a hot soup.

When those men came back from hunting, this pot of soup was going to be her first real weapon.

The water in the iron pot reached a rolling boil. Thick white steam hissed into the air.

Kiana scraped the diced tomatoes off the bone knife and into the boiling water. The red juice instantly bled into the clear liquid, turning the broth a rich, vibrant crimson.

She grabbed a thick wooden stick and stirred the pot. The sweet, acidic aroma of cooked tomatoes rose with the steam, cutting through the dusty smell of the wasteland.

Kiana cracked the speckled bird eggs against the rim of the pot. With one hand, she dropped the yolks and whites into the rolling water.

The egg cooked in seconds, blooming into fluffy, golden-yellow ribbons that floated on top of the red broth.

She found a small pinch of coarse rock salt in the host's spice pouch and sprinkled it over the soup.

A complex, mouth-watering scent-something that had never existed in this brutal, primitive world-wafted through the camp.

Inside the stone room, Gunner shifted on the wooden bed. The smell pulled him out of his deep, healing sleep.

He forced his heavy eyes open. The jagged wound on his stomach still burned, but the paralyzing, icy grip of the poison was gone.

His stomach let out a violent rumble. He turned his head toward the open door, following the scent.

Outside, bathed in the morning sunlight, sat the woman who had tortured him for months.

Kiana was squatting by the fire, her eyes focused entirely on stirring the pot.

The sunlight hit the side of her face. Despite the horrifying purple toxic spots covering her skin, her expression was incredibly calm. Peaceful.

Gunner stared at her. His brain couldn't reconcile the screaming, violent monster in his memories with the quiet woman cooking by the fire.

Kiana felt his eyes on her. She turned her head and met his intense, searching gaze.

She didn't look away. She reached for a clean wooden bowl, dipped it into the pot, and filled it to the brim with steaming hot soup.

She stood up and walked into the stone room, stopping right beside his bed.

Gunner's muscles instantly locked. His vertical snake-like pupils contracted into thin slits. He braced himself for pain.

Kiana saw the fear in his eyes. She immediately took a half-step back, putting physical distance between them.

She set the wooden bowl down on a flat stone near his head.

"Eat," Kiana said, her voice flat and emotionless. "You need energy to heal."

She didn't wait for a response. She turned her back on him and walked straight out the door, returning to the fire. She gave him total privacy.

Gunner looked down at the bowl. The red and yellow soup steamed in the cool air. It smelled like heaven.

He swallowed hard. The starvation and the incredible aroma broke his willpower. He reached out with a trembling hand and picked up the bowl.

He took a tiny, hesitant sip.

The rich, savory, sweet-and-sour flavor exploded across his tongue.

Gunner's eyes flew wide open. A shockwave of pure pleasure hit his brain. He swore to the gods he had never tasted anything so incredible in his entire life.

He abandoned all caution. He tipped the bowl back and chugged the scalding soup, swallowing the eggs and tomatoes in massive gulps until the bowl was completely empty.

The hot liquid hit his stomach, sending a rush of intense, comforting warmth through his freezing, recovering body.

He looked out the door at Kiana's back. The raw hatred in his eyes began to fracture, replaced by a messy knot of confusion and deep, undeniable gratitude.

Kiana glanced over her shoulder. She saw the empty bowl. A tiny, invisible smirk touched her lips.

She walked back in and picked up the bowl. "The tribe's rations are garbage," she stated matter-of-factly, her voice calm and deliberate. "When you can walk, we are going into the deep forest to find real food."

Gunner stared at her for a long second. Slowly, he gave a single, stiff nod. He agreed.