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.

A few days later, the Viridian energy Kiana had left in Gunner's body worked a miracle. The fatal wound had closed into a thick pink scar.

Early in the morning, Kiana strapped a crude, woven-vine basket to her back.

Gunner walked exactly half a step behind her. His hand rested on the hilt of a jagged bone knife at his waist. He had naturally fallen into the role of her bodyguard.

They walked side-by-side down the dirt path leading to the edge of the tribal camp.

A female named Chrystal Olsen was tossing a basin of dirty water into the dirt. She froze when she saw them.

Chrystal's eyes bugged out of her head. It was like she was watching a ghost walk through the camp.

She immediately grabbed the arms of two other females walking by. She pointed at Kiana and started practically screaming her gossip.

"Look at that!" Chrystal sneered loudly. "The wicked bitch didn't whip him to death! She actually let him out of the house!"

Another female crossed her arms and laughed maliciously. "She's probably dragging him into the forest to feed him to the mutated beasts. He's still injured. He's dead meat."

The vicious, mocking words carried clearly through the crisp morning air.

Gunner's grip on his bone knife tightened until his knuckles turned white. His vertical pupils narrowed into deadly slits. He shifted his weight, preparing to turn around and silence them.

Kiana stopped walking. She turned her head and looked directly at the group of gossiping females.

There was no rage in her eyes. No screaming fit. Just a cold, empty stare. She looked at them the way a human looks at a noisy insect.

The females felt the sudden, crushing weight of her gaze. The malicious smiles slid off their faces. A cold chill ran down Chrystal's spine, and she snapped her mouth shut. It wasn't just the freezing emptiness in Kiana's eyes that terrified them; it was the absolute, unnatural calmness. This was entirely different from the screaming, whip-wielding madwoman they knew. That terrifying contrast made an unsettling sense of dread settle heavily in their stomachs.

Kiana didn't say a single word to them. She turned her head back to the path.

"Let's go," Kiana said to Gunner, her voice completely bored. "Don't waste energy on trash."

Gunner stared at her profile. His heart gave a strange, heavy thump.

The old Kiana would have drawn her whip and started a bloody brawl right here in the dirt. This new Kiana possessed a terrifying, unshakable calm.

They stepped past the tree line and into the deep forest.

The massive, ancient trees immediately blocked out the sun. The air turned damp, smelling of rotting leaves and wet earth. A low, guttural roar echoed in the distance.

Gunner instantly shifted his body, stepping slightly in front of Kiana to shield her from the unknown darkness.

Kiana ignored the creepy atmosphere. Her eyes scanned the underbrush, looking for resources.

She spotted a patch of tall, incredibly tough-looking grass with serrated edges.

She stopped, pulled a small bone knife from her belt, and slashed down a massive handful of the long grass.

Gunner frowned, his eyes scanning the trees. "What are you doing with weeds?"

"Making tools," Kiana replied.

Her fingers moved in a blur. She twisted, knotted, and braided the tough grass with practiced, mechanical precision. It was muscle memory from years of surviving the apocalypse.

In less than three minutes, the pile of grass had been transformed into a thick, tightly woven net bag.

Gunner watched her hands, mesmerized.

He realized then that the woman standing in front of him didn't just know how to cook. She held survival knowledge that no one in this primitive wasteland possessed.

Kiana tossed the finished net to Gunner. "Test it."

Gunner grabbed both ends and pulled hard. The grass fibers groaned, but the knots held perfectly firm. It was incredibly strong.

He looked up from the net and met Kiana's eyes. For the first time since she had arrived in this world, Gunner offered her a very faint, genuine smile.