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.
