Kaiser let out a long sigh and crouched down, gripping Aria's arms. "Alright, champ," he said, "Up you go." He lifted her off the ground, and immediately regretted it.

"Holy sh— Aria, what the hell are you made of?!" he wheezed. Aria lazily rested her chin on his shoulder, half-conscious. "Kralak…"

Kaiser groaned, shifting her weight. "You're dense. How can you still be this small and weigh like a full-grown warhorse?"

"...Muscle," she muttered, eyes closed.

"Bullshit, it's Kralak. You're literally half candy right now." Kaiser adjusted his grip and started walking out of the store and down the road, carrying her like a sack of sugar-coated regret. As he walked, he glanced at her. "Y'know…" he said, a small smirk tugging at his lips, "You're awesome."

Aria cracked an eye open. "…Huh?"

"The way you completely destroyed that guy." Kaiser chuckled. "That was some next-level scamming." Aria snorted sleepily.

"But," Kaiser added, "You really can't just run off like that."

She let out a slow sigh. "I know…"

"Next time, just tell us where you're going," he said. "No disappearing acts."

Aria pouted against his shoulder. "...Sorry."

Kaiser shook his head. "Nothing to be sorry for. Everything turned out fine. If anything, you basically legally robbed a store, so it's a win for us."

At that, Aria snapped awake. Her head shot up. "Put me down." Kaiser blinked. "What?" Aria started wiggling violently, like a fish on land. "PUT ME DOWN! RIGHT NOW!

"Alright, alright, stop squirming!" Kaiser bent down and set her on her feet and Aria immediately wobbled like a newborn deer, but she didn't fall. Instead, she turned her head, her eyes locking onto something in the distance. Kaiser followed her gaze, and his soul left his body for the second time this evening.

Another candy store. "...You've got to be fucking kidding me." Aria moved, not fast, not graceful, but determined as hell. With the wobble of an overfed duck, she began shuffling toward the store, hands pressed to her stuffed stomach, her willpower alone dragging her forward.

Kaiser stood frozen… He had seen monsters, he had seen war, but nothing had prepared him for the sheer, unrelenting hunger of this small, sugar-addicted menace. He took a slow, shaky step forward. "…Aria," he said carefully, "You physically cannot still be hungry."

Aria ignored him, and Kaiser felt his reality breaking all over again. He hurried after her, ready to grab her before she did something criminal again, but that's when it happened.

A woman, one moving unsteadily, as if she had been standing too long stumbled straight into Aria. The moment Aria stumbled into her, it was as if reality itself lurched. The world didn't shift, the ground didn't shake, and there was no grand spectacle—yet something felt wrong.

There was no immediate pain, no forceful impact, just a light, clumsy collision, yet when Aria landed on the ground with a soft thud, she felt something.

A chill… Not the kind that came from cold winds or sudden shocks, but something deeper, something ancient and instinctual, an unexplainable sense of unease that crept into her bones before her mind could even process why. For the first time in a long while, food was no longer on her mind, only the woman who stood over her, looming.

Her frame was long, as if someone had stretched a human just past the limits of normalcy. Her neck, thin and oddly elongated, swayed with a slow, deliberate motion, the unnatural movement subtle but wrong. Pale, slender hands twitched at her sides, fingers curling and uncurling in a rhythmic, almost hypnotic pattern, as if testing the air itself.

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But it was her eyes that sent a second shiver down Aria's spine, as they were black, hollow and utterly empty. There was no warmth, no flicker of curiosity or humanity, just an abyss, deep and consuming. Aria did not like this. Her stomach, once swollen with the joy of excess, now felt tight for an entirely different reason.

"…Ah," the woman finally murmured, her lips stretching into a slow, unnatural smile as she extended a hand toward Aria. "Forgive me, little one," she said softly. "I didn't see you there."

Aria did not move, because she wasn't sure she even could. Before she had to decide whether to take the offered hand or bolt in the opposite direction, Kaiser moved. In one swift motion, he grabbed Aria by the back of her collar and hoisted her onto her feet like a misbehaving cat.

"Go inside," Kaiser said, not even sparing her a glance. "Get whatever you want." Aria, still shaken, dusted herself off, but the unease lingered as she eyed the woman warily. She glanced up at Kaiser. "...You know her?"

For the first time, his face was unreadable.

"I do."

The woman's lips stretched wider, something almost predatory in the way her expression deepened, yet her black eyes remained the same.

She tilted her head, watching both Kaiser and Aria. "And I now know you," she murmured, amusement thick in her voice. "I never forget a face, after all."

Aria hesitated. Something about the way the woman said that made her skin crawl, but as unsettling as she was, standing between these two felt worse. The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating, an unspoken understanding crackling in the air like the moment before a storm.

Finally, Aria exhaled and muttered, "You two would make a perfect couple of psychopaths." Nothing, no reaction. Not from Kaiser, not from the woman. The weight of their stillness sent another, smaller shiver through her.

"Alright then. Cool talk," she grumbled before turning and heading straight into the candy store, her usual excitement nowhere to be found, the door shutting behind her.

Kaiser moved as soon as the doors closed. "Walk with me," he said. The woman didn't budge, her smile never faltering. "I feel like that wasn't a request," she murmured, but with an amused hum, she followed soon after.

They walked in silence, side by side, until Kaiser led her into a narrow alleyway, the dim light of the setting sun casting long shadows over the walls. When they reached the end, he finally turned to face her. "I heard about you," he said flatly. "From Ivan and Mia."

A flicker of recognition passed through the woman's dark eyes, her smile deepening. "So that's the names of those children," she mused.

Kaiser said nothing, his posture deceptively relaxed, but every fiber of his being remained honed in on her, watching for the smallest twitch of intent. After a moment, he exhaled through his nose. "Was your encounter with Aria just a coincidence," he asked, "or are you after her for some reason?"

For a moment, she remained still. Then, without warning she took a step forward. Kaiser's weight shifted instantly, his stance adjusting, though he did not move away. The woman's smile only widened. "I don't care about your child," she whispered, voice slow and deliberate. "Out meeting was a coincidence, but I'm not interested in her at the least, you are the one who currently has my undivided attention." She pointed a finger at him. "You felt it, didn't you? The moment our eyes met."

She took another step.

"I usually watch people run," she continued, voice rich with amusement. "It's amusing, really—how their legs move before their minds catch up. That raw, desperate instinct to flee. The absolute terror in their eyes."

Another step.

"But this?" She exhaled, eyes narrowing in something close to delight. "This is different." She stopped just inches away from him.

"For the first time," she whispered, "I was on the receiving end of that feeling." She raised her hand. Kaiser immediately noticed that she was wearing leather gloves, not the kind worn for warmth, nor the kind used for decoration. These were obviously meant to hide something.

Her fingers curled slightly, hovering just in front of his chest, before she whispered, "I always wondered what it felt like. What they felt like—the ones who saw me and ran. The ones who knew what I was before I even moved."

Her voice dropped lower, a whisper. "I wondered and wondered and wondered—"Then, she grabbed his hand.

The second her gloved fingers wrapped around his, Kaiser felt a sensation like nails dragging against his skin, like something pressing into his bones, wrapping around them, sinking into the very marrow. It wasn't pain, but it was something worse. And still, Kaiser did not move.

The woman's fingers tightened just slightly, her head tilting, black eyes drinking in every subtle shift of his expression. Then she exhaled, as if savoring the moment.

"You gave me that feeling," she whispered, her voice filled with a giddy, sick sort of reverence. A slow, delighted shiver ran through her, her smile stretching just a little too wide. "And after so many years of wondering," she breathed, pressing her grip against his hand, "I am so very grateful."

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