For a restaurant that charged six craploads for a single meal, the Rorden Gamsy was surprisingly quiet. Of course that's because the customers there would rather die than show emotions . The air hummed with soft, royalty-free classical music. The lighting was engineered to make everyone look like they had just stepped out of a highly edited social feed.
At their table, however, absolutely none of that mattered.
Because at their table, there was a Great Beast sitting on a silk cushion and aggressively cleaning its leg.
The Neighborhood Menace had been "politely requested" to remain off the dining table. In practice, this meant a terrified maître d'(Yep) had pointed at the velvet seat next to Cielle and stammered something about the health code. Cielle had responded with: "He is very sanitary.
Then Sunny had tipped the man an amount large enough to buy the chair itself.
Now, the orange cat lounged on his cushion like a retired mob boss, its golden eyes half-lidded, and its tail occasionally thumping against the upholstery with the quiet sound of a falling cinderblock.
Effie poked a fork at the delicate La-Bouche sitting in front of her. It was a single, lonely scallop wearing a tiny hat of lemon foam and herbs.
"So this is it?" she asked, genuinely baffled. "This is the whole thing? Did they actually cook it, or did they just threaten it with heat and hope for the best?"
"It's to awaken the palate," Kai said, trying and failing to hide his amusement. "A refined prelude. A suggestion of flavor."
Effie squinted at the scallop. "My mouth doesn't need a suggestion. It needs a battering ram."
Cielle leaned in, inspecting the tiny plate with clinical suspicion, as though the foam might suddenly deploy toxic gas.
"This item weighs approximately twenty-eight grams," Cielle observed. "I burn more calories by blinking."
Sunny sat back with his arms crossed, watching them all with that familiar, exhausted blend of second-hand embarrassment and reluctant fondness. "It's not supposed to feed you. It's supposed to impress you."
"It has failed," Cielle stated immediately.
Across from Sunny, Cassie's lips twitched upward. "I… kind of agree," she admitted softly. "It smells nice, but it feels very lonely on the plate."
The Neighborhood Menace chose that exact moment to let out a deep, rumbling purr that vibrated the silverware. His golden eyes tracked the scallop with chilling, unblinking focus, the dish had the misfortune of being both bite-sized and nearby.
"Don't," Sunny warned the cat under his breath. "That thing costs a crapload, maybe multiple craploads! 'S' ok?"
Effie perked up, her eyes gleaming with intent. "Oh, is this the part where we talk about 'refined' dining? Because we can really put this place to shame."
She stabbed her scallop with completely unnecessary force, then pointed her fork across the table at Sunny like an accusation.
"Everyone here thinks this is fancy," she announced loudly enough for the nearest table of billionaires to hear. "But none of you have truly lived until you've watched Doofus over there choke down a burned Fallen bird on a cursed shoreline while trying not to cry."
Cielle looked at Effie, blinking once.
Across the table, Kai made a sound halfway between a laugh and a cough, quickly taking a sip of water to hide his face. Cassie turned her blindfolded gaze toward Effie, suddenly very interested.
Sunny groaned, sliding lower in his booth. "Can we not—"
"No, we absolutely can," Effie steamrolled, grinning fiercely. "And we will. Because if we're going to spend three hours eating foam, we might as well traumatize the staff too."
One of the passing waiters visibly flinched and quickened his pace.
Effie gestured with her fork, warming up like a veteran storyteller at a tavern.
"So," she began, "picture this. We've been travelling on the Forgotten Shore for months. Everything there wants to kill us. The water wants to kill us. The ground wants to kill us. The sky is actively thinking about it."
"The sky did kill us," Sunny muttered bitterly. "Repeatedly."
"Exactly!" Effie agreed cheerfully. "Supplies are low. Morale is nonexistent. Our glorious scout over there—" she jerked her thumb at Sunny "—is rationing food like a stingy goblin king. And then, we see it. A Fallen bird. Ugly thing. Covered in razor-feathers and malice."
"It wasn't that ugly," Sunny protested. "It was majestic. In a deeply hateful way."
"You roasted and ate it," Cielle said flatly, piecing the story together.
"Roasted, yes," Effie declared. "Ate, also yes. Enjoyed? Highly debatable."
Cielle's brows drew together. She looked at Sunny, more impressed than horrified. "You ingested Fallen flesh as a sleeper? Raw corrupted meat directly into the digestive tract. Fascinating. And highly suicidal."
"See?" Sunny pointed at her, looking at Effie. "Thank you. Completely insane."
Effie waved the logic away. "We needed to eat. And I needed an excuse to light something on fire. So I built a campfire out of cursed wood that whispered at me, and Sunny dragged the carcass back while complaining the entire way."
"It was heavy," Sunny defended himself. "Also, it exploded when I killed it. That seems like relevant context."
Kai chuckled quietly, his eyes distant with the strange nostalgia of shared trauma. "Effie seasoned it with what she swore were edible herbs from the city."
"I stand by that," Effie said defensively. "No one died."
"We were already dead," Sunny reminded her. "That was literally the entire point of the Dark City."
Cassie covered her mouth, trying to hide a smile. "Was it really that bad? I liked neph's cooking…"
There was a collective, heavy pause as all three veterans of the Forgotten Shore stared at the middle distance, processing the culinary trauma.
"It crunched," Sunny said at last, his voice hollow. "In ways meat should never crunch."
"There was a… distinct flavor," Kai offered delicately.
"Like chewing on resentment" Sunny specified. "With a distinct aftertaste of feet."
Cassie choked on her water.
"I-I guess its did taste like socks…."
"However," Effie added, entirely undeterred, "it was still better than nothing. So yes, this little foam-hat scallop is adorable, but I have personally eaten something that actively tried to murder me twice. Raise the bar, rich people."
Cielle evaluated the conversation. She looked at the tiny scallop, then at Effie.
"If you wish," Cielle offered calmly, "we could hunt a corrupted beast, drag it in here, and demand they prepare it. Their expressions might be interesting."
Sunny pictured that. A star chef in a pristine white jacket staring down at a still-smoking, multi-eyed horror sprawled across his polished marble floor. Josh, sunny decided to call him that.
Josh was a bright young man, in fact he would be an awakened with an aspect specially for culinary use. Josh would be sad if they did that, he would call them idiot bandwitches.
He smiled despite himself. "I'll give you that one. That would almost be worth the lawsuit."
A new set of dishes arrived in a flurry of nervous waiters: something involving artfully stacked vegetables, a microscopic smear of sauce, and meat arranged at angles that would have delighted an architect.
The Neighborhood Menace received a plate as well. A massive, perfectly marbled slab of A5 raw Wagyu, delicate, and obscenely expensive, it was reverently placed in front of him on the table.
The cat blinked once at the offering.
Then, with a slow, terrifying display , he unhinged his jaw just a little too wide and inhaled the entire piece of meat in one easy, horrifying movement. The plate was left completely bare without a single smear of blood.
Kai froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. Effie's jaw dropped.
Cassie shivered, her hands clenching in her lap. The cat, having committed a war crime against culinary art, licked his nose, let out a tiny burp, and resumed purring.
"Good boy," Cielle said, scratching his chin. "Do not eat the plates. They lack nutritional value."
"I feel like that thing shouldn't exist," Effie muttered, staring at the empty plate. "And yet here he is. Mocking physics."
"He doesn't mock physics," Sunny corrected. "He ignores it. There's a difference."
Cielle turned toward Effie, her head tilting slightly. "You yelled at him earlier. Are you still going to execute your interrogation regarding my survival strategies?"
Effie perked up instantly, all thoughts of the cat vanishing. "Oh, absolutely."
Sunny tensed, immediately regretting every life decision that had led him to this exact moment. Maybe he should just hang himself, yeah he would even buy those expensive synthetic ropes, worth at least two craploads….
"So," Effie said, clasping her hands together and resting her chin on them. "Cielle. You're terrifying. You snapped the neck of a Great Beasts and you moved like a ballistic missile. I just have one question."
She smiled sweetly. It was not a harmless smile.
"How," Effie drawled, "do you tolerate him? And his massive, glaring touching allergy?"
Kai actually chuckled. Cassie went perfectly still, clearly torn between extreme curiosity and overwhelming dread.
Cielle looked at Sunny like she was considering how to answer a particularly simple question on a toddler's math test.
"He is not allergic to touch," Cielle stated
"Historically," Effie countered, leaning in, "he absolutely is. I have tried to hug him many times. He reacts like I stabbed him with a cursed blade."
"That is because you approach like a hostile dropship," Cielle replied calmly, buttering a piece of bread. "He responds better to gradual pressure."
Sunny closed his eyes, praying for a sudden, localized earthquake. "Cielle—"
She ignored him entirely.
"At the sanctuary, he pulls me closer," she continued, her tone completely even. "If I move away, he follows. He relaxes with prolonged physical contact. When I scratch the back of his head, he makes a very quiet sound."
"Cielle," Sunny repeated, his voice now a strangled, desperate rasp.
Effie stared at her. "What kind of sound."
"A small one," Cielle said, entirely sincere. "Like a soft 'mmf.' Very short. It only happens when he is almost asleep, and his guard is down."
Effie's chair actually squeaked as she leaned forward, her eyes wide with savage, unholy glee.
"He makes—" she sputtered, "—a soft noise?"
Kai lost his battle completely. He bent forward, his shoulders shaking with helpless laughter, tears pricking the corners of his eyes. Cassie pressed both hands over her mouth, her cheeks burning pink, a giggle she couldn't contain slipping free.
Sunny looked like he wanted to dissolve into shadows and never return.
"My soul has left my body," he informed the table, staring blankly at his water glass. "I am no longer here. I am a ghost. You are speaking to an echo. The ghost of sunny, call me solace"
Effie slapped the table so hard the silverware jumped. "This is the best day of my life."
The sudden noise drew the ire of a nearby table. A pair of impeccably dressed, silver-haired elites glared over, clearly annoyed at the disruption of their curated silence.
The Neighborhood Menace stopped purring, slowly turned his massive head, and locked unblinking golden eyes with them.
The elites went stark pale, immediately looked down at their plates, and did not look up again.
"So," Kai managed to choke out once he'd regained his composure, wiping his eyes. "You two are… close."
Cielle considered this. "We share a bed. We are in a cohort. He buys me clothes that does not scream. I believe that statistically qualifies as 'close.'"
Sunny dropped his face into his hands. "I hate all of you."
Cassie, her voice quiet but entirely sincere, ventured, "You make each other safer. That's… really nice."
Cielle turned those sharp, calculating green eyes toward the blind oracle. She studied her for a beat too long.
"You are interesting," Cielle concluded. "You see things."
Cassie's fingers tightened around her water glass. "Sometimes more than I want to."
"You saw too much earlier," Cielle added. "Sunny said you did not mean to, so I will not remove your eyes."
Cassie choked. "That's… good to know?"
"That is her being gentle," Sunny muttered from behind his hands. "Take the win."
Effie leaned toward Cielle, grinning from ear to ear. "So, Cielle. Be honest. When did you decide you were going to keep him?"
It was a ridiculous question. It sounded like Effie was asking about adopting a feral, deeply paranoid stray dog.
Cielle answered without hesitation. "The first time i heard about his fascinating aspect. He was said to have lead all of you through the crimson spire and was rumored to be a shadow himself, I decided he required management."
Sunny peered through his fingers, glaring at her. "I am not a project."
"Yes, you are," Cielle corrected smoothly. "You are very high-maintenance."
Kai snorted. Cassie outright giggled again Effie pointed her fork at Cielle. "I like you."
"I know," Cielle said, taking a bite of her bread. "You are very loud about your emotions."
One of the servers approached nervously at that moment, holding a tray of drinks. As he reached their table, the Neighborhood Menace's tail lazily swished, gently bumping the waiter's knee.
The waiter stumbled. The tray tipped. Five heavy crystal glasses of expensive wine began to plummet toward the floor.
In a blur of motion, three hands moved at once.
Sunny's hand shot up like a whip, stabilizing two glasses mid-air. Cielle's hand snapped out too, catching another two before they had fallen an inch. Kai's moved too, righting the tray and the final glass.
Not a single drop spilled.
The waiter stared, his eyes wide, hovering on the verge of a complete breakdown.
"See?" Effie said cheerfully, casually taking her glass from Cielle's hand. "Perfectly normal lunch. Nothing to worry about."
The waiter made a small, broken squeak and practically sprinted away.
"You're scaring the staff," Kai murmured, but he was smiling. "Again."
"We are tipping well," Sunny countered, dismissing his shadow. "They'll cope."
"Tell me more," Cielle prompted suddenly, turning back to Effie and Sunny. She ignored the drinks entirely. "About the Forgotten Shore. You mentioned a statue earlier."
Cassie's shoulders tensed slightly, then slowly relaxed as she realized the topic was memory now. Kai looked thoughtful.
Sunny exhaled, letting some of the old sharpness in his expression ease. "You really want to know?"
"Yes," Cielle said. "I like field reports."
"This was not a field report," Effie argued. "This was an insane, suicidal idea."
"It was her idea," Sunny reminded her.
"Exactly."
Sunny rolled his eyes, leaning back in the booth. "All right. So. We had a problem. There was a Colossus walking in circles across the Shore, a walking mountain of stone you could say. Giant. Ancient. Very step-on-you-by-accident vibes. Effie called it a perfect mommy"
"Very tall," Effie added helpfully. "Shouting at it was not effective. We tried."
"We needed to cross an impossible distance," Sunny continued. "Walking would have taken too long. And everything in between wanted to eat us."
"So we looked up," Effie grinned. "Saw a giant stone Uber. Decided: 'Yes. Obviously. That one.'"
Cielle's eyes glinted with sudden, sharp interest. "You scaled it."
"We clung to it," Sunny corrected. "Like ticks."
"Like very attractive, desperate ticks," Effie clarified.
"In our defense," Sunny said, "it was slightly less suicidal than all the alternatives."
"We climbed its leg while everything was trying to climb us," Effie said, gesturing wildly. "Corrupted gargoyles, shrieking locusts, a couple of Fallen that didn't get the hint. And the stone was moving. Constantly. Every step was an earthquake."
Cielle's fingers were still on her fork, but her knuckles had gone white. She wasn't afraid; she was thinking about it in her head, mapping the sheer chaos of it.
"And once we were up," Sunny said, "we just… stayed there. For days. Riding this giant across the shoreline. Eating what we could scavenge, sleeping against rock, occasionally kicking a Corrupted thing off its shoulder."
"It was like a very aggressive cruise," Effie concluded. "Terrible amenities. No buffet. Great views."
Cassie listened, her expression complicated. Guilt lingered at the edges, but there was something else there too: faint, tentative warmth of not being entirely left out.
"We really… did all that," Cassie murmured.
"We did a lot of stupid things," Sunny said softly. "That one just happened to work."
"It was not stupid," Cielle said quietly. Her voice cut through the humor, anchoring them. "It was precise. You turned a catastrophic environmental hazard into a mount."
Sunny stared at her for a beat, then huffed a soft laugh. "You make it sound almost respectable."
"It was," she said simply. "It is efficient madness. I like it."
Effie raised her glass. "To efficient madness."
Kai clinked his glass to hers, then to Sunny's and Cassie's. "To surviving it."
Cassie hesitated, then lifted hers too. "To… still being here."
Cielle raised her water glass with the smallest hint of ceremony. "To managing him."
"Unnecessary," Sunny sighed, but he touched his glass to hers anyway.
The Neighborhood Menace yawned, exposing a maw of teeth that should not legally exist inside city limits.
Effie eyed the cat. "What does he even do most of the time?"
"Sleep," Cielle said. "Eat. Attempt to eat sunny's pet snake. We negotiate."
"I saw him," Cassie said carefully, remembering her earlier panic. "Or… I saw what he is. To my sight. I'm still not sure I believe it."
"That is wise," Kai said dryly. "Belief is dangerous around that thing."
The cat reached out one heavy paw and pressed it onto a freshly delivered bread basket. The wicker creaked ominously under the weight of the entity.
"Menace," Cielle said warningly. "Those are costly for sunny. Do not flatten them."
The cat pulled his paw back by exactly one centimeter, as if weighing his options, then left it there, loafing over the basket like a smug, orange siege engine.
"He understands language," Cassie whispered, half horrified, half delighted.
"He understands tone," Sunny corrected. "And bribery."
Cielle tore off a piece of bread, dipped it in expensive truffle butter, and held it up. The Menace immediately abandoned his claim on the basket and devoured the offered bite with dainty enthusiasm.
Effie watched this display, then looked pointedly at Sunny. "Do you see the pattern, Doofus?"
"No," Sunny said stubbornly. "And I refuse to."
Cielle chewed her bread, completely unapologetic. Kai looked around the table, the bickering, the shared memories, the absurd, impossible peace of surviving long enough to eat overpriced food together. He let out a slow, contented breath.
"This is nice," he said quietly.
Cassie's shoulders relaxed, the last of the tension bleeding out of her inch by inch. "It is," she agreed.
Sunny caught the direction of her blindfolded face, the softness there. The old resentment hadn't vanished, but its edges were duller now, smoothed over by embarrassment, absurdity, and the undeniable fact that they were all still sitting at the same table. He didn't forgive her. Not yet. But, for the first time, he believed that maybe one day he could.
Cielle sat back in her booth. She looked at the loud, boisterous woman complaining about the lack of meat. She looked at the polite idol hiding his laughter. She looked at the blind girl tentatively smiling. Finally, she looked at Sunny, who was currently trying to steal a fry off Effie's plate using his shadow.
She did not need to asses them anymore. She did not feel the need to hit anyone in the room.
A tiny, genuine smile, so small it was almost invisible, tugged at the corner of Cielle's lips.
Yes. She liked his pack.
Effie, completely unaware she was about to ruin a fragile emotional moment, stabbed another piece of meat and grinned.
"So," she said loudly. "Next time we all end up stuck in a horrible murderous hellscape, I vote Cielle gets to pick the ride. Sunny's track record is entertaining, but I want to see what she does with a Colossus."
Cielle considered this seriously. "I would install a saddle."
Sunny pinched the bridge of his nose. "Of course you would."