That gold coin in her palm had a cold and solid weight.
In this forgotten corner of Black Iron Town, it was almost equivalent to a gift from the gods.
Seraphilia didn't immediately exchange it for bread and cheap liquor.
She hid this small, cold sun in the deepest crack of the wall, carefully sealing it with rubble and rags.
Every time her fingertips touched that cold metal, the suffocating feeling of midnight in Sawtooth Alley and the moment her heart stopped before the drunkard crashed into her would replay in her mind.
This wasn't just a month of security.
This was a medal.
It was the first time her ability had been clearly priced and recognized by this cruel world.
With this confidence, Seraphilia's plan became clear and bold.
Though Robin's wounds had healed, her body was still like a reed in the wind—pale, thin, as if she would break with a gentle snap.
Seraphilia's experience from her past life was branded into her soul: food is the best medicine.
Her first goal was to set up a primitive, yet steam-producing... kitchen.
This was almost a declaration of luxury.
When Seraphilia returned carrying a heavy old iron pot and a ceramic stewing jar, Robin, who was flipping through an old book, had shock clearly written in her pale blue eyes.
In a place where everyone only sought their next meal, acquiring cooking utensils was no different from announcing one's intention to take root here.
Seraphilia didn't explain.
She just silently set to work, cleaning the fireplace that had been clogged with soot and trash for years.
It was filthy and exhausting.
Hours later, when the first flicker of flame licked the dry wood in the hearth with a soft crackle, the temperature of the dilapidated house actually rose by a degree.
When the first wisp of cooking smoke rose, Seraphilia used her ability to carefully disperse it, blending it into the eternal gray haze of Black Iron Town without a trace.
But from then on, this room was different.
It had the warmth of a hearth.
With cooking utensils, the direction of Seraphilia's "business" also adjusted accordingly.
She no longer only took on moving jobs, but instead turned her gaze toward food-related fields.
At the fish market, amidst the salty sea breeze, she covered the fishmongers' piles of fresh fish with an extremely thin layer of low-temperature preservation mist. Her payment was a few unwanted miscellaneous fish.
On the edge of the black market, she helped moonshiners cool their barrels with stable, low-temperature Cloud Mist to prevent over-fermentation, in exchange for a small bag of coarse salt and a few shriveled onions.
She even used the permeability of her Cloud Mist to help an old chef test the flavor of newly mixed soup bases under different humidity levels. Her reward was a small packet of mixed herbs and a few hard scraps of cheese.
When she returned in the evening, her pack no longer contained only hard, dry bread.
It might be fish wrapped in leaves, a few wilted carrots, or a small piece of meat of unknown origin.
Her cooking was an art form unique to her.
She melted fat in the iron pot, using her Cloud Mist to precisely control the oil temperature so it would never burn.
While processing ingredients, a stream of high-speed compressed mist would brush past her fingertips, turning into an invisible "Cloud Mist Blade" to scale and chop, quiet and noiseless.
Over the ceramic stewing jar, a thin layer of "Heat-Preserving Cloud Mist" was draped, firmly locking in every bit of heat.
The first decent dinner was miscellaneous fish and wild vegetable soup, served with roasted potatoes.
When the steaming soup was ladled into a coarse ceramic bowl and handed to Robin, a strange silence filled the space between them.
Robin looked down at the scattered oil droplets floating in the bowl, then looked up at Seraphilia, whose cheeks were flushed by the hearth fire.
She said nothing, only lowered her head and began to sip in small mouthfuls.
The soup was bland, and there were many fish bones.
But it was hot.
That warm current burned all the way from her throat to her stomach, soothing her entire being.
From then on, eating by the hearth at night became a silent ritual.
Seraphilia spoke little, only adding wood to the fire and ladling soup.
Robin remained quiet, but the way she ate changed. It was no longer a frantic swallowing, but became slow and deliberate.
The nourishment was like spring rain soaking the earth—silent yet steady.
A few weeks later, the sickly paleness on Robin's cheeks faded, and the dark circles under her eyes lightened.
She spent more time reading, sometimes even using a worn-out quill to write and draw on scrap paper.
As Seraphilia watched all this, a corner of the frost deep in her eyes quietly melted.
Life stabilized, and her ability training entered a more rigorous stage.
On the edge of the junkyard, her goal was no longer just maintenance, but—shaping.
"Soft Cloud Shield" was the first defensive skill she envisioned.
She compressed and stacked the mist, trying to form a dense, circular plane.
At first, that "shield" was thinner than paper; a small pebble could shatter it.
She tried again and again, increasing the concentration of the mist and changing the stacking structure, feeling how the mist molecules dispersed force under impact.
Weeks later, she could finally condense a translucent mist shield half a meter in diameter that could deflect pebbles.
The direction was right.
The attempt at "Cloud Lock" was even more difficult.
She needed to shape the mist into a stable whip-like form, which required an insanely high level of mental micro-manipulation.
Failure, failure, and more failure.
The sharp pain of mental exhaustion was like steel needles stabbing into her brain.
So she started from the basics: first condensing a highly compressed "cloud core," then trying to "pull" a band of mist from it like pulling sugar silk.
The occasional success in pulling a wobbly mist band over a meter long brought her enough excitement to offset hundreds of failures.
Controlling the temperature came with real danger.