Everywhere he looked, Arden saw new things. The rubble of buildings was cleared away, and replaced with new buildings. Intact ones. Structurally sound. It was only a few months that had passed, but looked like years of construction had taken place. He was sure that the Starborn had a hand in reconstruction.

  He walked in the middle of a crowd of people. None of them looked like they were in need of meals. They all looked well fed, but more than that, they looked happy. Happiness was even more scarce in the slums than the food, so seeing everyone look human was a shock to Arden.

  “She really undersold it,” he muttered to himself.

  As he walked among the crowd drawing strange looks from his clothes, he noticed a window display for a clothing store. He stopped and peered through the window at the clothes lying folded beneath unlit lights on tables inside.

  “I need some of those…”

  Arden’s slum rat instinct took over, and he had to stop himself from shattering the glass and breaking in. It would be hard to overcome these urges in this new world. The slum had been branded on him, but now the slums were gone.

  “Is that blood, mommy?” he heard from behind him.

  “Of course not, sweetie.”

  Arden turned around and saw a little boy pointing at him while holding his mothers hand. Arden glanced at the mother who averted her eyes and tried to hurry along.

  Arden chuckled to himself and continued moving along. A person in torn and bloody robes eyeing a clothing store was not something that would look good, nor subtle. Subtlety was a lost art to Arden, but he figured he needed to learn it a bit if he wanted to stay hidden.

  He slipped into the alley next to the building. He needed to check a few things first, and he might be able to find some clothes that were thrown away. When he was fully behind the building he was disappointed to find that there were no trash cans or dumpsters carrying damaged products.

  “Damn. One of the few things I know about retail is that they throw away everything even if it's barely damaged. Everyone knows that.”

  He sighed and opened his Status to the inventory tab. It’d been a while since he’d seen what was inside, excluding his chat with Savish, so he looked through.

  “Deck of cards, a few swords from the Mausoleum. Oh, the pouch of holding.”

  His eyes lit up when he found the armor he had been given by Podren. He brought them out and his joy quickly turned to disappointment. It was pretty much just a bent and broken sheet of metal that could barely be called armor.

  “Right, I wore it in the fight.”

  He dropped what used to be clothes to the ground and he sighed.

  “I should have taken the servant outfit with me. Personal feelings aside, that at least looked good.”

  He leaned against the brick wall of an adjacent building and faced the back door of the clothing store.

  “I have powers, but I’m still skulking around the back alleys of the slums,” he chuckled. “The more things change, and all.”

  An idea quickly came to Arden and he took off the bloody robes that were with him since his escape from the cave. It was a struggle to get off, but he managed it. He looked at the dried blood discoloring it and thought about his new power, Devour. It stated that it would allow him to absorb biomass.

  “This should work, right?”

  Arden held his hand to a patch of blood and was about to use his power when the back door swung open. He looked at the man holding a plastic garbage bag full of clothes staring at him in shock.

  Arden put on an easy smile and raised a hand in greetings.

  “Hi.”

  He watched the man start trembling in fear and go pale in the face. He just walked out behind the shop and found a bloody mostly naked man getting rid of a bloody piece of clothing. Was he about to be killed?

  “Okay, I know this looks bad…” Arden began, but that was as far as he got before the man dropped the bag on the ground and fled inside. Arden didn’t waste a second and threw his bloody robes into his inventory and began rifling through the bag.

  A few minutes later, Arden emerged from the alley with a new look. Thankfully, most of the clothing was his size, if not his gender. He didn't care that he was wearing blue skinny jeans that showed off his ass or a white blouse. He was just happy that he was wearing better clothes that weren’t stained with blood. Even if he was crossdressing.

  He continued along, wondering if the guy in the store decided to call the cops or not. Just in case, he walked a little faster. He crossed the street and continued heading to the place that had quickly become home to him.

  Down the street, he saw a party taking place in front of a bar. He smiled to himself at the infectious joy of the new slums. It felt like a dream. Music was playing and attendees were busy singing, getting drunk, and seducing other attendees. Arden’s kind of party. Hopefully, that one wouldn’t end in tragedy.

  As he walked by, a man reeking of alcohol stumbled up to him. He looked like he was Arden’s age. He looked Arden up and down and spoke.

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  “Babe, you look hot. You should come join us. We’ve got plenty of booze to go round!”

  Arden began to regret his wardrobe decision. He tried not to let any emotions show on his face, as he calmly denied the man hitting on him who thought he was a girl.

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve got someplace to be. Maybe next time.”

  Arden continued along as he heard the party explode in laughter watching the man get denied. He went back to the party laughing and drinking along with them. Arden was pleasantly surprised that the interaction stopped right there. He just avoided the Association. He didn’t want to get sent to them for assaulting a mundane.

  He didn’t know the address of his destination, as it didn’t have one before. He also only left that place once after being brought there, so he was trying to find it by retracing his steps from the restaurant.

  After a few wrong turns and a disproportionate amount of cat calls from blushing men, Arden finally found the house he was looking for. The last time he saw it, it was missing its roof, and most of its walls.

  Now, Vera’s house was repaired.

  It was a bit out of the way. It wasn’t part of the urban part of the slums that the restaurant was part of. Now, the house was in the middle of a suburb. Green grass and young trees grew in every yard of the suburb.

  All of the houses were similar, but subtly different. There could be a balcony on one house, a porch on another, but Arden wasn’t interested in those. The house that Arden identified as Vera’s was missing all of those amenities. It was just a simple house, but the familiarity resonated with Arden.

  He tried to get his breathing under control as he approached the door. A lot had changed in two months. He had to be ready for the possibility that Vera wasn’t here. That Sya wasn’t here.

  He stood in front of the door and took a breath. With his heart beating in his ears, he brought his fist to the door and knocked.

  No response.

  He knocked again, hoping that Vera and Sya were just asleep. Again, there was no response.

  After the third time, the door finally opened. Pain shot through Arden’s chest as he realized that they weren’t here. Only an angry middle aged man.

  “What do you want!? It's past midnight! Come back in the morning!”

  The door slammed in Arden’s face and he just stood there in front of the door feeling numb.

  “Where are you guys?” He whispered.

  He turned away from the door and started walking away with an uneven gait. Arden was used to feeling pain. He was used to being confused. His trial had seen to that. But this was the first time he felt so lost.

  He didn't have a single idea of what to do.

  ‘Do I go back to Savish? Do I try to find Cirai? What's the best way to find them?

  More questions weighed down his soul, one that he didn't have the spirit to answer.

  ‘Was Cirai taken as well? Is Sya alright?’

  She was a Blight Walker. She was dangerous in any place with a mundane population. That was somewhat alright before because of how sparse the slums were, but now they were bustling. If anyone found out she was around here, then she would be taken away or killed.

  Vera was not here. Her house was in possession of someone else. That meant that she was in hiding, still in her trial, or she had perished in her trial.

  Or in Arden’s.

  Arden refused to believe the last one. He couldn't go through that again. It had cost him most of his sanity last time she died. The world was even destroyed because of his actions after her death. He didn't know what he'd do this time. His finger's reflexively dug into his face as he tried to peel his mind away from his actions at the end of the world. He thought he heard voices, all of them hateful.

  'No...Not now...'

  Arden walked down the streets bathed in the soft light of the lamppost without a destination in mind. He just knew that it couldn't be here.

  He needed to think. He needed to finally go over his final rewards. He needed to find direction. He couldn't do any of those things in his current state of mind.

  A quiet hopeful voice spoke to him from somewhere in the dark nearby.

  “Arden?”

  Arden stopped and slowly turned his eyes to the source. He hadn't heard that voice in what felt like years, but he would never forget it.

  The speaker was a few centimeters shorter than him with black hair that had light blue streaks going through it, giving it an appearance like ice. She wasn't dressed in her normal clothes but instead a set of light leather armor with a thin layer of frost covering it. She was even more attractive than the first time he met her. She was already a monument of beauty before, but now she looked like elevated perfection after evolving into a protostar.

  Arden’s eyes came back to life and started leaking tears as he sprinted in her direction, and she did the same. When they reached each other, they threw their arms around each other.

  When Arden and Vera embraced, they held each other for a long time. Neither said anything, and neither broke away. Neither wanted it to end.

  Finally, Vera's quiet voice came out, Muffled By Arden's body which she still didn't let go of.

  “Why are you wearing women's clothes?”

  Arden rubbed her back and laughed softly.

  “It was either this or a bloody set of robes.” He pulled back and looked her in the eyes. “I'm so glad you're okay, Vera. During the trial…” Arden didn't finish the sentence.

  The memory of Vera from his trial floated to the forefront of his brain. Her pleading eyes begging him to stay with her. Her fear of dying betraying the fact that despite her strengths, she was still a human.

  “I missed you,” he said through a veil of tears. “So much.”

  He felt her hands in his hair just like the other Vera did in the trial. He felt safe. Warm.

  The past few weeks had been a marathon at sprint speed. Now was the first time Arden felt that it was over, or at the very least winding down.

  “Was it hard?” She asked softly.

  He silently nodded his head.

  “It was impossible. I didn't mean to do it, I swear. I just wanted to get back to you and Sya.”

  If she had any questions about his cryptic words, she didn’t ask them or even show confusion. Just like when she first discovered the doppelganger, she didn’t go off on Arden. She had absolute trust in him now. She gently pulled away from the hug and Arden did the same.

  She extended an open hand to Arden.

  “Come on. Let's find some place to sleep. It’s late.”

  Arden smiled and took her hand, and Vera gently pulled Arden down the street. He had only one thought as he felt her hand.

  ‘She’s warm.’