Deus Necros

Chapter 624: Tea Time

Redd’s joke fell on deaf ears, everyone was far too worried of what just happened to laugh. He could only stare, because the figure in front of them carried a presence that made the hut feel smaller, as if the room had been built around her rather than the other way around.

Tull noticed it too, she was far too beautiful for this world. Far too pristine and elegant.

His suspicion sharpened immediately. Beauty like that didn’t survive this world without reason. It wasn’t admiration that held his gaze, it was appraisal, the same cold evaluation he’d give a blade that looked too perfect.

Her hair fell like darkness given shape, and her eyes were uncomfortably deep, the kind that made a person feel seen even when they wished not to be. Her pale skin looked almost fragile at first glance, yet it carried a vitality that contradicted the pallor, like she was untouched by sickness and hardship alike.

A high jaw, think neck, slim waist and an hourglass body that would make men and women swoon over. One with lust and the other with envy.

She looked crafted rather than born, not in an artificial way, but in a way that suggested the world had been generous with her and then kept giving. It was the sort of beauty that provoked reactions before thought, and that alone made her dangerous.

“An angel?” Alex muttered.

The word slipped out as a guess more than a claim, quiet and uncertain. Alex’s gaze remained steady, searching for the truth behind the appearance, as if the answer mattered more than the awe.

“Shit, I really am dead!” Redd couldn’t help but sigh.

The sigh was equal parts disbelief and grim acceptance, as though death would be simpler than explaining this. Yet his claws stayed ready, because even if this was heaven, heaven could still bite.

“No, dearest children, you are very much alive,” the woman replied, even her voice seemed to sooth aches one didn’t know they had. It carried a calm that settled on the nerves like a warm cloth. It didn’t demand obedience, it simply made panic feel slightly foolish. Even so, that soothing quality was unsettling in itself, like being comforted by something that might not need to comfort you at all.

However, she didn’t pay them any attention, or at least it felt like it when she walked toward Ludwig.

Her focus narrowed, and the rest of them became background without her needing to dismiss them. She moved with quiet certainty, steps soft, as if she had already decided where she belonged in the room.

She lightly placed her palm on his cheek, eyes looking at him with sorrow and grief, even guilt seemed to be mixed in them. The touch was gentle, intimate in a way that made the air tighten. Her gaze held too much emotion to be casual, sorrow that looked old, grief that looked personal, guilt that hinted at history.

“Child, you’ve done me favors I cannot repay…” The words carried weight like a confession, not a compliment.

“Get your hands off him!” Redd said as he noticed that something might go wrong soon.

Redd’s tone snapped sharp, protective anger rising fast. He shifted forward, claws flexing, because every instinct in him distrusted gentleness offered without explanation, especially to Ludwig, especially here.

“Do not worry, one who shares his body with another,” the woman replied as she seemed to gaze at the entity behind Redd.

Her eyes didn’t just meet Redd’s. They seemed to look past him, through him, to something layered behind his presence. The way she spoke his condition so plainly made Redd’s skin prickle, as if a private truth had been read aloud.

“I mean you all no harm, Ludwig is my benefactor.” She said as she sighed, “But there is nothing I can do to alleviate this unless it means cutting off his own growth, he must go through this for now.”

The sigh carried reluctance, not indifference. Her words made it clear she understood exactly what Ludwig was enduring, and that interfering would cost him something important. She didn’t soften the truth, and the honesty sat strangely alongside the warmth of her voice.

She turned to the group and waved her hand. “Tea, anyone?”

Reality obeyed her gesture without resistance. Chairs simply existed where they hadn’t a heartbeat ago, the table shifting as if it had always been waiting for them. The offer of tea, spoken so casually, felt almost insulting after the brink of death, yet it also felt like a deliberate attempt to force the moment into calm.

Confusion flickered across their faces, quickly chased by suspicion. None of them sat immediately. Tull kept his posture ready. Redd kept his claws out. Alex watched her hands, as if expecting another wave to rewrite the world.

Still this woman didn’t harm them, or need to, and if she wanted to… well she simply wouldn’t have saved them from that creature.

The logic was uncomfortable but undeniable. She had intervened at the last possible instant, and whatever she was, she hadn’t done it out of necessity. That didn’t make her safe. It only made her motives important.

“Speaking of which,” the prince who had that same train of thoughts asked. “Where are we?”

Alex’s question was careful, measured. He didn’t challenge her, but he didn’t bow either. He asked because uncertainty was a vulnerability, and he’d already had enough of those for one day.

“You are in the Witch’s Forest. Near Tulmud as you call it.”

The answer landed cleanly, as if naming the place made it fixed and unquestionable. The Witch’s Forest carried its own implications, stories, warnings, disappearances, and hearing it spoken so casually made the hut feel even stranger.

The prince was confused, “That’s not possible, there are no teleportation gates anywhere near this region, and we were in the far west, deep in the kingdom of the sand…” he said.

Alex’s objection came from knowledge, not stubbornness. He knew the land, knew the systems that made travel possible. His mind reached for gates and routes and maps, and found none that could explain what had happened.

“Many things seem impossible for those who have lived but a few blinks. Drink up, we have many things to talk about…” She replied as she took a chair and sat down, drinking from a tea cup while staring at Ludwig who seemed to be fighting what felt like his inner demons.