Chapter 236: Special - — Every moment matters.

Chapter 236: Special Chapter— Every moment matters.

The cart rattled over an uneven muddy road.

Clara slept curled against the wooden side, her cheek pressed to the rough grain, her fingers clutching the velvet pouch Eren had given. She was still wearing the ornamented gown of a courtesan.

She hadn’t changed it.

It was the only proof that the night had been real, that she hadn’t imagined the flames, the boy with blue eyes who’d told her to live.

Warm, golden sunlight poured through the canvas flap.

She woke slowly, blinking against the brightness, her body tensing automatically for the familiar aches—the bruises, the soreness, the hollow pain of being used. But they weren’t there. There was only the gentle sway of the cart, the distant song of birds, and air that smelled of grass and rain.

Not alcohol. Not perfume masking sweat. Not the copper stink of fear.

Just... morning.

"Hey, lady," the driver’s voice called back, weathered and kind. "You sleep well?"

Clara nodded, resting her hand on the cart’s edge as she peered out at the passing world. Green fields stretched to the horizon, damp with dew, the sky above impossibly wide and achingly blue. She’d forgotten how big the world was, how it could look when not viewed through barred windows.

"Slept well," she said calmly. "Better than I ever have."

The old man chuckled. "Good. You looked like you needed it."

A few minutes later, the cart slowed, then stopped. Clara stepped down onto a muddy road—red earth, thick and clinging, the kind she’d walked as a child before she was sold to the brothel. The sensation hit her like a blow: the suck of mud against her boots, the resistance, the ground holding her up rather than trapping her.

The old man pointed down a path that wound between wildflowers. "That way. The ocean’s just over the ridge. It’s still morning. The view’s damn beautiful, if I do say so."

Clara’s breath caught. She turned to him, fumbling with the pouch, pulling out more gold than he’d earn in a year. "Thank you. For this. For—"

He held up his weathered hand, refusing the coins with a shake of his head. "Keep it, miss. Be careful with that, though. World out here ain’t kind to folk carrying heavy purses. Lots of eyes, lots of hands that take what ain’t theirs."

Clara looked at the gold, then at the path, then at the sky. She smiled, with teeth and everything, the first in sixteen years.

"It’s better," she said softly, "than the world I lived in."

The old man studied her for a moment, seeing something in her face that made his own expression soften. He touched his cap, nodded once, and snapped the reins. The cart rolled away, leaving her alone with the road and the wind and the distant sound she’d only ever heard in dreams.

She walked.

The rhythmic sound grew louder with each step. The crash and sigh of water against stone, the cry of gulls, the whisper of sand shifting underfoot. Her legs trembled as the path crested, as the world opened up before her.

The ocean.

It stretched to the edge of the world, an endless sheet of deep blue that moved, breathed, and sang. The sun sat low on its surface, painting everything in gold and rose and impossible light, and Clara felt her knees weaken.

She left her boots on the path.

The heavy brocade of her courtesan’s dress dragged through the foam, but Clara didn’t give a damn.

She walked straight into the incoming tides.

With every step, the wet sand yielded under her bare arches, the undertow gently tugging at her feet like a curious child coaxing her forward. Then came the cold—sharp, clean, and electric. It hit her ankles first, sending a shiver up her spine, washing away the phantom grime of sixteen years of captivity.

She quickened her pace, wading deeper until the frothing surf rose to her knees, then her waist.

A swelling breaker rolled in, bursting against her chest and spraying cold, crystalline droplets across her face and into her hair. Clara gasped, throwing her hands up in an instinctive, clumsy attempt to deflect the spray, only to get drenched.

She giggled.

Not the practiced, seductive chuckle meant to stroke the fragile vanity of fat nobles, but the pure laugh of an eight-year-old playing hooky in the rain.

She wiped her lips with the back of her wet wrist, catching the taste on the tip of her tongue.

"Ohh Gods... it really is salty," she murmured aloud, laughing into the wind. "Those bastards weren’t lying."

She splashed forward, scooping up smooth shells tossed onto the sandbanks, letting the pearl gleam against her dripping skin. Lifting her head, she looked out at the horizon where the morning sun climbed steadily into the heavens.

It was, without a shadow of a doubt, the most magnificent thing her eyes had ever witnessed.

"Thank you," she whispered.

She laughed again, spinning once in the water, her soaked gown billowing around her like blooming petals.

She laughed because the sky was too wide to contain it. She laughed because she was standing under the open sun. After all, her skin belonged to her, because she was breathing air that wasn’t borrowed from a customer’s payment.

This was the quiet, desperate prayer whispered into damp pillows in the dead of night. The impossible daydream she had buried beneath layers of numb obedience, convinced that freedom was a myth.

And then, somewhere between the laughter and the crash of the waves, the dam broke.

Hot tears spilled over her lashes, burning against the chill of the seawater soaking her cheeks. Her bright giggles broke, turning into ragged, heaving sobs that shook her entire frame.

She pressed her wet palms over her face, trying desperately to scrub the tears away, but they wouldn’t stop. They poured out like an ocean of their own. She had abandoned all hope so long ago, letting her soul rot behind a painted porcelain smile.

Yet all it took was one crazy night.

One terrifying, completely unhinged boy with blue eyes and an infuriating smirk who had kicked the doors off their hinges, burned down her gilded cage, and told her to go find the ocean. She didn’t even know his real name. If she saw his true face tomorrow, she probably wouldn’t recognize it.

But he had handed her the world anyway.

Clara sank until the foamy surf lapped against her shoulders, clutching her chest where her heart hammered.

"Thank you..." she sobbed into the roaring gale, letting the tears fall freely into the endless sea. "Thank you for everything... I want to live. I want to love... I actually want to love my life. Thank you."

****

[Alert!]

[You altered a fate from bad ending!]

[Fates changed: 860]

The voice of the system in his mind jolted Eren awake, his blue eyes staring at the clear blue sky with no single cloud.

The thing under his head felt soft, warm, something familiar. And two mounds of hills blocked half his vision.

"You finally woke up, Eric," a smooth melodic voice he would never forget in his life greeted him.