Chapter 303: Civilization
Kael did not stay on the riverbank for long.
For a few minutes, he simply lay there, soaked from head to toe, staring up at the gray dawn as if the sky might vanish and replace itself with another ceiling of stone, blood, or Vanitas darkness. Cold river water pooled beneath him. His clothes clung to his skin. His leather armor creaked whenever he breathed. The weight of the Tower was still on him, not physically, not entirely, but in that deeper way a place carved itself into the nerves after too many moments spent one mistake away from death.
Then the smile faded.
He had the Elixir.
That meant lying around was done.
Kael sat up, pushed himself to his feet, and looked around. Most of the few people who had noticed him earlier had already moved on. A jogger on the far side of the path glanced once at his size, then pretended very hard that large wet men crawling out of rivers in leather armor were normal for early morning. And for New York, he was probably right. A cyclist slowed, reconsidered curiosity, and pedaled faster.
Good.
Kael had no interest in explaining himself.
Destination, home.
As much as he wanted to go straight to the hospital, he needed clothes. Real clothes. Human clothes. He had been wearing leather armor, old Tower underclothes, and gear that had survived monsters, forests, deserts, blood moons, sewers, and worse. The best thing he could say about what he wore underneath was that it existed. Comfort had not been a priority in the Tower. Back in civilization, however, cotton existed.
Kael was not about to let the soft feel of cotton escape him.
He started walking.
Unfortunately, walking was the only reasonable option. He had no money on him for a taxi, at least not outside his apartment. He did not own a car, and even if he had, the keys would not have followed him into the Hudson River. So he moved on foot, fast enough that the city around him felt slower than it should have. Every step carried him forward with a force he had to consciously restrain. His body wanted to eat distance, and the sidewalk was full of ordinary people with ordinary bones. He moved between them carefully, angling his shoulders, adjusting his pace, making sure he did not bump into anyone.
Most people made that easy by moving away first.
It was hard to blame them. Trying to body-check Kael now would be like stepping in front of a bulldozer and hoping civic pride would save you. He kept his head down anyway, not from fear, but from habit. The Tower had taught him that attention was expensive. On Earth, attention came with questions, cameras, guild scouts, police, or worse, heroes.
As he walked, his eyes drifted east, beyond the river.
The Tower of Trials was still there.
It rose in the distance like a wound pinned to the skyline, huge and impossible, the kind of thing humanity had somehow learned to live beside because people could adapt to anything if the rent stayed due. Kael stared at it for a while as he walked. Not with longing. Not with awe. With the cold annoyance of a man looking at a debt collector who already knew his address.
He would return there eventually.
After a month.
The thought tightened something in his chest, but he pushed it aside. A month was more than he had expected to have. A month was enough to save his mother. The rest could wait until the Tower came to collect.
Half an hour later, Kael reached home.
The building looked exactly as miserable as he remembered, which was somehow comforting and insulting at the same time. Old brick. Worn entryway. Flickering light over the mailboxes. A faint smell of damp concrete, cheap food, and too many lives stacked into too little space. Thanks to his lack of social life, not many people bothered to ask who the giant entering the building was. He had kept minimal contact with neighbors before the Tower. A nod here, a door held open there, nothing enough for anyone to recognize him now that his body had changed so much.
A few people did look.
They saw the leather armor, the heavy gauntlets, the soaked gear, and quickly made the usual calculation. Tower. Climber. Probably rich. Probably dangerous. Probably none of their business. The only confusion came from the neighborhood itself. Climbers who wore Tower gear were supposed to live somewhere better than this. They were supposed to have guild contracts, sponsorships, apartment towers with security at the door, not overpriced rooms in poorer parts of the Bronx.
Kael ignored the looks.
He climbed the stairs, reached his floor, and opened his door using the code.
The apartment greeted him with silence.
Under-equipped would have been a polite description. There was a mattress on the floor, old and low enough that calling it a bed felt generous. An old flat TV sat against one wall. A small wooden closet leaned in the corner with one door slightly crooked. The kitchen counter was barely large enough to deserve the name, and the toilet and shower were tucked beside it in a cramped space that had clearly been designed by someone who believed dignity was optional. Several letters lay scattered on the floor near the entrance, bills and documents that had slid through the mail slot while he was gone.
Things he needed to handle sooner rather than later.
He stepped over them.
Shower first.
The hot water took too long to arrive, then came too weak when it did, but Kael stood beneath it anyway and let the river, dirt, blood, sweat, and Tower stink wash off him in uneven streams. Almost immediately, he ran into a new problem.
The showerhead was too low.
Kael stared at it.
Then at his own shoulders.
Then he laughed.
It came out rough at first, then easier, because the absurdity of it managed to slip past the exhaustion. For the world, maybe only a narrow slice of time had passed since he fell into the river. For him, it felt like he had lived through a lifetime of dread, pain, training, monsters, and death. He had killed bosses, survived Vanitas twice, gained runes, nearly died under a blood moon hunt, and returned carrying a Legendary cure.
And now his shower was too short.
"Of course," he muttered, bending awkwardly beneath the water.
He cleaned himself as best he could, working out dried blood from his hair and skin, checking wounds that should have still existed but did not, and staring more than once at the unfamiliar shape of his own body. Wider shoulders. Thicker arms. Denser chest. Scars, bruises, and changes layered over him in ways he did not fully recognize yet. His hair, still that blood-red shade from the Demon King’s Fist’s influence, clung wetly around his face.
When he finished, he went to the closet.
Nothing fit.
That was the next insult.
Shirts stretched uselessly across his shoulders or refused to go over his arms. Pants barely made it past his thighs before threatening structural collapse. The only thing that fit was a pair of old unused boxers he had bought too large and never gotten the chance to return. Kael looked at the boxers, then at the rest of his old clothes, then accepted reality.
He wore the boxers and threw a coat over himself.
It was not dignified.
It was functional.
He placed everything he owned into his inventory except the rings on his ankles and arms. The apartment became even emptier. Tower gear vanished. Armor vanished. Gauntlets vanished. The few things that mattered disappeared into that impossible storage space, leaving him standing in a cheap coat, oversized boxers, and bare feet in an apartment that suddenly felt too small for the person who had returned to it.
He grabbed the money he had saved for rent.
Then he left.
Six flights of stairs waited.
Kael did not even entertain the idea of taking the elevator. Not with the amount of weight his body and hidden gear represented now. The last thing he needed was to be responsible for a building maintenance disaster before reaching the hospital. He went down the stairs quickly, almost lightly, though the old steps creaked under him with every landing.
Outside, the city had begun waking properly.
Only a few shops were open at that hour, but that was enough. Kael found one that sold basic clothes and bought what he could make work. Nothing fancy. Nothing stylish. Just enough to look presentable and not like a half-dressed escaped boss monster. Larger pants. A shirt that did not scream for mercy when he moved his arms. Socks. Shoes that were barely acceptable. He changed as soon as he could and left the coat behind in his inventory.
The haircut came next.
That part took longer than expected.
The young man who took care of his hair had more flamboyance and sass than most divas on Earth, and he treated Kael’s arrival like a gift the universe had personally delivered to spice up his morning. He circled Kael once before even touching the scissors, eyes bright with interest.
"Baby, what happened to your arms?" he asked. "You carrying buildings for breakfast?"
Kael stared at the mirror. "Something like that."
"And this hair color?" The stylist ran fingers through the blood-red strands with professional envy. "This is gorgeous. Disturbing, but gorgeous. What dye is this? Don’t lie to me. I’ll know."
"Side effect."
"Side effect of what?"
"Something I got."
The stylist leaned closer in the mirror, smiling. "Mysterious. Huge. Red hair. Terrible conversational skills. You climbed, didn’t you?"
Kael said nothing.
The stylist laughed. "Of course you did. Fine, keep your secrets. I’ll just make sure you don’t look like you crawled out of a haunted river."
He then began snipping.