After the bath, I went looking for a banana.

  The bathing rooms had scrubbed the worst of the advancement off me. Hot water and harsh soap peeled away layers of grime, blood, and something darker that had come from deeper than skin. I had watched it slide down the drain in slow, cloudy spirals, not quite wanting to believe that all of it had come from me. Even after I was clean, the smell lingered faintly in my hair and along my arms, like a stubborn memory that refused to let go. It clung just enough to be noticeable, just enough to remind me that something inside me had changed whether I liked it or not.

  I had stayed in longer than necessary, half-submerged in the bath, letting the heat seep into my shoulders and spine at its own slow pace, waiting for it to reach places that still felt distant. It took longer than I expected for the warmth to settle in, longer to penetrate down into muscle and bone, as if my body were holding it at arm’s length. My breath hitched sooner, not from heat, but from the effort of staying upright while I waited for sensation to catch up. The strength was not there yet, not in the way I remembered it. But the awareness was. I could feel where the fatigue lived, could feel how the heat pulled at it, could feel when it was time to step away before my body betrayed me.

  Clean or not, I was hollowed out.

  Not weak, exactly. The weakness was there, yes, a heaviness in my limbs and a faint tremor when I moved too quickly, but that wasn’t the core of it. This was emptiness. A deep, gnawing hunger sat under my ribs, patient and insistent, like an animal that had curled up inside me and decided it was done waiting. It did not feel like starvation. It felt like demand.

  I dried off, pulled on clean clothes that still felt strange against my skin, and followed that hunger out into the hall.

  The dining hall was not awake. It was simply open.

  There was only one person there.

  Myrda stood near the serving counter; back turned to me as she put things away with methodical care. Crockery clinked softly as she stacked it. A ladle was rinsed, set aside. Nothing was hurried. Nothing was wasted. The space felt paused, like the hall was holding its breath between uses.

  She glanced over her shoulder as I entered.

  Her eyes flicked to my face, then to the way I moved, slow and careful, every step deliberate. She didn’t comment.

  “Bananas,” I said.

  The word came out flat, stripped down to need.

  Myrda nodded once.

  She disappeared into the back without another word. I stood where I was, hands hanging at my sides, the hunger gnawing harder now that it had been acknowledged. My body had started to shake, a fine tremor running through my legs and arms that I couldn’t quite stop. Pain lived everywhere at once, dull and constant, the kind that didn’t spike but also didn’t fade. It made it hard to think about anything except getting through the next moment.

  Myrda returned with a single fruit in her hand. She placed it on the counter in front of me, then paused, looked at me again, and went back.

  When she came out the second time, she set down the whole bunch.

  “Take as many as you want,” she said.

  I nodded, picked up the bunch, and carried it to the nearest table. The chair scraped softly as I sat. I set the bananas down in front of me and stared at them.

  The banana I had eaten in the heaven of iron had been this same kind.

  The difference was simple. That one had felt like a lesson that happened to taste good. This one was real food in my hands, real weight, real mess, the kind of ordinary that actually mattered.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  I set the bunch down and stared at it for a moment anyway, because my body was shaking and my mind was trying to keep up.

  The fruit was curved in a way that looked natural rather than designed, thick skinned, firm beneath my fingers. Seeds pressed faintly from inside when I turned it over, as if the banana kept a skeleton.

  And it smelled incredible.

  Warm, sweet, almost like honey, with something soft under it that reminded me of marshmallow even though I had no right to make that comparison.

  My hands were shaking now, not from fear, but from pain and fatigue catching up all at once. Every muscle felt wrung tight. I breathed slowly, counting it out, waiting for the tremor to ease enough that I trusted myself to hold the fruit.

  When I finally peeled it, the skin resisted more than I expected. The inside was pale and dense. I took a bite.

  Sweetness spread across my tongue, rich and deep, honeyed in a way that felt almost unreal. The texture was soft but substantial, the kind that made you slow down without meaning to. The seeds crunched, yes, but even that felt like part of the experience, a grounded reminder that this fruit belonged to a living world.

  My body reacted immediately.

  The shaking eased.

  The pain stopped taking up the whole room inside my head.

  The hunger quieted enough that I could think again.

  I ate slowly, forcing myself not to rush it, even though every instinct screamed at me to finish and grab another. When I was done, I didn’t look up. I reached for the next one and kept eating.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I felt the God of Iron, distant but unmistakable.

  Approval did not arrive as a smile or a voice.

  It arrived as steadiness.

  Like a nod I could feel in my bones, the same simple answer as the regimen itself.

  Eat. Recover. Build.

  The hunger finally receded, leaving me warm and profoundly tired. I hadn’t expected that. I’d assumed that resting while the core was being inserted would have left me energized, refreshed, ready to move.

  It turned out that dying, even briefly, was not restful.

  I made my way back to the bunkroom, steps slower now, the world feeling distant around the edges. Sounds felt muted, like I was moving through a layer of cotton. I found my new bed, the one that smelled faintly of fresh wood and soap instead of rot, and lay down.

  Sleep took me almost immediately.

  When I woke again, light was filtering in at a different angle, brighter and whiter than before. My body felt heavy in a way that felt earned rather than alarming. I blinked, disoriented, taking stock of where everything was, then focused on the shape standing directly in front of my bunk.

  The orcish boy.

  He stood there looking down at me, broad through the shoulders, tusks visible, his expression deeply unsettled, as if reality had shifted while he wasn’t looking and he was trying to decide whether to believe it. He didn’t move when I stirred. He just watched.

  “That’s not your bed,” he said.

  “Yes, it is,” I replied, still foggy, my voice rough with sleep.

  He shook his head quickly, frustration flickering across his face. “No. No, no, no. It’s where your bed is supposed to be, but that’s not your bed.”

  I sat up and glanced around. He was right. Same position. Same frame bolted into the floor. Different mattress. Different blankets. New wood where the old had been burned and carried away.

  “You’re right,” I said after a moment. “This is a new bed.”

  He exhaled in visible relief, shoulders sagging like he’d been holding his breath since he walked in. “Okay. Thank the gods. I thought I was imagining things.”

  I lay back down, oddly comforted by that. The idea that someone else had noticed the change, had been unsettled by it, made me feel less alone in my own disorientation.

  I looked up at him. “Sorry. I never caught your name.”

  He frowned at me for a moment, studying my face with open curiosity, eyes sharp and assessing in a way that didn’t match his size. “You talk funny.”

  “I get that a lot. I am a reincarnator. So, I am an adult in a child’s body.”

  “Oh,” He nodded once, apparently satisfied by the explanation. “That makes sense.”

  He relaxed visibly, shoulders dropping just a little. “I’m Koo-Tahm. But my friends call me Koo.” He hesitated, eyes flicking away, then back. “And I guess you can be my friend if you want.”

  I smiled despite myself. “I’d like that.”

  He nodded again, decision made, as if friendship were a simple thing that only required consent.

  “Why are you still here?” he asked, then tilted his head. “Koo. If you don’t mind.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “Oh, my name is..."

  He waved a hand, dismissive. “Everybody knows your name at this point.”

  I blinked. “Do they now?”

  “You’re the Great Wizard Runt,” Koo said, as if stating a simple fact of the world.

  I slapped my hand against my forehead. “Ah. Who told you that? Winnie?”

  “She told everybody,” he said. “You’re called the Great Wizard Runt. It’s a good name.”

  “That’s not my name,” I said. “That’s just what she calls me.”

  Koo frowned thoughtfully, considering this like a puzzle that deserved careful attention. “How do you get ‘Great Wizard’ as a name?”

  I slapped my forehead harder. “I’m going to have to talk to Winnie about that.”

  He watched me for a moment, then nodded, satisfied. “Still. It’s funny.”

  “It is,” I admitted. “Just not when it’s me.”

  If it had been about anyone else, I would have been laughing.