Chapter 88: The Weight of Gratitude
It was already late when I finally drifted into a shallow, restless sleep in my assigned room at the inn. The horrors of the goblin cave played on a loop behind my closed eyelids, a silent, screaming slideshow of blood and despair. I acted as if I were asleep when Eren returned, the sound of his quiet, measured breathing a strange counterpoint to the chaos in my own mind. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to explain. I just wanted the silence.
In the morning, I woke to the familiar, rhythmic scrape of steel on whetstone. Eren was already up, bathed, and dressed, his back to me as he sat on the edge of his bed, meticulously polishing the blade of his family’s ancestral sword. The morning light, filtering through the small, grimy window, caught the silver of his hair, making it seem to glow.
He must have sensed me stirring, because he paused, his movements ceasing for a moment. "Morning," he said, his voice a low, quiet rumble that was a stark contrast to his usual boisterous energy. "The village head was searching for you earlier."
I simply grunted in response, my own body a symphony of aches and phantom pains.
"And the village," he continued, his gaze still fixed on his blade. "They all want to thank you."
"I don’t need any of that," I said, my voice a rough, gravelly thing as I swung my legs over the side of the bed. "Just tell them if they want to thank me, they can do it in terms of money."
He was quiet for a long, heavy moment. Then, he simply nodded and returned to his work.
When we descended to the inn’s common room for breakfast, the rest of our team was already there, a tense, silent tableau around a large, rough-hewn wooden table. The air was thick with unspoken questions, with the shared, traumatic memory of what we had all witnessed.
Layla, ever the commander, was the first to speak. "Ashen," she began, her voice carefully neutral, "the villagers are... incredibly grateful. They’re already preparing a small ceremony in our honor."
"I’m not interested," I said, my gaze fixed on the bowl of porridge before me.
"They see you as a hero," Aurelia added, her own voice a soft, hesitant murmur.
"I’m not," I replied, my voice a low, dangerous growl.