Chapter 92: Vault of Indulgence
It should have been the end of it.
After the cold. After the bone-deep silence. After the creature in the vents that never quite showed its face but left clawed impressions in metal and memory alike. Aria had told herself that was it. That she and Selene had braved the worst of the meat vault's secrets and come out with full hands and barely scratched skin. Her dimensional storage groaned from the weight of stolen sustenance — rows of smoked meats, preserved delicacies, crates of frozen ingredients sealed with a mix of magic, grit, and discipline. They'd packed a graveyard into inventory. They'd made the abyss yield.
Selene had thought the same.
The last of the frostbitten corridors were quiet now. The generators still hummed behind rusting walls, but they no longer carried that undercurrent of menace. Just age. The air had stilled — cold, yes, but no longer watchful. No more echoes of motion in the vents. No more tracks in the ice.
But something about the stillness was too complete.
That was the first sign.
Selene felt it before Aria did. She always did.
It wasn't a sound. It wasn't even a temperature shift, though Aria was now attuned enough to notice when Selene stopped walking and her breath subtly changed.
It was the pulse.
Subtle. Rhythmic. Not loud — but precise. A vibration, soft and insistent, registering not through the ears but in the teeth, the bones. A frequency tuned for flesh. Not threatening. Not welcoming either. It felt like something was knocking from deep underground, not asking to be let out, but simply reminding the world that it still existed.
Selene's boots paused mid-step.
Aria's gaze flicked to her. "What now?" she asked, though her voice was already lowering. Tension spread down her spine like cold fingers. She didn't need an answer.
Selene tilted her head, listening to something beneath the realm of human hearing.
Again.
Always again.
They turned without a word and followed the vibration's source — down a bricked hallway half - covered in insulation foam and old tarps, a space marked in their map as a structural dead - end. Something sealed away, as if the architects themselves hadn't wanted it touched.
This corridor didn't match the rest of the facility. The walls were older, uneven, made from mismatched stone. Ivy had pushed in through gaps where the foundation cracked, twisting up along chipped concrete. The paint had peeled into sickly flakes. It smelled of dry rot and mineral water. The air felt thin, and the silence had changed — not empty, but curated. Like someone had scrubbed all sound from the world.
At the end of the passage stood the door.
Another vault.
Not like the freezers they'd already explored — those wide industrial chambers with rows of meat hooks and open - air frost. This one was compact. Square. Tightly sealed. Reinforced with layers of hardened steel. Its edges shimmered faintly — not magic exactly, but something adjacent. A technological proxy. Wards shaped by circuits instead of runes.
The digital lock blinked red from the center of the door, rimmed in frost. Still alive. Still drawing power from some long - dead generator.
Aria's eyes narrowed. "This one wasn't on the map."
"Because it wasn't meant to be," Selene murmured. She knelt beside the panel, fingers hovering above the screen.
"You think it's another food reserve?"
Selene didn't answer.
Her silence had grown heavier lately. Not cold — Aria knew her well enough by now to understand the difference. This wasn't detachment. It was… focus. Listening for something deeper than logic.
Aria knelt beside her. "It's locked. Multi-tier. Someone buried this."
Selene spoke a string of numbers. Not guessed. Remembered.
The code worked.
Aria didn't ask how she knew.
Locks disengaged with a hiss. Steam vented through the seals. The door pulled inward with the weight of hydraulic arms straining under decades of stillness.
Light poured out.
But not the blue - white glare of freezer LEDs.
This was something warmer.
Something curated.
The interior looked like no vault they had seen before. It wasn't a meat locker. It wasn't even cold.
It was… immaculate.
Polished marble tiles. Soft, ambient lighting. Shelves of dark wood inlaid with brass. Glass cases with gilded edges. The air smelled faintly of cedar and something richer — wine - soaked soil, old leather, burnt sugar.
It wasn't preservation.
It was presentation.
Aria stepped forward, breath shallow. "This is…"
She didn't finish.
Her words didn't belong here.
Every item was lit individually, encased like art. Nothing stacked. Nothing stored. Every cut of meat sat on velvet or porcelain. Each was labeled with handwritten calligraphy, some accompanied by letters or certificates — provenance, aging, processing history.
Wagyu A5, dry-aged 800 days.
Iberico bellota shoulder, massaged and sung to sleep daily.
Hand - harvested veal, raised on saffron milk.
Bluefin otoro belly, line - caught under moonlight.
Even the fish had documentation.
Aria moved down the rows, mouth slightly open. "This isn't storage. This is… curation."
Selene moved slower, eyes sharp, but distant.
"This is indulgence," she said. "A shrine."
Aria paused beside a slab of beef wrapped in lotus leaves, set on a Himalayan salt block. "For who?"
Selene's gaze swept the room. "For someone who believed the world would end… and he'd still deserve the finest dinner after."
They passed delicacies that made Aria's mind ache. Sardinian mullet roe cured in ash. Duck hearts lacquered in aged vinegar. Reindeer marrow suspended in aspic shaped like winter trees. Whole pheasant trussed in silk and brushed with gold leaf.
And beneath a shimmering glass dome — tins of caviar. Beluga, Ossetra, Sevruga, arranged like precious stones.
There were no multiples.
No replenishment stock.
Only singularities. One of everything.
It was a museum of appetite. A mausoleum of desire.
Aria ran her fingers over a jar of goose liver mousse sealed in truffle oil. "This man wasn't hoarding. He was… remembering. Immortalizing."
Selene stood at a pedestal near the back. A display unlike the others. Simpler. A single slab of Kobe tenderloin, resting on dark velvet, wrapped in bamboo leaves. It was enclosed in a clear crystal case, the note beneath it barely yellowed:
"To be opened only when the rest of the world is no longer watching."
Selene's fingers hovered above the glass. She didn't open it.
"This was never meant for survival," she said. "It was meant for defiance."
Aria turned to her. "Against what?"
Selene's expression was unreadable. "Against death. Against forgetting. Against the idea that the world could end without someone still enjoying the finest meal imaginable."
Aria nodded, slowly. "Gluttony made sacred."
"Or art, mistaken for it."
They began cataloguing.
Aria expanded her storage again — twice. The strain hit her between the ribs like a cramp, but she pushed through it. She packed the goods gently, reverently. Preserved labels. Used silk to separate jars. Lined tins like jewelry.
She found a case of Ayam Cemani eggs — black as obsidian, shimmered faintly with a sheen that looked almost alchemical. Velvet casing. Labeled: "Unbroken since collection."
A vial of pine - smoked eel marrow. A package of quail lungs stuffed with saffron rice. Everything was absurd. Everything was beautiful.
Selene lifted a tin of something wrapped in rice paper and lacquered with ink. It had no label. Only a stamp.
"What is it?" Aria asked.
Selene tilted it once. "Something no one should eat. Ever again."
She didn't take it.
Aria closed the last of her satchels and turned to the vault.
They left behind half the collection. Not for lack of space — but for principle.
Some treasures weren't meant to be looted.
Some were meant to be witnessed.
She placed her hand on the vault's control panel and let it seal.
The door hissed shut. The last echoes of cedar and memory faded as the lock engaged.
Outside, the hallway felt colder — but not in temperature.
In spirit.
The light felt cheaper. The dust more real. The silence returned, no longer curated, but ordinary. The kind of silence that always followed awe.
They walked without speaking.
And for once, it wasn't tension.
It was reverence.
And understanding.
This wasn't just about survival anymore.
It was about memory.
About choosing what to preserve, even at the end of things.
The world had burned. The future was uncertain. But someone — decades ago, maybe longer — had decided that joy mattered. That indulgence mattered. That legacy wasn't about strength, or wealth, or war.
It was about the art of the unnecessary.
Of choosing beauty when the world said there was no place for it.
As they reached the exit, Aria looked over her shoulder once.
"It feels wrong, leaving it behind."
Selene glanced back too.
"No," she said. "It feels like honoring it."
They stepped into the dark.
The vault sealed behind them with a sound like final breath.
And somewhere, in the depths of silence, decadence slept on.
Waiting for the world to remember it once existed.