Byung pushed open the door to his chambers and stopped just past the threshold. Dust hung thick in the air, visible in the light coming through the shuttered window. A fine gray layer covered everything—the wooden table, the chair, the sleeping furs piled in the corner. The room looked exactly as he had left it weeks ago, completely untouched. No one had come in to clean or straighten things. He didn't find that surprising. They couldn't enter without permission, and they shouldn't. This space belonged to him alone.
He stepped inside and let the door swing shut behind him. The dust didn't bother him. His body had endured far worse. He'd been torn apart and rebuilt in that prison world beneath the settlement. He'd felt bones break and mend. He'd survived drinking the blood of something ancient and dark. Dust was nothing compared to all that.
