Back in the hotel room, Katrina stood in front of the full-body mirror in the white nightgown Veneri had given her earlier. The room itself was quiet and warm. Only she and Veneri were inside. Bio and Paran had given them space, which was probably for the best because this was clearly not a group conversation. Katrina kept glancing at her reflection and then at him, still not entirely used to the fact that her body was whole again. It had only been a little while since she had woken up screaming and now she was standing upright instead of an alley.
"So what are we doing in here?"
Veneri, seated near the table with one leg crossed over the other, looked up from where he had been idly sorting through notes and supplies.
"The first thing is changing your appearance permanently."
"Permanently?"
"Yes."
She frowned a little. "Why?"
"If you're going to start over, you need to abandon everything that connects you to the old life. Your name, your face, your overall look, everything. You're not Katrina anymore."
"You mean I'm changing my name too?"
"Yes. From now on, you're Yelena."
That got a small, uncertain look from her, but he had already moved on.
"Also, you don't look pretty enough yet."
Katrina turned so fast she nearly stepped out of the nightgown.
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me."
"You're very rude for someone who just saved my life."
"I'm being practical. You're starting a circus, a merchant troupe, and a new life. If you're going to be visible, you should at least choose a body that can survive the attention."
"I survived just fine before."
"By looking like a noble with good tailoring. That only works until people start hunting you down."
Katrina opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again, because annoying as it was, he wasn't entirely wrong. She huffed and looked back at the mirror.
"Fine. But I still don't like being called ugly."
"I didn't call you ugly."
"You said I wasn't pretty enough."
"That's different."
"It really isn't."
Veneri didn't bother pretending he was sorry.
"So what body appearance do you want?"
That stopped her. She turned back towards him.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean exactly what I said. I can change your body, not just your face."
She stared for a second, then looked back at the mirror again as if waiting for the joke to land.
"You can do what?"
"I can reconstruct the whole thing. Height, proportions, curves, muscle distribution, breasts, hips, thighs, face, bone structure, everything. If you want massive breasts, a bigger butt, sexy thighs, I can do all of it."
"Are you a Deity of Love or something?"
"Actually, yes. It's one of my Divinities."
In his own mind, the answer was obvious. At Seventh Enlightenment, he was practically a pseudo-deity already and his control over love-related influence was not something he felt like discussing in detail. But the answer still landed with enough casual authority to make her shut up for a second and reassess the entire conversation. Katrina looked at him with a mix of shock and suspicion.
"You said that like it's normal."
"For me, it is."
She gave him a long look, then let out a breath and turned back to the mirror. The shock gradually gave way to thought.
"Well, if I'm starting over, then I might as well do it properly. I want blonde hair. Green eyes. Skin so pale it looks like snow. And yes, I want the massive breasts, the big butt, and the sexy thighs."
He actually paused. That was enough to make her glance at him with a little smugness.
"What? You offered."
"I did not expect you to be that casual about it."
Katrina shrugged one shoulder.
"I'm not a noble anymore. I don't have to be classy."
"Fair enough, my lady."
"Also, I never really liked being lithe. It always felt too easy to overlook. If I'm going to be visible, then I'd rather be impossible to ignore. And keep the freckles. I like them."
That got the faintest lift of his eyebrows, but he agreed immediately.
"Fine. We keep the freckles."
Katrina exhaled and looked back at the mirror one more time. The new name still felt strange in her head.
"Yelena, huh?"
Veneri stood and walked over to her, stopping beside the mirror.
"If you hate it, you can say so now."
She looked at his reflection beside hers and then shook her head once.
"No. It's good."
"Good. Don't move. This will take about twenty seconds."
"Is it is that fast?"
"Only when I already know what I'm doing."
That probably should have sounded arrogant. Coming from him, it just sounded like a fact. Katrina took a slow breath and held still.
Veneri's hand moved from her shoulder to the center of her upper back. Body Reconstruction never looked dramatic from the outside when he used it properly. It looked almost peaceful, which was the strangest part. Her posture relaxed as the reconstruction began. The bones shifted first as though every piece of her frame was being measured and reassembled according to a better blueprint. Her spine lengthened by a fraction and then settled into the new alignment. Her shoulders narrowed in one place and broadened in another, giving her a more delicate look. Her waist reshaped, her hips adjusted and her own bone structure changed. The change was not a violent tear or a grotesque surgery.
Her chest changed next, fuller and heavier in shape, settling naturally into place. Her hips widened. Her thighs gained the shape she wanted. Her face followed. Her skin got pale, turning into a clean snow-white tone that made the freckles stand out beautifully across her cheeks and nose exactly as she'd asked. Her dark hair brightened from its previous shade and turned into soft blonde strands. Her eyes changed last. The irises turned a deep green. The transformation took place in less than half a minute but the speed did nothing to reduce the care.
When it was over, she blinked. She slowly looked at herself in the mirror. For a moment she said nothing.
She touched her hair first, then her cheek, then the edge of her jaw. She then looked back at the mirror with a strange expression.
"It's... it's actually me."
Veneri, who had stepped back to give her space again, gave a small nod.
"Yes. Congratulations on your beautiful self, Yelena."
She turned a little, watching how the body moved. The body looked expensive and elegant. She looked like someone who could walk into a room and be remembered, which was exactly the point.
"I asked for a lot and you just... did it."
She let out a breath that might have been a laugh if she weren't still too busy processing the fact that her reflection had changed into someone she actually wanted to see looking back at her.
"This is ridiculous. You really are a Deity."
"Oh, so now you believe that I'm a Deity after this. Yelena suits you."
She glanced at him through the mirror and gave a faint, uncertain smile.
"I guess I'll have to get used to it. I'm supposed to trust you completely, apparently."
"Yes."
"Great. So now what?"
-----
Yelena and Veneri were walking through the streets of Skazka Illyuzia when she noticed something that immediately pulled her attention away from the crowd.
A newspaper stand sat near the edge of the road, half-covered by a wooden awning with stacks of fresh copies arranged in neat bundles. The city was already busy enough to make the scene feel ordinary but Yelena slowed down anyway, squinting at the headlines. She glanced at Veneri and gave a small, embarrassed laugh.
"Can you buy that for me?"
He looked at her, then at the paper, then back at her.
"You're broke?"
"I'm broke. The restaurant owner gave me free food because my family helped his before. He helped me for a week, but I can't keep relying on people's kindness forever."
Veneri didn't answer immediately. He simply walked over and bought the paper without making a scene. Yelena took it from him with a soft murmur of thanks and opened it while they kept moving.
The headline made her eye widen.
Last Member of Zarya Family, Katrina Zarya, Killed in an Alley.
Yelena's face changed for half a second before she forced herself to keep reading. Her voice stayed low as she walked but Veneri heard every word.
They had identified the body through the state of the remains and the family records. The article described the mutilation in the same cold, detached way newspapers always did when they wanted to sound respectful. It mentioned the severed limbs, the missing eyes, the tongue removal and the autopsy findings that confirmed the cause of death had been the attack itself and the blood loss that followed. It also listed the family's remaining assets and explained, with almost insulting calm, that the last possessions of the Zarya Family had now been absorbed, squandered or seized by the other four circus families. The way it was written made it sound like a legal inconvenience.
Yelena stopped walking for a second after she finished reading, then lowered the paper.
"So that's it. Katrina Zarya is dead."
She stared at the newspaper a little longer, then exhaled and tucked it under one arm. There was something quietly strange about reading your own death in public. For a moment she just walked beside him in silence and Veneri let her have it. He had enough sense not to interrupt a person while they were processing their own disappearance.
"Now you can start anew."
Yelena looked at him, still holding the paper.
"That's a very casual way to say I've been declared dead."
"It is what it is."
"You really don't have a normal reaction to anything, do you?"
"No."
That got the smallest hint of a smile out of her.
"If you're dead on paper, then you don't exist in the usual way anymore. That gives us room. Were you taught how to manage a circus?"
She blinked, caught off guard by the sudden shift in topic. She realized that he has a habit of changing topics whenever he felt like it.
"Yes. All members of the family were. Why?"
"Because if we're starting again, we need more than an idea. We need money, supplies, labor, equipment, storage, routes and a way to make people care enough to come see the circus."
"I know. I don't want to rely on you."
He made a soft sound that was almost a scoff.
"I'm not going to loan you money or hand it over and pretend that counts as building something."
"Then what are you doing?"
He looked ahead at the street while they walked.
"Helping in a way that doesn't ruin the point. Tell me, what do circuses need most?"
Yelena answered automatically, because that was still the part of her that knew exactly how to think.
"Performers. Stage equipment. Transport. Tents. Food. Audience appeal. Safety. Money."
"That's a lot."
"It is a circus."
"Yes, but what do they need the most?"
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
"A venue."
"Close, but not the first thing."
She frowned harder now.
"Then what?"
"People. A circus without people is just cloth, wood, and delusion. You need a troupe. A core group, to be specific. Performers, managers, handlers, cooks. Oh, and someone who knows how to keep the whole thing moving without you being there."
"That would still require money."
"Of course it would."
"You have millions of Isuone. If you're a Deity you must have a lot."
"And I'm not just giving it away."
"Why not?"
"Because then you'd be building with my money instead of your own work."
The two of them kept moving through the street. Skazka Illyuzia had the strange, peaceful energy of a city built around performance and trade. The late morning light made the wide roads and Russian-style facades look softer than they had in the evening. People walked past them with baskets, crates and folded cloth. A few looked at Yelena with curiosity. A few looked at Veneri. He ignored all of it.
Yelena looked down at the newspaper again and then asked more quietly.
"So what now?"
Veneri's answer came after a short pause.
"Now we build."
"You make that sound simple."
"It isn't simple. I don't need food the way you Immortals do. I don't need money in the normal sense either. I already have plenty. If I wanted, I could hand you resources and make this easy. But that would defeat the purpose."
"Because you want the circus to grow properly."
"Yes. Also, there's something restricting me. Destiny and Fate. The stronger one gets, the less influence they have over lesser beings. It's like that with Divinities too. You start caring less about the common life around you, and the Primordial forces begin tightening around the paths that matter. Fate and Destiny especially."
Yelena listened without interrupting.
"Controlling Fate or Destiny is something only very powerful beings do at a small scale. My Fate lets me alter other people's Fate if I'm involved with them. That's part of why so much of my life has turned out the way it has. Helping you more isn't hard. I could give you abilities. I could give you money. I could probably do both. But if I push too far, whatever's regulating this starts interfering more. So I'm letting you grow into it. Also, I already helped. I saved your life. I gave you a body. I gave you a name. That's enough to start."
That made her look away for a second. She folded the newspaper in her hands.
"So you're just going to stand back and watch?"
"For now."
"Why?"
"Because I want to see what you do. I'm still going to help you, just not as much as you think."
He was giving her the chance to prove that the circus would be hers in more than name and that meant he was treating her like someone capable of carrying the future instead of someone who needed to be carried through it. Yelena looked down the street ahead of them, then back at him.
"You're really not going to make this easy."
"No."
She sighed, but there was no real complaint in it now.
"Fine. Then we start with people."
"Good. That's the right answer. And I know where to begin. Follow me. I just got a message from Bio. I think she found one of the members you need."