Cohen stared at the dark brown square in his palm. It was unnaturally smooth—too perfect for human hands. As the heat from his fingers seeped into the substance, it began to yield, leaving dark, glossy smears on his grime-caked skin. The aroma was overwhelming. Cohen couldn't find the words. It smelled of a childhood he’d never truly had. It smelled of the South. It smelled of something impossibly, sinfully expensive.

  The Baron looked up at the Stranger. The man gave a subtle, encouraging nod, mimicking a chewing motion. "Eat," he said. A short, simple command, the meaning unmistakable.

  Overcoming a flicker of primal fear—what if this is a beautiful poison?—Cohen brought the square to his lips and bit off a small piece. At first, there was only a strange, tart bitterness. But a heartbeat later, it exploded. A wave of sweetness so rich and enveloping hit his tongue that he felt his head swim. Then, a grain of sea salt crunched between his teeth. The contrast—the sharp salt against the velvet sugar—made his senses, dull from a lifetime of bland turnips and stagnant water, scream with visceral delight.

  It wasn't just food. It was the taste of Life itself.

  Cohen swallowed without even realizing it. Instinct took over; he shoved the rest of the square into his mouth, sucking on it greedily to prolong the magic. His eyes widened. For the first time since the "White Dragon" arrived, the fear vanished, replaced by a raw, childlike wonder. He looked at Dmytro with a silent, desperate question: Where did you find the food of the gods?

  At that moment, his body betrayed him. The Baron’s stomach, empty for days, was shocked into life by the sudden hit of calories. It didn't just rumble; it let out a cavernous roar—GR-R-R-R-UUU-MMM. The sound was loud and demanding, amplified by the stone courtyard until it sounded like the growl of a hungry beast.

  Cohen froze. A flush of deep shame flooded his pale face, visible even through the layers of dirt. He was Baron Prast. The lord of these lands. A descendant of dukes. And here he stood, before a total stranger, his very guts singing a song of squalor. It was more humiliating than falling into the mud. It stripped away his last rags of pride, exposing the terrible truth: they were starving.

  Karl looked away, feigning sudden interest in a stone wall. Hans lowered his head. In the corner, Martha sobbed quietly, pressing a hand to her own stomach.

  Dmytro’s smile vanished. His expression shifted—not to contempt, but to a cold, businesslike focus. He understood. The chocolate had been a mistake. It was like giving a single drop of water to a man dying of thirst—it only sharpened the agony. They didn't need delicacies. They needed fuel. Heavy, hot, and immediate.

  Dmytro stepped forward, closing the distance. The Baron, crushed by shame, didn't even flinch. The stranger crouched down—right in the mud, with no regard for his high-tech trousers. With a broken branch, he cleared a patch of black sludge down to the cold stone.

  He began to draw. First, a square with eight wheels. His machine. He pointed to the drawing, then to the gate. "Machine," he said firmly.

  Then he drew a smaller box inside the square. Within it, he sketched simple circles—cans—an oval for bread, and a crude chicken leg. It was primitive, like a cave painting, but to a hungry man, it was a masterpiece.

  Dmytro stood up. He mimicked the motion of eating from a bowl with a spoon. He pointed to Cohen, Karl, and Martha, circling his hand to include them all. "Food. There. Lots." He used his hands to show the size of a large crate.

  Cohen watched him in disbelief. This strange, pristine man, master of the iron beast, wanted to... feed them? Just like that? No demands for gold they didn't have? No oaths of fealty?

  "Khar?" (Why?) the Baron asked softly, staring into the dark lenses of the stranger’s glasses.

  Dmytro didn't know the word, but he felt the weight of the question. He reached up and removed his glasses. For the first time, Cohen saw his eyes. They were ordinary. Human. Grey, tired, and framed by a web of fine wrinkles. There was no demonic fire there—only a deep, quiet pity. Dmytro gestured: Wait here. He put a finger to his lips, calling for silence, and gave Martha a brief wink.

  He turned and walked back toward the gate. He didn't look back at the armed men. He knew they wouldn't shoot. Not after he had heard the song of their master’s hunger.

  The gate creaked open, letting in the grey light of the dying world. Dmytro stepped through, and the door slammed shut. Cohen remained in the courtyard, clutching the gold foil of the uneaten chocolate. The sweetness in his mouth was fading, but the promise remained.

  "Will he return?" Karl asked, his voice a dry rasp.

  The Baron looked at the drawing in the mud. A square filled with food.

  "He will," Cohen said firmly. "Demons do not offer chocolate. Only men do that. Or madmen."

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Inside the Ark, Dmytro stood before the open chest freezer. A plume of cold steam washed over his face, a sharp contrast to the musty dampness of the castle. His hand hovered over a box of MREs.

  "No," he muttered. "That won't work."

  He imagined their reaction. Hermetic, olive-drab pouches with chemical markings. Inside, a grey mass. A flameless heater that hissed and spat steam like a living thing. To these superstitious people, it wouldn't look like a meal; it would look like witchcraft. The food had to be honest. Raw. Understandable. They needed to see it transform into a meal.

  Dmytro grabbed two vacuum-sealed packs of marbled beef—icy bricks of deep red meat—a container of rice, and a jar of spices. He dived into the cargo hold, retrieving a bag of charcoal and a Fenix CL30R camping lantern.

  "Humanitarian mission: Steak and Porridge," he chuckled, shouldering his backpack.

  The return trip was harder. The rotten bridge groaned under his weight, threatening to drop him into the fetid sludge of the moat. But Dmytro crossed, balancing like a tightrope walker. They were waiting for him in the courtyard—the same four, wet, shivering, their eyes burning with hungry hope.

  Dmytro nodded at the bag of coal, then toward the door that smelled of ancient soot. "Kitchen? Fire?" he asked, gesturing toward flames. Cohen understood. He waved to Martha, and the procession moved deep into the castle.

  The kitchen door opened with a prolonged groan. Dmytro stepped over the threshold and stopped dead, nearly dropping his bag. "Good God..."

  It wasn't a kitchen. It was a flooded cave. The floor of the massive room was submerged under a layer of black, stagnant water. Wood chips, rotten straw, and a dead rat floated in the gloom. To reach the hearth, one had to traverse shaky, slippery planks laid over the water. The dampness was so thick that every breath came out as steam. The walls were slick with greasy, black mold. Cooking here was madness; it was a breeding ground for pneumonia.

  Dmytro shook his head. "No. Nyet. Not here. Cold. Water." He pointed upward. "Dry place? Do you have one?"

  Cohen hesitated, but then nodded, a fresh blush of shame touching his pale face. He knew his guest was seeing the full depth of their ruin. "Maa la..." he muttered, pointing toward a spiral staircase in the corner of the courtyard.

  The climb was grim. The narrow stairs smelled of mice and damp stone. The steps had been worn into smooth chutes by generations of Prasts. Dmytro climbed, his headlamp slicing through the dark, revealing an empty pedestal, then the tattered edge of a rotting tapestry. It was the skeleton of a house. A stripped, frozen corpse.

  They entered the Small Drawing Room on the second floor. It was drier here, the floorboards creaky but solid. The windows were shuttered against the wind, though the room was a tomb of shadows, lit only by a single tallow candle stub. Steam still drifted from their mouths. Two lonely logs smoldered in the fireplace, producing more smoke than heat.

  Dmytro walked to the center of the room. "Here," he decided.

  He placed his supplies on the massive oak table, blackened by time. In the gloom, his movements were barely visible to the locals huddling by the door. Dmytro pulled the Fenix lantern from his pack and pressed the button.

  Flash. A neutral-white light flooded the room at 360 degrees. This wasn't the flickering ghost-light of a candle or the orange flare of a torch. It was steady, electric, and merciless at 650 lumens. Martha cried out, shielding her face. Hans recoiled, stumbling against the doorframe. Even the Baron squinted as if he’d been struck.

  For Dmytro, the light was normal. But here, it worked like a spotlight at a crime scene. It exposed everything: the cracked wall panels, the cobwebs thick in the corners, the greasy stains on the rotting velvet armchairs. It highlighted the grey, unhealthy skin of the people and their matted hair. This light killed the "mercy" of the shadows, exposing their raw squalor. Dmytro felt a sharp pang of pity. It was like turning on the lights in a terminal ward.

  "Sorry," he muttered, dimming the lantern to its lowest setting. The light softened, but it remained alien—too perfect for this place.

  Dmytro walked to the fireplace. With a rusty poker, he ruthlessly raked the smoldering logs aside. He tore open the bag of charcoal, pouring a black stream into the hearth. A splash of lighter fluid—the chemical scent made the Baron wince—and then a strike. Fire roared to life, engulfing the coal. Within a minute, the fireplace began to radiate a powerful infrared heat that started to dry the air.

  He returned to the table and laid down a plastic cutting board—he wouldn't let his food touch that ancient wood. He laid out the two bricks of frozen meat and drew his knife. The Benchmade steel gleamed like a predator in the lantern light. The inhabitants drew closer, like moths. Hunger was winning over fear.

  Dmytro began to shave the meat. Zip. Zip. The sound of the razor-sharp blade through the frozen beef was the only noise in the room. Shavings thin as paper fell into a pile—pink meat, white marble fat. Cohen watched the knife, mesmerized by the ease of the blade. A weapon of the gods, he thought. Or of masters who are no more.

  Dmytro scooped the meat into a pot, added water from his flask, and set it directly onto the glowing coals. Then came the rice—long, white, pristine Basmati. Not the grey, crushed husks they ate here. Finally, the spices: turmeric, red pepper, dried herbs. A cloud of aroma rose as soon as the water hit a boil.

  Dmytro stepped back, leaning his shoulder against the mantelpiece. The pot bubbled. The room grew warm. The scent of garlic and seared meat displaced the smell of mold. He looked around. Now that his hands were free, he could truly see where he had landed.

  His gaze drifted to the blackened portraits of stern men in armor. Ancestors. They looked down with judgment through centuries of dust. He saw the rotting upholstery of the heavy furniture. And the people—standing in a semicircle, staring at the pot. Martha, her face a map of wrinkles though she wasn't yet forty. Hans, the toothless scarecrow. Karl, the butler trying to maintain his dignity in a frock coat darned in a dozen places. And the Baron. A young man with fine, aristocratic features and long, dirty fingers.

  Homeless, Dmytro thought, but without disgust. Burn victims. People whose house burned down, but they keep living in the ashes, pretending the roof is still there.

  Water dripped in the corner of the room. Drip. Drip. Plop. Into a copper basin. It was the metronome of their lives.

  Dmytro shifted his gaze to the bubbling pot. The meat shavings cooked in seconds; the rice swelled. "Soon," he said into the silence.

  Cohen flinched, then looked at him. Dmytro smiled—tiredly, a bit sadly. He felt like an interloper from a world of plastic and LEDs, invading a grim tragedy. But now, watching the steam rise above the pot, he realized: this was exactly where he was meant to be.