"Aurora, my sweet girl, are you all right?"
The old woman had barely stepped inside before she swept the little girl from the sofa into her arms.
"I'm okay, Grandma. The uncle over there saved me."
The little girl wriggled a little in her grandmother's embrace, then lifted a small hand and pointed at Bruce across from them.
The old woman kissed her granddaughter's forehead, visibly shaken, then finally turned toward Bruce.
After giving him a quick look, she stepped forward and placed a hand over her chest.
"Fidel told me what happened on the way back. Sir, you risked your life to save my granddaughter. Please accept the most sincere gratitude of the Lucero family."
The whole family stood there with the same solemn, heartfelt expression.
Bruce got to his feet at once.
"You really don't need to..."
He stopped and sucked in a breath.
The movement had pulled at his wounds.
"Aika, give me the kit."
After taking the black medical box from the younger woman, the old lady walked over and sat beside him.
"Let me treat those cuts."
Bruce nodded and let her.
She opened the kit and began laying out what she needed. Bruce noticed right away that there were not many standard Western medicines inside. Most of it was made up of bottles and jars in different colors, each with handwritten labels he could not read.
First she cleaned the dirt and grit from around his wounds with water.
Then she selected a small brown bottle, about the size of a baby's fist, pulled the stopper, and carefully shook a pale gray powder over the torn skin on his elbow.
A cool sting spread through the wound almost immediately.
"This is a healing powder our people make ourselves," the old woman said as she worked. "It stops bleeding well and helps the skin recover quickly. In a week at most, your elbow should look as good as new."
"Thank you," Bruce said.
She shook her head. "No. We're the ones who should be thanking you. If we had lost Aurora tonight, this family would have lost its reason to keep going."
With practiced hands, she wrapped his elbow in white gauze, neat and secure.
By the time she finished, Fidel stepped forward holding a gray shirt.
"Mr. Guo, your clothes are torn up and dirty. Please, change into this for now. Don't worry, I just bought it at the supermarket. I haven't worn it."
Bruce looked at the shirt, then at the sincerity in the man's eyes, and accepted it with a nod.
He did not want to reject genuine kindness, and his own T-shirt really was a mess by now, dirty, ripped, and stained with blood.
After thanking them, he changed.
The shirt was clearly too small for him. On a man Bruce's size, what had probably fit someone around five-nine normally now looked absurdly tight. It clung to his frame like a cropped fitted top, making him look faintly ridiculous.
Bruce caught sight of himself in the mirror and twitched a little at the corners of his mouth.
Still, ridiculous beat bloody.
"Thank you again for bandaging me up," he said. "It's getting late, so I should probably head back."
All he wanted now was to get back to the hotel and change out of the shirt before anyone else had the chance to see him in it.
Fidel stepped forward at once.
"Please wait, Mr. Guo. We've prepared dinner. Stay and eat with us."
The old woman added gently, "Please let us thank you properly."
Bruce hesitated, then nodded.
At that point, refusing would have felt rude.
Once they brought him outside, they led him to the fire.
Word had clearly spread. The people gathered around the campfire already knew he had saved Aurora, and every Romani face that turned toward him carried an unusual warmth.
His plate was soon piled with roasted beef, wine, and several traditional dishes. The food lacked the polish of a Michelin kitchen, but sitting under the night sky, eating by the fire while watching the dancers move to music that felt somewhere between folk rhythm and flamenco, the whole thing had its own kind of charm.
By the time the meal ended, it was already deep into the night.
Bruce stood and prepared to say goodbye.
"Please wait."
Fidel stopped him again.
Bruce was about to ask why when the crowd around the fire began parting down the middle.
Supported by two middle-aged Romani women, an elderly woman slowly approached.
She wore a light gray robe, with colorful ribbons tied around her head. The skin on her face looked dry and deeply lined, like old orange peel. She seemed close to a hundred years old.
What stood out even more was the way everyone around her responded.
Every Romani person nearby lowered their head as she passed. The respect in the air was unmistakable.
When she finally stopped about three feet in front of Bruce, he met a pair of cloudy yellow eyes that somehow still carried a strange, penetrating clarity, the kind that only came from a lifetime of seeing too much.
"I heard what happened to Aurora," she said. "Thank you, child."
Bruce straightened instinctively.
Whether out of politeness or respect for age, his tone turned especially careful.
"You're being too kind."
The old woman studied him from head to toe, then gave a small, satisfied smile and gestured to someone nearby.
A table covered in red velvet was quickly brought over from the largest caravan in the center of the camp, along with two cushioned wooden stools.
"Please," she said. "Sit."
Bruce had no idea what this was about, but he sat anyway.
Then, under the watch of half the camp, the old woman reached into her sleeve and removed a small pink embroidered pouch.
From that pouch, she drew a beautifully made tarot deck.
Bruce knew a little about tarot.
In his previous life, he had heard plenty about it, usually as the Western equivalent of classical divination in the East. In this life, he had also inherited some of Bruce's vague memory of playing around with tarot. He knew the broad basics, the twenty-two Major Arcana, the fifty-six Minor Arcana, and some of the standard meanings, but only in a loose, surface-level way.
The old woman handed the pouch to the middle-aged woman standing beside her, then brought both hands together and began to shuffle.
For someone whose body looked so old and fragile, her hands were astonishingly steady.
Strong, precise, and fast.
There was nothing shaky about them at all.
"Child," she said, her eyes fixed on him, "as a sign of our people's gratitude, I will read the cards for you once. Close your eyes. Empty your mind. And when you feel the moment is right, open them and draw three cards from this deck."
Bruce met her gaze.
Her eyes were startling, dark and clean like a child's in one instant, then impossibly ancient the next.
He nodded.
In both lives, he had always carried a certain respect for anything he could not fully explain.
He drew in a slow breath, closed his eyes, and let the noise around him fade.
After a while, when his thoughts had settled and the stray distractions in his mind had finally gone quiet, he opened his eyes and pulled three cards from the spread.
The old woman turned them over one by one.
"The Emperor. Death. Wands."
Bruce's pupils tightened.
He recognized them immediately.
The old woman looked up. "What do you want to ask?"
Bruce thought for a few moments, then answered with unusual seriousness.
"The future."
It was a broad question, almost absurdly broad, but the old woman did not refuse.
She simply nodded and lowered her eyes to the three cards.
As the seconds passed, her expression changed.
Her brows drew tighter and tighter together. Her deeply lined face seemed to compress into itself, until the wrinkles across it made her look almost fierce.
Then she murmured, more to herself than to anyone else, "Why does it look like this? Death... or rebirth?"
Bruce felt something in his chest jolt.
No one in the world understood better than he did why that phrase hit so hard.
The old woman stared at the cards for a little longer, then silently slid them back into the deck and began shuffling again.
This time, the method was different.
"Draw again," she said.
Bruce nodded and did as he was told.
The moment the three cards were revealed, his eyes narrowed sharply.
The same three.
Again.
The Emperor. Death. Wands.
Only this time, the order had changed. Now it was the Emperor, Wands, then Death.
Bruce's mind went cold.
What is this?
Is there really something out there? Something beyond coincidence?
The old woman said nothing.
She simply gathered the cards, reshuffled, and asked him to draw a third time.
Bruce did.
And for the third time, the same three cards appeared.
Now Death came first, with the Emperor and Wands behind it.
Three draws.
The same three cards every time.
At that point, calling it chance felt weak even to Bruce.
He could also feel the shift in the people around him. The Romani watching from nearby were no longer just curious. There was shock in their eyes now.
The old woman looked at the cards in silence for a long time before finally speaking.
"Within death and rebirth, I see immense power and wealth. But the gods have veiled your fate. I cannot see it clearly. I cannot read the whole of your path. I can only give you fragments, and those fragments will have to serve as our people's thanks."
Bruce looked at the exhaustion now visible on her face and said at once, "That alone is more than enough. Thank you for doing this."
She smiled faintly and inclined her head.
Then she turned to an elderly man nearby.
"Kong Sang. Go to my room. Bring me what's tucked inside the very back of the bottom shelf of the medicine cabinet."
The old man, probably in his sixties or seventies, froze for a moment.
He looked as if he wanted to object.
In the end, he swallowed whatever he had been about to say, turned, and left the crowd.
A short while later, he returned carrying a ceramic bottle about the size of an adult hand, marked with dark red patterns across its surface.
The old woman took it from him.
Someone beside her handed over a small cup, no bigger than a liquor shot glass.
She removed the stopper and poured a thick purple-red liquid into the cup.
Then she offered it to Bruce.
"This is one of our people's secret medicinal wines," she said. "Drink it. It will help your wounds heal. Think of it as part of our repayment."
Bruce accepted the cup and looked down at the liquid inside.
He hesitated.
There was no way to know what it really was.
But when he lifted it closer, a strange scent reached him, elegant, slightly unusual, but somehow deeply enticing. The effect was immediate. The dull fatigue in his body seemed to clear at once, and for reasons he could not explain, he suddenly wanted to drink it.
He glanced around.
Dozens of eyes were on him.
What caught his attention most was the expression in many of the men's faces.
Envy.
Not suspicion. Not concern.
Envy.
Bruce was smart enough to understand the implication immediately.
Whatever was in this cup, it was not ordinary.
At that point, he stopped hesitating and threw it back in one swallow.
The liquid slid down cool and smooth.
A second later, warmth spread from his stomach through the rest of his body, flowing into his limbs in a way that felt almost luxurious. The soreness and impact pain left from throwing himself across the pavement seemed to ease almost at once.
Bruce lowered the cup.
"Thank you," he said, and meant it.
The old woman smiled.
Then she spoke again, her tone low and deliberate.
"After you leave here, go twelve kilometers east. There is a bar there called Black Rose. Wait twenty-five minutes in the alley to the right of the entrance. The luck arranged for you will arrive there."
Bruce stared at her for a moment.
Her smile was hard to read. So were her words.
Still, after everything that had just happened, he nodded.
"Understood. Thank you. I'll take my leave."
"Fidel," the old woman said, "see our guest out."
"Yes."
As soon as Bruce was gone, the elderly man who had fetched the bottle could no longer hold himself back.
"Mother, why did you give him Angmar?"
The old woman turned to him calmly. "You object?"
"Of course not. We Romani are never stingy with those who save one of our own. But once Angmar takes effect, if there's no woman with him..."
She cut him off with a wave.
A mysterious, almost chrysanthemum-like smile spread across her wrinkled face.
"Did you forget the last thing I told him?"
The old man still looked uneasy. "But what if he doesn't understand? What if he doesn't follow your instructions?"
"He will," she said with certainty. "I may not be able to see through his fate, but I can see enough of the man himself. He will do exactly as I said. His curiosity is too strong. So is his need for control."
The old man was quiet for a moment, then slowly nodded.
Still, he could not help asking, "But Angmar does more than just that..."
"There's no need to worry," the old woman said lightly. "He'll be fine. Besides, by the time I was nineteen, I already had all of you..."
.........
Honestly, this chapter is bizarre. I nearly cut the supernatural parts out because they made no sense, but I changed my mind at the last second. Enjoy the nonsense
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