The coin sat on my nightstand when I woke up. I didn't remember taking it out of my pocket.
I put it back and went to breakfast.
Tessa was there before me, which was not unusual. What was unusual was that she didn't say anything when I sat down. Just pushed a mug of coffee toward me and looked at her food.
We ate in silence for a while.
It wasn't uncomfortable. That was the thing. It should have been uncomfortable, and it wasn't; neither of us said anything about that either.
The kiss on my cheek was somewhere in the room with us, not quite present enough to acknowledge and not quite absent enough to ignore. We both knew it was there.
We were both very focused on our breakfast, but every once in a while I'd catch her eye and one of us would smile.
Kael arrived and sat down and looked between us, as he set out various metal components – the prototype. "What did I miss?"
Tessa and I spoke at once. "Nothing."
He looked at his food. "Right."
He poured himself coffee and set about his tinkering.
Hask found us halfway through breakfast.
He didn't sit down. He didn't say good morning. He just looked at us with the expression he wore when he had something to say that he would rather not have to say, and we went quiet. "Your provisional license has been formally challenged. The denial petition claims our work was careless. The guild has opened an investigation. Until it concludes, you're on suspension."
The table was very quiet. I had, in all honesty, forgotten about the provisional B-rank license we had been promised for clearing the Ebon Maw so many months ago. We had stopped asking about it after Hask had repeated, for the fifth time, that the Guild ran on red tape and anticipation.
Now I was not only being reminded of it, but was being told that it might get ripped away from us. Frustration tangled my stomach into knots.
Tessa spoke first. She always spoke first. "Why?"
Hask said nothing for a moment. "I don't know."
He did know. I was certain of it. His stillness when he said it was that of a man choosing his words rather than finding them.
Tessa's face did something complicated. She nodded once, very small, and looked at the floor.
I felt my heart break slightly.
Kael said nothing. The vein on his forehead said everything.
Alara looked at Hask with an expression I couldn't fully read.
Hask looked at each of us in turn. "You've done nothing wrong. The work you've done has been exemplary. This will be resolved."
He said it with a confidence that I did not share. "Go enjoy your time off. I'll update you when there's something to update."
He about-faced and strode formally from the mess hall.
The four of us sat there and said nothing for a long moment.
Then Tessa stood and walked away without a word, half her plate full, which was the most alarming thing she'd ever done.
I looked between Kael and Alara for an idea of what to do, and saw only my own confusion looking back at me. I looked behind me at Tessa's bright red hair retreating from us.
I shook my head and followed her out.
She was moving fast, weaving through people milling about in the hall. It looked like she was heading for the garden. I could tell from her posture that she was crying. As I struggled to keep her in my line of sight, I frantically searched for something to say when I caught up to her. Something that would help.
I had nothing.
I knew I had nothing because I was struggling to reconcile the news of our suspension in my own mind. I was furious. I was confused. I wanted to run away crying too.
But no tears fell. I just followed Tessa.
I had assumed correctly that her destination was the garden. By the time I got there, she was kneeling in front of the small pond, staring into the water. I stood at the gate, watching her for a moment. She was silent, but her shoulders were heaving.
I walked carefully across the grass, the beauty of the flowers and plants under the magical sunlight completely lost on me. I didn't speak. I didn't put a hand on her shoulder. I just sat cross-legged on the grass next to her and stared into the pond. Two brightly colored fish were darting about near the surface of the water.
I allowed Tessa to cry for several long minutes. She eventually caught her breath and sat back on her heels, brushing her hair over one shoulder and wiping at her eyes. "It's not fair, Lorne."
I nodded but said nothing. She clearly had more to say. Her voice was weak and devoid of her usual cheeriness in a way that I'd not heard before. "We've done so much work. Filed all the right reports, went through so much shit. We did everything right. And the Guild continues to spit in our faces. There's something terrible happening to the dungeons. Someone is trying to do something awful."
She took a deep breath to steady herself. "I'm not saying we need to be paraded through the city with medals around our necks, but we deserve more than being ignored and then punished."
I sighed. "You're right."
I could tell there was something else that she was struggling to express. She clenched her fists. "And on top of all this…Uncle Hask is hiding things from us. From me."
I could tell that was what was truly hurting her.
"Why would he not tell us what's going on? Does he not trust us? I'm his family." She brushed another lock of hair away from her face, and I saw the sadness on her face. It made me want to storm into Guild Administration and start swinging. I wanted to punish the ones responsible for making her feel this way.
I didn't know everything, but I knew that Hask was keeping the details of our suspension from us for a reason. He was constantly working to figure this out. To protect us.
I wanted to tell her everything: About the conspiracy, about the old, unidentified magic, about Hask possibly being a five-hundred-year-old adventurer who founded Thunder Hawk. About the Silk Runners. Everything.
But I couldn't.
And that destroyed me.
And it hurt to realize how easily the secrecy came to me. She deserved to know. So did Kael and Alara.
But it would only make things worse.
I had to keep telling myself that.
I inhaled. "We have to trust our foreman. He's never steered us wrong."
She looked over at me, her green eyes reddened from crying. "But we could help him. I know he's trying to figure this all out by himself. I'm not stupid. Kael is a genius. So is Alara. And I'm scrappy and have a can-do attitude!"
I smirked. "That's all true."
"So why isn't he utilizing us? We're a team."
I knew exactly why. "It's probably something he doesn't want us in the middle of."
"But it affects ALL of us. How is that his decision to make all by himself?"
She had a point. But Hask had, in fact, confided in someone. Me.
I remembered something Kael had said to me, on my very first day.
"Out of this whole team, I've been with Hask even longer than Tessa. I trust Hask with my life. He's the greatest man I've ever known. You'd do well to put your trust in him too."
And I did. "You're right, Tessa…but he is our foreman. We have to trust him."
She pondered that for a long second before nodding. "I do. And I trust you."
My stomach clenched. She trusted me. And I was actively betraying that trust even now. I knew the stakes involved in telling her everything, so I would not, but I felt intensely guilty.
She reached out and took my hand. I saw that some of the usual Tessa sparkle had returned to her eyes. "Thank you."
I smiled softly. "Don't mention it."
The first three days of suspension felt like three weeks. The Guild Hall was not designed for people with nowhere to go. I spent that time in the library with Alben, combat training with Hask, and wandering aimlessly in between.
Tessa threw herself into researching her magic.
Kael was seen rarely, keeping himself cooped up in our room, working on his prototype. He barely spoke. I knew how angry he was.
Alara was off doing whatever it was that she did when she had nowhere to be. I spotted her in the mess once, but aside from a brief moment of eye contact, she had ignored me.
During this time, I had plenty of space to think about our situation. Suspension, our provisional license on the line, sabotaged dungeon Cores, someone in the government with the power to keep it all buried…ancient magic…
I needed to make a move.
I was sure that Hask was doing everything he could. But I had a lead that he didn't. And on the evening of day three, I decided it was time to use it.
I snuck out of the dorm again after sundown and headed back to The Tangle. I remembered the route I had taken previously and quickly found myself back in the middle of the rundown buildings, walking over broken cobblestones.It was raining, which was a welcome change. The Empire generally had a pretty temperate climate that never got too hot or cold. It rained maybe once every couple of months, but for a day or two at a time. I was grateful for my guild-issued coat.
The poor side of the city felt different the second time. Not safer exactly — just more legible. I knew what to look for now. The couple that wasn't strolling. The beggar that wasn't sleeping. The kind of people who were somewhere for a reason they weren't advertising.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
I moved differently too. Whether that was Hask's training or something older I couldn't say.
I wasn't looking for a sigil on a flour bin this time. I was looking for a place to spend a coin.
It didn't take long to find what I needed. Tucked between two buildings that leaned against each other like old friends was a tavern that had apparently decided signage was an unnecessary expense. The door was dark wood, worn smooth, with a faint smell of ale and something smokier underneath. The kind of place that didn't need a name because everyone who needed to find it already knew where it was.
I pushed the door open and went in, pulling the soaked hood of my coat down.
It was dim inside. Not romantic dim — functional dim, the kind of lighting that made it difficult to see faces clearly from across the room, which was probably the point. A handful of patrons were distributed across the space in a way that told me they had chosen those places specifically. Nobody looked up when I came in.
The bartender was a broad woman with the expression of someone who had heard everything twice and hadn't been surprised either time. She set down the glass she was polishing and looked at me. "What'll it be?"
I placed the coin on the bar.
She looked at it. She looked at me. Something shifted behind her eyes — not surprise, just recalibration — and she picked up the coin without a word. "Take a seat."
She disappeared through a door behind the bar.
I took a seat.
I waited.
And I waited.
And I kept waiting.
After a long while of simply sitting there, I was ready to just get up and leave, knowing this chance had been too good to be true. Or that I was going to be killed the second I stood up.
Then, a voice beside me. "You used the coin."
He was simply there.
One moment the chair across from me was empty. The next, Dandy Dan was sitting in it, sans bells, sans pointed shoes, wearing plain dark clothes that had no business being on someone who had been juggling flaming swords three days ago. The smile was the same. Everything else was different. "I used the coin."
He looked at me like he was taking inventory. He was much more intimidating here in the dimly lit room. I was coiled like a spring, ready for anything, I hoped. "You're the janitor. The Unnamed City job."
"That's me."
"You're also the one who caught my swords."
"That was an accident."
Something moved behind his eyes. "Yes," he said. "It was."
He let that sit for a moment. "What do you want?"
I reached into my jacket and put the letter on the table between us. He looked at it without touching it. "Guild response letter. Read the filing number."
He did. Something shifted in his expression — small, controlled, but there. "Where did you get this?"
"They sent it to me. After my team filed a report about something tampered with in a dungeon Core."
I kept my voice even. "We've filed over a dozen reports. Got the same letter back every time. Same words. Same filing number. Different dungeons, different locations."
Dan looked at the letter again. "Before I continue — what do you already know?"
I looked at him. Fair enough. "Ancient magic. Older than the empire. No records anywhere — not guild, not scholars, not government. Whoever is doing this has access to something that predates everything we have now, and enough pull inside the guild to make sure nobody asks questions about it."
Something shifted in Dan's expression. Small. Controlled. "You've done your homework."
"I have a good foreman."
He was quiet for a moment. He looked like he was changing tack. "Alright. Here's what your foreman doesn't have."
He leaned forward slightly. "It's not just Delvenmoor. We've found the same signature in dungeons across at least three other kingdoms. The Askar Confederacy. The Southern Reaches. Possibly further. Whatever this is, it's been running across the whole continent for a long time. This isn't just an imperial problem."
I sat with that.
Three kingdoms. "Same thing with the reports? Filed and buried?"
"Different guilds, different systems. But the same pattern. Reports go in, reports disappear, nobody says anything."
He reached into a pocket and produced a flask, taking a long pull from it before continuing. "Also. The magic you mentioned. You're right. There's no official record of it. Anywhere. But we do know something about it. It comes from the Pale Wastes. Deep in the Wastes, where the land becomes entirely inhospitable. We think there's an undiscovered dungeon that no one can get to."
I blinked in disbelief. An undiscovered dungeon.
He picked up the letter. "This filing number is going to be interesting to check against."
"Keep it," I said.
He looked at me. "You came here to give me something."
"I came here because I need information I can't get through the guild. Figured bringing something was better than just asking."
"What's to stop me from simply taking this?"
I clenched my fist under the table. "You're welcome to try."
I shocked myself with that. Where had that come from? I kept my face neutral.
Dan's smile shifted. More genuine than the festival version. "Sensible and confident." He set the letter down but didn't pocket it yet. "What else have you got?"
I looked at him for a moment. "The Unnamed City. The Core had two layers of tampering. The base signature — the same one we've been finding everywhere. And something newer on top of it. A contingency. Someone went back in after the dungeon was cleared and added an instruction for monsters to respawn after the Boss died."
Dan said nothing.
"Silver Fang cleared that dungeon," I said. "Their mage is the only person in that party with the skill set to do what was done to that Core. Someone gave them an instruction, and they followed it. I don't think they knew what it was for."
The silence that followed was a different quality than the silences before it. "You're sure about Silver Fang."
"Sure enough to be sitting here saying it."
Dan picked up the letter and pocketed it. "That," he said, "is considerably more interesting than the filing number."
He leaned back. "Can I see your console?"
"Why?"
"I find you interesting. Interesting people often have interesting consoles. Humor me."
I held his gaze for a long, tense second. "Console."
The display appeared between us, casting its faint light across the table. Dan looked at it with the practiced speed of someone who knew what they were looking for. His eyes found the skills section.
They stopped.
He looked at Shadow Art: Night Step IV for considerably longer than he looked at anything else. His expression didn't change. His eyes did.
He looked up. "Interesting."
"That's all you've got?"
"For now."
He nodded at the display. "You can put that away."
I dismissed it.
The table was quiet. "One more thing," Dan said, like it had just occurred to him, which I was certain it hadn't. "Your console is unusual. But you know that."
A pause. "Might be worth looking into."
He stood, sliding the coin he had given me back across the table. "The coin gets you one more conversation. After that we'll talk about terms."
He was gone before I could respond. Not through the door. Just gone, the way he'd arrived. The chair was empty again.
I sat there for a while.
The bartender appeared and set an ale in front of me without being asked.
I drank it.
Hask's office door was open.
I heard the voices before I saw anything — two of them, low and controlled in the way of people having a conversation they had both been through versions of before. I stopped in the corridor.
I should have announced myself. I didn't.
I recognized Hask, but the other voice was unfamiliar to me. It was measured, authoritative. The voice of someone who had been the most powerful person in most rooms for a very long time. "Your team is filing reports that implicate Silver Fang in something they had no part in."
It clicked. Varkas.
Hask's response was immediate and quiet. "My team is filing accurate reports about what they found. And I know you are, in fact, involved."
"What they found is creating problems for people above both of us."
"That sounds like a problem for the people above both of us."
A pause. When Varkas spoke again, something had shifted in his voice. Still controlled. Costing more to stay that way. "You need to stand down. You and your team."
"We filed reports. That's our job."
"Your job is cleaning dungeons. Not pulling threads that don't concern you."
"You're messing with my team, Varkas."
Hask's voice was still quiet. That was somehow worse than if it hadn't been. "People who did nothing wrong. Because you can't get to me directly."
"I'm trying to keep this from becoming something neither of us can manage."
"You're punishing them for my choices. That's what you're doing."
Silence.
"You don't want to be involved in this." Varkas again. Something underneath the authority now. "Trust me."
"But I am involved. And you're making it worse for everyone."
Another silence. Longer. "This isn't about Silver Fang, Varkas."
The response took a while. The dramatic silences were driving me insane. "No, I suppose it isn't."
Hask's voice took a shift. He was still quiet, but I could hear simmering anger in his next words. "Not the first time you've pulled something like this."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
I heard a chair shift. Hask was standing. "I got to monologue recently, and I liked it. So I'm going to do it again for you right now. You've spent a very long time getting in my way. You got my last adventuring license suspended. You did everything you could to make sure I had a hard time as a Janitor. You're interfering with my kids now. And that's not close to all of it. You randomly decided to start making my life exceedingly difficult because you were angry with me."
"Why wouldn't I be angry with you? You abandoned m-"
"I decided I couldn't watch you turn into a government puppet. A lapdog for the powerful. It made you bitter. Jaded. Two-faced."
"And so that means you just walk away?"
"It means you were too far gone. I tried, Varkas. You know I did. For decades. Different parties. Different Guilds. Different names. I tried to reach you. I failed."
"Do you think I like this, Morian? Do you think I'm happy?"
"No. I wish you were."
When Varkas spoke again, the authority was still there, but something else had come up through it. Something older. "I did what I did because of you. You know that. You've always known that."
Nothing from Hask.
"I have spent five centuries trying to make it right. That has to count for something."
Still nothing.
"And now we go back to the strong, silent Hask. Well then I'm going to tell you something: you don't get to look at me like that." Varkas's voice had changed again. Quieter. More raw.
"Not after everything. Not after what you made me into."
A long beat. "She would have wanted—"
"Don't," Hask warned softly.
One word. So quiet I almost missed it, yet I could hear a terrifyingly violent threat in it. The tension was so thick it spilled into the corridor.
Hask spoke one final time. "Fix this."
"You absolute piece of – fine. Fine. I'll figure something out. Thanks for the ale."
Footsteps.
I pressed myself back into the shadow of the corridor as Varkas came through the door. His face was exactly as I remembered: sharp, arrogant, calculating. He was not wearing the silver plate armor I had seen him in previously. He wore an elegant purple tunic over silk breeches. He did still have his sword - the massive, intricate purple blade strapped firmly to his back.
He walked past without seeing me.
Or without showing that he saw me.
I waited until the sound of his footsteps had fully faded. Then I stood in the doorway.
Hask was at his desk. He wasn't doing anything. Just sitting with his hands flat on the surface and his eyes on the middle distance. The ring on his finger caught the lamplight.
A cask of Stoneguard Ale and two mugs sat on the desk.
He didn't look up when I appeared. "Callister."
"Sir."
He was quiet for a moment, then produced a third mug and filled it from the cask. He slid it across the desk. "It was Varkas."
He said it the way he said most things. Simply. Like it was a fact that existed and he was acknowledging it rather than delivering it.
I sat down and lifted the mug to my lips. "I figured."
He looked at me then. Something in his expression that I didn't have a name for and didn't try to find one. "You have something to tell me."
It wasn't a question. I decided to jump right in. "The tampering. It's not just Delvenmoor. Same signature, same buried reports, same pattern across at least three other kingdoms. The Askar Confederacy. The Southern Reaches. Possibly further. This has been running continent-wide for a long time."
Hask looked at his glass. "There's more…The magic you told me about. The one that has no record. The contact you told me about before the assembly was right about that. But it has a source. The Pale Wastes. Deep in, where the land gets too dangerous to travel. There's a dungeon out there that nobody has officially found."
Hask was very still.
Not the stillness of someone receiving new information.
The stillness of someone receiving confirmation.
He took a long drink of his ale. Set the glass down. Turned the ring on his finger once. "How long have you known?"
"I confirmed it tonight."
"Confirmed…how?"
I held his gaze. This was the man I trusted most in the world. A man who had repeatedly saved my life, encouraged me, trained me, and guided me since I first stumbled into the mess hall all those months ago. The man who was trusting me to help him protect the rest of our team. Our family.
And I still couldn't give him the answer.
The office was very quiet. Hask didn't look angry. He didn't even look disappointed. "Which tavern?"
I looked at the ale in my glass. "It didn't have a sign."