The relative anonymity of the Market District offered less sanctuary than a single flickering candle against a hurricane. Rain, driven by a relentless wind that moaned through the high eaves of the covered market stalls, continued its assault, turning the cobblestones into treacherous, obsidian mirrors that reflected the sputtering gaslights and the anxious, blurred faces of the few remaining stragglers. Elara huddled deeper into the damp, shadowed recess of a shuttered textile merchant's stall, the rough-spun canvas smelling faintly of lanolin and mildew. A violent shivering seized her, a palsy born less from the penetrating cold of her soaked cloak and more from the bone-deep chill left by the Void-tainted energy blast – a coldness that felt like the grave itself had breathed upon her. Her breath hitched in ragged, painful gasps, each inhalation tasting of wet wool, desperation, and the lingering, acrid phantom of decay.
They knew her. The Archivist. The empty, rasping voices echoed in her memory, devoid of humanity. They wielded magic forbidden even by the most liberal interpretations of Guild law, a magic that felt like the antithesis of life itself. They were hunting her, hunting the scroll, hunting the truth it represented. Every elongated shadow cast by the struggling gaslights seemed poised to detach itself, to coalesce into one of those unnerving, grey-cloaked figures. Every distant shout, every clatter of a closing shutter, sounded like the scraping prelude to another attack. The meticulously ordered, predictable structure of her life, the life she had so carefully constructed within the hallowed, silent walls of the Great Archives, hadn't just cracked; it had imploded, leaving only ruins and raw terror.
The Archives, her haven for three years, the place where she felt most herself amidst the quiet company of history, was now irrevocably compromised. They knew she worked there. They had waited for her there. Returning felt like walking willingly into a predator’s den. The City Watch, the uniformed symbols of Eldoria’s vaunted order? Useless. Worse than useless. Who among them would believe her frantic, half-coherent story of ancient scrolls, cosmic prisons, Void-wielding assassins, and invisible resonance? They would see a hysterical, rain-drenched young woman, likely assume she was drunk or drugged, perhaps detain her for disturbing the peace. Their investigation, if any, would be cursory, bureaucratic, and might inadvertently alert the very forces she fled. She couldn't shake the chilling possibility, planted by the scroll's implication of ancient deception, that Eldoria's established structures might themselves harbor hidden corruption, blind eyes turned willingly away from inconvenient truths. And her small room above the baker's shop? Home? Unthinkable. If they could identify her near the Archives, tracking her modest lodgings would be child’s play for entities capable of wielding such power.
She pressed her forehead against the cold, damp brickwork of the stall, a wave of utter, soul-crushing despair washing over her. Utterly alone. Hunted by forces she couldn't comprehend. Possessing knowledge that felt like a physical weight, a brand searing her soul. What could she possibly do? She was Elara Vanya, junior scribe, skilled in deciphering archaic scripts and applying classification runes, not fighting shadow-spawned horrors or navigating the treacherous undercurrents of a city suddenly revealed to be far darker than she had ever imagined. The impulse to simply curl into a ball in the shadows, to surrender to the rain and the fear, to let the inevitable happen, was a siren song of exhaustion and hopelessness.
But then, the memory, vivid and visceral: the sickening green flare of the Void-blast, the *wrongness* of it, the feel of reality itself recoiling from its touch. A flicker of something other than fear – cold, sharp anger – sparked within the hollow space of her despair. Those grey figures, those empty voices, they represented the very darkness the scroll warned against, the consuming void that threatened everything. They operated with impunity within Eldoria’s heart, wielding power that mocked the kingdom’s carefully constructed order. Giving up now meant letting them win. It meant letting the truth remain buried beneath layers of official history and deliberate obfuscation while the world slid unknowingly towards annihilation. It meant betraying the desperate plea that had echoed across centuries from the shimmering ink of the scroll: *Reforge or be unmade.*
No. She wouldn't just lie down and be unmade. Defiance, fragile but fierce, straightened her spine. She needed help. Not the sanctioned, rule-bound help of Eldoria’s official channels, but help from the other side of the city's carefully polished facade. Help from the shadows, from those who navigated the city’s murky undercurrents, those who understood dangers the authorities preferred to ignore, or perhaps, were complicit in concealing. Her mind, trained to sift through vast quantities of information, frantically scanned her limited experiences and the repository of secondhand knowledge gleaned from hushed conversations and archived anecdotes about the city's less reputable districts.
The docks. The Undercroft markets beneath the Grand Concourse. The smog-choked lanes of the Lower City near the foundries. Places where the reach of the City Watch was tentative, where Guild regulations were openly flouted, where mercenaries, smugglers, information brokers, and adventurers of dubious character congregated. Individuals who traded skill-at-arms, forbidden knowledge, and questionable expertise for hard coin, their loyalties often as shifting as the river fog.
And then, the memory surfaced, clear and distinct: Old Man Hemlock. The one-legged ex-sailor who supplemented his meager dockhand pension by carving intricate little wooden birds near the riverfront archives annex. Elara often shared her lunchtime bread and cheese with him, listening to his rambling, often contradictory stories of distant ports and fantastical sea creatures. He spoke little of his own past, but possessed a shrewd, cynical understanding of Eldoria’s hidden workings, the flows of power both legitimate and illicit. Once, after she’d spent half an hour patiently deciphering a water-damaged, near-illegible shipping manifest the overworked harbormaster couldn’t be bothered with – saving Hemlock from a potential fine – he’d fixed her with his one good eye, surprisingly sharp beneath bushy grey brows. *"Got a good head on yer shoulders, lass,"* he'd rasped, carefully packing his carving tools. *"Too good for dusting off old papers, maybe. But listen close. This city ain't all polished stone and fancy words. Got teeth, sharp ones, hidden underneath. If ever you find yourself tangled in nets the Watch won't touch, or worse, nets they *helped* cast… ask for the Mug down Wharfside. The Cracked Mug. Tell 'em Hemlock said… nah, don't tell 'em nothing 'bout me. Just ask 'round quiet-like for someone who deals in trouble. But mind yer purse, lass. And watch yer back twice. Wharfside eats the unwary."*
The Cracked Mug. It felt like grasping at smoke, a desperate gamble based on cryptic advice from a man she barely knew, offered months ago under entirely different circumstances. But it was the only thread she possessed, the only potential path leading away from certain doom. Pulling her hood lower, trying to make her rain-soaked figure blend into the thinning throng of late-night workers and hard-luck stragglers seeking shelter from the storm, Elara forced her trembling legs into motion. She hugged the shadows, moving with a newfound, fearful caution, navigating the warren of increasingly narrow, ill-lit streets leading towards the river district.
The character of the city shifted dramatically as she moved away from the relative grandeur of the central quarters. Polished granite gave way to soot-stained brick, ornately carved facades dissolved into sagging timbers plugged with tarred rags, and the carefully spaced gaslights became fewer, farther between, casting deeper, more menacing shadows. The air grew heavier, thicker with the smells of the river – brine, damp earth, rotting vegetation – overlaid with the acrid bite of coal smoke from the nearby industrial district and the unmistakable stench of poorly managed refuse. The few people she passed here moved with a different energy too – hurried, wary, their faces often obscured by hoods or downcast gazes, avoiding eye contact as much as she did. This was the Eldoria beneath the veneer, the working underbelly the city preferred to ignore.
Wharfside, when she finally reached it, felt like another world entirely. The relative order of even the rougher merchant districts evaporated into a chaotic jumble of massive, blind-walled warehouses looming like sleeping giants, cheap, noisy taverns spilling drunken shouts into the rain, ship chandlers displaying rusty anchors and frayed ropes, and cramped, leaning tenements stacked precariously over narrow, garbage-strewn lanes that likely hadn't seen sunlight in decades. The air hummed with a raw, untamed energy, a volatile mixture of hard, dangerous labor, illicit dealings, simmering resentment, and the constant, gnawing edge of desperation. Figures lurked in doorways shrouded in shadow and suspicion, their faces momentarily illuminated by the lurid, flickering glow spilling from tavern windows. The creak of damp wood, the groan of mooring lines, the distant clang of hammers on metal from a riverside forge, the lap of unseen water against slimy pilings – it formed a disquieting symphony of the city’s forgotten edge. Elara clutched her satchel tighter, the small weight of her coin purse feeling pitifully inadequate against the perceived threats on every side. She tried to project an air of purpose she didn't feel, keeping her head down, navigating treacherous puddles filled with unidentifiable liquids, praying she didn't look like easy prey.
Finding The Cracked Mug took time. Wharfside addresses were notoriously fluid, landmarks prone to sudden disappearance or transformation. She finally located it, tucked away down a particularly narrow, lightless alley between the sheer, windowless brick wall of a crumbling salt warehouse and a dubious-looking shop specializing in what appeared to be salvaged nautical charts and suspiciously well-preserved driftwood carvings. Its sign, a crude wooden carving of a tankard split dramatically down the middle, swung on rusty hinges, creaking a mournful rhythm in the wind and rain. No welcoming light spilled from its grimy, leaded-glass windows, only a dim, flickering, amber glow suggesting minimal illumination and maximal shadow within. Hesitation seized her again. Could she really walk into such a place? Could she trust Hemlock’s cryptic advice? But the memory of the Void-blast, the chilling emptiness in the grey cloaks' voices, propelled her forward. Taking a deep, shuddering breath that did little to calm the frantic butterfly wings of terror in her chest, Elara pushed open the heavy, water-warped door and stepped inside.
The assault on her senses was immediate and overwhelming. A physical wave of noise, heat, and smells washed over her. Thick, acrid pipe smoke mingled aggressively with the pervasive reek of stale ale, unwashed bodies, cheap, cloying perfume attempting to mask other odors, frying grease, damp wool, and something else, something vaguely metallic and unsettling, like old blood scrubbed poorly from floorboards. The low-ceilinged room was larger than it appeared from outside but felt cramped, packed with rough-looking patrons squeezed around scarred, sticky tables or leaning three-deep against the long, stained wooden bar. The air itself felt heavy, used-up. Sputtering oil lamps, their glass chimneys coated with grime, cast more shadow than light, leaving corners in near-total darkness and carving harsh lines onto hard faces.
Conversations were low, guttural murmurs, punctuated by occasional bursts of harsh, barking laughter, the sharp clatter of dice hitting wood, or the slurred cadence of drunken arguments simmering just below the surface of violence. Nearly every head turned as she entered, a collective pause rippling through the room. Dozens of eyes – wary, calculating, hostile, or merely dully curious – took her in within an instant. Her rain-soaked but relatively fine wool cloak, the lingering scent of Archive dust and old paper clinging to her despite the storm, her obvious youth and wide, fearful eyes – they marked her as an outsider, an anomaly, potential prey. The noise level dipped perceptibly for a long moment, the silence amplifying the pounding in Elara’s ears, before resuming its previous level, leaving her feeling stripped bare, exposed, and intensely vulnerable under the weight of unspoken assessment.
Fighting the urge to turn and flee back into the relative safety of the storm, Elara forced herself to scan the room, her gaze darting nervously, searching for someone who matched the vague archetypes of mercenaries whispered about in Archive gossip – someone radiating competence amidst the squalor, someone watchful, detached from the surrounding chaos. Her eyes slid past drunken laborers slumped over tables, past hard-faced women with knives tucked openly into their belts, past groups of rough men arguing over cards, past a trio of dour-faced Dwarves nursing earthenware mugs filled with something that smelled potent enough to strip paint.
Then, her gaze snagged on a figure sitting alone at a small, heavily scarred table tucked into a darker corner, partially obscured by a thick, load-bearing wooden pillar slimy with years of accumulated grime. He wasn't large or ostentatiously armed, but he commanded the space around him with an aura of quiet, dangerous stillness.
He was nursing a tall tankard of dark, flat-looking ale, cradling it loosely in one hand while the other rested, seemingly relaxed but strategically placed, near the worn hilt of a sword propped against his chair leg. The weapon itself was utterly devoid of ornamentation – a practical, heavy blade, its crossguard bearing numerous nicks and scratches, its leather-wrapped grip worn smooth and dark from long use. It was the tool of a professional killer or a lifelong soldier, not the decorative accoutrement of a strutting city bravo. The man himself seemed forged from similar hard, unforgiving use. His dark hair, overdue for a cutting, was plastered damply to his forehead by the rain or sweat, threaded with streaks of premature grey at the temples that hinted at stresses beyond his apparent years. His face was lean, all hard planes and sharp angles, weathered by sun and wind, dominated by a jagged, ugly scar that ran from his left temple down across the high curve of his cheekbone, finally disappearing into the rough, dark stubble shadowing a determined jaw. More scars, older, paler, puckered – burn marks, Elara guessed with a sickening lurch, remembering the talk of Fluxburn – were visible on his forearms beneath sleeves rolled carelessly to the elbow. He wore practical, well-maintained leather armor – a cuirass and sturdy vambraces – over a simple, dark tunic, the whole ensemble stained and travel-worn but clearly serviceable, lacking any insignia or identifying marks. But it was his eyes, when he briefly glanced up, that held Elara’s attention captive. They were a startling, clear grey, sharp as newly honed steel, and utterly devoid of illusion or warmth. They held the profound, weary cynicism of someone who had witnessed the world’s absolute worst on multiple occasions and expected little better from the future. He wasn't overtly scanning the room, yet Elara had the distinct, unnerving impression that he missed absolutely nothing, cataloging every entrance, every exit, every potential threat with subconscious, ingrained vigilance.
This had to be the kind of man Hemlock meant. A blade for hire. Someone who dealt in trouble because trouble was his native element. Gathering the tattered remnants of her courage, which felt thin and inadequate in this stifling atmosphere, Elara took a deep breath and began to navigate the crowded, obstacle-strewn room, murmuring apologies as she inevitably bumped shoulders or jostled elbows, acutely aware of the curious or hostile stares following her progress. She felt like a misplaced sparrow trying to navigate a roost of hawks.
She stopped before his table, feeling small, conspicuous, and absurdly out of place, like a misplaced punctuation mark in a run-on sentence of violence and desperation. The smell of stale ale, cheap tobacco, and his own faint scent of leather, sweat, and cold iron filled her nostrils.
The man looked up, slowly, deliberately, his grey eyes sweeping over her from head to toe in a single, comprehensive, dismissive glance. He took in the soaked cloak clinging to her slight frame, the lingering ink-stains on her trembling fingers, the undisguised fear widening her eyes, the way she held her satchel clutched protectively before her. He registered her presence, filed her away as unimportant, and then returned his attention to his ale, taking another slow, deliberate sip. The silence stretched, thick and uncomfortable, broken only by the tavern's ambient roar and the frantic pounding of Elara’s own heart.
"Can I help you?" he finally asked, his voice a low, gravelly baritone, carefully neutral, carrying easily over the din without being loud. The tone hinted at deep reserves of impatience held barely in check.
"I... I was told..." Elara began, her voice barely audible, swallowed by the noise. She cleared her throat, forcing herself to project, hating the tremor she heard in her own words. "I was told… I might find someone here. Someone… professional. Someone who takes difficult jobs. Jobs outside the usual channels."
One corner of his mouth quirked upward almost imperceptibly, a cynical twitch rather than a smile. "This whole tavern takes difficult jobs outside the usual channels, girl. Depends on the job. Depends *mostly* on the coin." He gestured vaguely towards the empty, sticky stool opposite him with his tankard, not quite an invitation but a concession. "Spit it out. Quickly. I haven't got all night, and this ale isn't improving with age."
Elara perched hesitantly on the very edge of the offered stool, grimacing slightly at the sticky residue coating its surface. She leaned forward, instinctively lowering her voice, though the surrounding clamor made true privacy impossible. "I need protection," she said, the words feeling stark and inadequate. "And I need passage out of the city. Tonight. Urgently."
He raised a skeptical eyebrow, the scar tissue near his eye pulling slightly, making him look even more intimidating. "Protection from what? Passage from who? Running from a gambling debt gone sour? Crossed the wrong gang leader? Jilted lover with inconveniently sharp friends?" His voice dripped with weary sarcasm, the practiced cynicism of someone who'd heard countless tales of woe, most of them self-inflicted. "Or perhaps the Library Guild finally caught up to your illicit quill-sharpening ring?" He took another slow drink, his eyes never leaving hers, searching for tells, for the inevitable lies or exaggerations.
Elara swallowed hard against the lump of fear in her throat. How much could she risk saying? Too little, and he'd dismiss her as another sob story not worth his time. Too much, and he might think her dangerously mad, or worse, decide the trouble she brought wasn't worth any conceivable price. "I'm being hunted," she said, forcing steadiness into her voice, the simple statement landing with the weight of absolute truth. "By people… they aren't like the usual city thugs. They attacked me tonight. Near the Archives."
"'People'," he repeated flatly, unimpressed. "Helpful. Tall? Short? Armed? Wearing Guild colors, gang markings? Specifics, girl. Details matter in my line of work."
"Cloaked," she said, picturing the unnerving stillness, the way the fabric seemed to drink the light. "Grey cloaks. Drab. Two of them." She hesitated, then plunged ahead. "They used… magic."
He snorted softly, a dismissive sound. "Magic. Right. Plenty of hedge wizards and Guild dropouts sling cheap hexes and illusions in the alleys for enough coin to buy their next drink. Scared you with a few sparks and shadows, did they?"
"No," Elara insisted, leaning closer, her voice dropping to an intense, urgent whisper, desperate to make him understand. "This wasn't... it wasn't normal magic. It was *wrong*. It was green. A horrible, sickly green light. And it felt… *cold*. Dead. Empty. It smelled like… like old dust and graves and… nothingness." She faltered, struggling to describe the sheer wrongness of it, the violation against the natural order. "When it hit the wall, the stones… they didn't just break, they… imploded. Dissolved. And the cold…"
She saw it then. A flicker deep within those cynical grey eyes. A subtle, almost imperceptible shift in his posture. The lazy, dismissive sarcasm vanished instantly, replaced by a sudden, sharp, focused attention that felt like a physical touch. His hand, which had been resting loosely near his sword hilt, now gripped it, knuckles whitening slightly. He leaned forward fractionally, his gaze intent, locked onto hers.
"Green," he repeated, his voice losing its mocking edge, becoming quieter, harder, imbued with a chilling familiarity. "Sickly green, you said? Trailing black smoke, maybe? Like greasy soot? Smelled like old graves dug up on a wet winter night? Left the stone feeling cold to the touch afterwards? Brittle?"
Elara nodded mutely, startled and terrified by the chilling accuracy of his description. He *knew* this magic. He recognized it.
He stared at her for a long, unnerving moment, his expression unreadable but visibly tense. He let out a slow, controlled breath, running a hand through his damp hair, leaving streaks of grime. "Void-taint," he murmured, the words gravelly, almost spat, laced with a mixture of disbelief and loathing. "Gods below and skies above… *inside* the damned city walls? That close to the Core districts?" He shook his head slowly, a grim, horrified understanding dawning in his eyes. "Thought the deep wards were supposed to keep that filth out. Thought the Guild patrols actually *did* something."
He looked at Elara again, but this time his assessment was entirely different. He wasn't seeing a naive, frightened scholar caught in some mundane trouble. He was seeing someone who had brushed against something specific, something monstrous, something he clearly recognized and despised from personal, likely brutal, experience. Something he probably encountered regularly out in the wild, untamed Shardlands where the fabric of reality was thinner, more dangerous.
"Alright, Archivist," he said, his voice regaining some of its gruffness, but the mockery was entirely gone, replaced by a grim, focused seriousness that was somehow more intimidating. "You have my undivided attention. Now, tell me: who are these grey cloaks? And why in the blighted hells are they slinging Void-crap at a junior scribe in the middle of Eldoria?"
Elara hesitated. This was the precipice. She couldn't show him the scroll, couldn't risk revealing the full, world-shattering scope of its message to this hardened stranger in a dockside tavern. Not yet. It felt too vast, too fragile, too dangerous. But she had to give him enough to justify the risk he was clearly calculating. "I found something," she said carefully, choosing her words with the precision of a scribe translating a vital text. "A document. In the Archives. From a salvaged collection. It's… old. Very old. Pre-Sundering." She saw a flicker of renewed skepticism cross his face – old documents were common enough. "It describes things… events… that directly contradict Eldoria's official history. Especially concerning the Sundering. About what it really was, why it happened." She paused, then added the crucial piece. "These grey cloaks… they want it. Desperately. They called themselves… I think… the Whispering Hand."
Kaelen frowned, the name clearly stirring a dark memory. "Whispering Hand…" he echoed slowly, testing the syllables. "Yeah… Heard whispers of that name out east, near the Mire borderlands. Blood cultists, Shard scavengers, grave robbers… always messing with ruins best left buried, stirring up trouble. Thought they were just another band of power-hungry lunatics." He scrubbed a hand vigorously over his face, looking suddenly years older, wearier. "Pre-Sundering texts contradicting history… Void-slinging cultists operating brazenly inside the capital… Gods, this is going sideways faster than a greased pig on ice." He eyed her critically, his gaze sharp. "What makes this particular scroll so damned important that they'd risk drawing Guild attention, maybe even Wardens, by using Void-taint inside the city walls? What's *in* it, girl?"
Elara took another deep breath, the air thick with smoke and unspoken threats. She leaned even closer, her voice barely more than a strained whisper, the words feeling heavy, dangerous, possibly fatal, on her tongue. "It speaks of… of an entity. Imprisoned by the Sundering. Called… the Null-Whisper." She watched his face intently, bracing for disbelief, for mockery, for dismissal. "And it claims the Shards… *all* the Shards… are fragments of its prison wall. A prison that's… weakening."
Kaelen went utterly still. Still as the stones in a graveyard. The cynical mask didn't just crack; it disintegrated. The name 'Null-Whisper' hung in the air between them, thick and cold and pregnant with unspoken horror. He didn't scoff. He didn't demand explanation. He didn't call her mad. His face hardened into granite, lines deepening around his eyes, a profound darkness flitting across his features that spoke not just of recognition, but of old, deep-seated fears. Fears likely born from half-forgotten campfire stories told in hushed tones in the deepest, most dangerous parts of the Shardlands, stories he’d undoubtedly dismissed as superstitious myth until this very moment. The disparate, terrifying pieces – the precise description of the Void-taint, the known name of the Whispering Hand cult, the mention of a reality-bending pre-Sundering text, and now this impossible, mythic name – clicked together for him with horrifying synergy, forming a picture far worse than anything Elara could have articulated.
He stared down into the dregs of his ale for a long, silent moment, his knuckles white where he gripped the tankard. Then, with a sudden, convulsive movement, he drained the remaining liquid in one long swallow, setting the empty tankard down on the scarred wooden table with a heavy, resonant thud that drew a few curious glances from nearby patrons, glances he ignored utterly.
He finally met Elara's anxious, waiting gaze. His grey eyes were like chips of glacial ice, cold, hard, and reflecting a terrifying depth of understanding she hadn't expected. "Right," he sighed, the sound heavy with a profound, weary resignation, the sigh of a man who knew his relatively simple life had just become infinitely more complicated and dangerous. "This isn't a job. This isn't just trouble. This is a bloody catastrophe looking for a place to happen. And it looks like it found us."
He leaned back fractionally, crossing his heavily scarred arms over his chest, studying her with an unnerving intensity, assessing her not just as a client, but as a liability, a catalyst, perhaps even a weapon. "Here's the deal, Archivist," he stated, his voice low, cutting through the tavern noise, leaving no room for negotiation or misunderstanding. "I'll get you out of the city. Tonight. I'll keep you alive, at least long enough for us to figure out exactly what kind of ancient hornets' nest you've kicked over, and maybe find someone else qualified to deal with reality-eating boogeymen." He nodded towards her satchel. "My price is triple my usual rate for high-risk extraction and protection. Paid upfront, right now, from whatever pathetic savings you've got squirrelled away."
He leaned forward again, his gaze pinning her. "And understand this, more importantly than the coin: from the moment we leave this cesspit tavern, you do *exactly* what I say, when I say it. No questions you don't absolutely need answered for immediate survival. No arguments. No wandering off on your own scholarly tangents to admire weird rocks or read ominous graffiti. You hesitate, you freeze up, you slow me down, you attract the wrong kind of attention, you get me killed – I swear on my own miserable scars, I *will* leave you behind to face the grey cloaks or whatever else is hunting us. Are we absolutely, crystal clear?"
Relief washed over Elara, so potent, so absolute after the terror of the past few hours, that it almost made her weep. It was quickly followed by a fresh wave of fear – fear of the unknown dangers that lay beyond Eldoria's walls, fear of the grim, uncompromising intensity in this scarred man's eyes, fear of the path she was now irrevocably set upon – but it was overshadowed by the simple, desperate, overwhelming need for his protection, for his expertise in the violence she could not navigate alone. "Yes," she whispered, nodding quickly, emphatically. "Clear. Absolutely clear."
Without hesitation, she fumbled in her satchel, her trembling fingers closing around her small, worn coin purse. It contained nearly her entire savings – enough scraped together over three years to cover several months' rent and basic food, painstakingly set aside from her meager scribe's wages. It felt simultaneously like a fortune and utterly insignificant compared to the magnitude of the danger she faced. She pushed it across the sticky table towards him.
Kaelen picked it up, hefted its small weight in his palm, his expression unreadable. He didn't bother counting it, simply tucking it securely into a pouch hidden inside his leather cuirass. The transaction felt stark, brutal, sealing their desperate pact. "Name's Kaelen," he said gruffly, the first hint of personal information he’d offered. He stood up abruptly, the movement fluid, economical, practiced. He settled his sword belt more comfortably on his hip, the worn leather creaking faintly. "Alright. Stay close. Keep quiet. And for gods' sakes, try not to look like bait."
He turned without a backward glance and headed towards a heavy, curtained doorway at the back of the tavern, obscured by shadows and smelling faintly of mildew and something else Elara couldn't identify. It presumably led to a rear exit, a storage cellar, or perhaps directly into the city's hidden underbelly. Elara scrambled to her feet, casting one last, fearful glance at the smoky, raucous, dangerous haven of The Cracked Mug – the place where her old life had definitively ended, and her perilous journey into the violent, uncertain shadows inhabited by Kaelen Stormblade had truly begun. The blade was hired. The price was paid. The darkness awaited.