My father and Tim fell back into a conversation that drifted quickly into territory I didn’t really care about. It was familiar enough, the kind of talk adults slipped into after years of working together, full of half-finished thoughts and shared context that didn’t need explaining between them. Names I didn’t recognize came up and were dismissed just as quickly, references made to people and places that clearly meant something to them and nothing to me. I didn’t know how to interrupt without making it about me, and I didn’t want to do that.

  So I waited.

  I listened, letting their voices roll over me, the cadence of it steady and unhurried. It wasn’t boring, exactly, but it wasn’t meant for me either. Eventually, the rhythm of their conversation slowed and a small gap opened, the kind that felt natural rather than forced. When the pause felt safe, I took it.

  “Isn’t thirty thousand freds a lot?” I asked.

  My father looked at me, then smiled slightly, the kind of smile meant to reassure rather than amuse. “It is,” he said. “A very substantial amount. Luckily, I don’t actually have to pay that.”

  “That’s the standard rate,” Tim added immediately, tapping the desk once with a thick finger. “Market price. What guild members pay is different. Discounts. Considerations.”

  I frowned, turning that over in my head. The numbers were still too large to feel real. “What do you mean?”

  “Contribution points,” my father said easily, as if the answer were obvious once you knew the system existed. “I’ve got more than enough saved up. So don’t worry. This won’t cost me anything except doing my job.”

  I stared at him for a moment, trying to reconcile that with what I understood about money. “What exactly is a contribution point?”

  He blinked, then nodded, realizing the gap in my understanding. “Right. That’s something you wouldn’t have run into yet.”

  He rested his forearms on the desk, settling into explanation without turning it into a lecture. “That’s one of the big differences between the two guilds. The Defender’s Guild doesn’t operate on quests the way the Adventurer’s Guild does. We don’t have notice boards or open postings. Instead, we work off what are called subjugation orders.”

  He gestured vaguely, as if indicating the dungeon beyond the walls, even though it lay far outside the office and out of sight. “When we go out, we clear an area completely. In this dungeon’s case, that usually means a zone or two at a time, nothing fancy. It’s maintenance work, really.”

  “And then we strip them,” he continued. “Cores, materials, anything usable or valuable. All of it comes back here so it can be logged and redistributed properly.”

  “Tim tallies everything,” my father said, nodding toward him. “He looks at what was recovered, the size of the force involved, how long the work took, and the rank of the people who participated. From there, he assigns contribution points.”

  “Those points are divided among everyone who took part,” my father went on. “Rank matters. Experience matters. As a captain, I get a larger share than most. If Raptan personally led the subjugation, he would receive more than that.”

  “And I get a percentage off the top,” Tim said, cutting in without apology. “Nobody wants to deal with all the accounting.”

  He shifted in his chair, then reached out and pulled himself sideways along the length of the desk, metal scraping faintly as he moved closer to the bars that separated his workspace from the rest of the room. When he reached the opening in the metal fencing, he leaned forward and rolled up his trouser leg with practiced fingers, clearly intending for me to see.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The wooden leg beneath was immediately obvious, the joint polished smooth from years of use.

  “And I like it more than being out there, honestly,” he added.

  I nodded slowly, taking that in along with everything else. On the surface, the system seemed fair and efficient, built around routine work that needed doing whether anyone wanted glory from it or not. Zones were cleared so mana could accumulate properly, excess was harvested, and nothing was allowed to grow out of balance. It rewarded consistency and participation rather than promises or bravado. It was very different from the way adventurers operated.

  I didn’t know all the details, and I didn’t need to. It wasn’t my lot, but it was good to know nonetheless. Understanding how things fit together made the world feel a little less opaque.

  Unless there was a joint operation, it wouldn’t matter to me directly. I was still an adventurer, and I would still be given quests.

  Even so, the thought lingered at the back of my mind. I didn’t know how cross-contracts would work if something like what happened in my father’s village happened again, and I was assigned a quest to go subjugate a dungeon that had broken.

  I filed the question away for later, certain that the answer would matter someday, even if it didn’t yet.

  My mother held me close for most of that time, her arm warm and steady around my shoulders. When my father finished signing the last of the paperwork, he set the stylus down with a quiet finality. We said our goodbyes to Tim, brief and familiar, and then left the quartermaster’s office together.

  We made our way back up toward the top of the wall. I was fairly certain it was called a rampart. That felt right to me, at least, and no one corrected the thought. The path upward had already become familiar, stone steps worn smooth by decades of boots, hands brushing along the rail where the wall curved inward. The air grew cooler as we climbed, carrying the faint scents of stone, metal, and distant greenery.

  When we reached the top, we chose a quiet stretch and sat together. The stone beneath us still held some warmth from the day, and I shifted slightly until I found a spot that felt just right. The city spread out behind us, rooftops and towers softened by distance, while the Sea of Trees stretched endlessly in front of us. From here, it looked calm, almost gentle, its vastness easy to forget until you really tried to take it all in. The light was beginning to change, the sun dipping lower, casting long shadows across the wall and turning the distant canopy into a layered sea of greens and golds.

  My mother kept an arm around me as we settled in, her presence grounding in a way that required no words. For a while, we simply sat there, sharing the view and the silence. It was the kind of quiet that felt earned rather than awkward, filled with small movements and the steady rhythm of breathing rather than words. Eventually, she spoke, her voice low and careful, as if she did not want to disturb the moment.

  “My baby boy,” she said. “You’ll be leaving us soon. Going back to your training.”

  She brushed her thumb slowly along my shoulder, as if she needed to feel that I was still real. “Is there anything you’d like to ask us for? Anything at all. We’ll do whatever we can to help you, or even just to make you happy.”

  I looked at her first, then at my father, and then back out at the view beyond the wall. The answer came easily, without effort or doubt. “I feel happy here,” I said. “I would be happy if we could just spend our time together. There’s nothing more that I want.”

  I held both boxes in my lap as I spoke, the larger one containing my graduation outfit and the smaller one holding my three Tin cores. The weight of them felt significant, not because of how heavy they were, but because of what they represented. They were proof of care, of effort, of choices made for my sake.

  My father cleared his throat quietly. “Just so you know,” he said, “I put in a requisition request for any additional Tin cores that come up in our future subjugations. I put down the contribution points already. If nothing turns up, the points will be returned, so don’t worry about that.”

  I turned to him, surprised by how much that mattered to me. “What were you planning to use those contribution points for if it wasn’t for me?” I asked.

  He shrugged, easy and unbothered, as if the question were a simple one. “I’ve thought about pushing for gold rank one day. Maybe even platinum, if I felt like working for it. But I’m happy where I am. There’s still plenty of time for me to reach at least gold.”

  I understood what he wasn’t saying.

  He had given up part of that future because I had chosen a Tin core without a second thought, and he had done it so casually that it almost hurt.

  I set the boxes down carefully on the stone beside us and leaned into him, wrapping my arms around his middle as best I could. He stiffened for half a second, surprised by the suddenness of it, then relaxed and held me just as tightly.

  I reached up and pressed my hand against his cheek, feeling the familiar warmth of his skin. “I think you would look better with a beard,” I said.

  He cackled, loud and unrestrained.

  I smiled. My mother laughed. And I meant it.