The shop was quiet except for the scrape of Maruzan’s awl and the soft pull of cord through thick leather. The smell of treated hide and smoke clung to every corner, soaked deep into the walls like memory. It was familiar now. Home.

  The morning light from the window spilled across his worktable, glinting off the half-shaped shoulder plate in his hands. The hide was deep red, smooth but strong, cut from a beast most men would never see alive. He traced a finger along the edge before setting it down, reaching for a thread of cord so thin and polished it looked like spun silk.

  The front door opened in haste.

  “Three hides,” Xonya said, ducking under the doorway, her arms full. She carried a heavy bundle wrapped in oilcloth, her steps slow but certain. The smell of earth and blood followed her in.

  She dropped the bundle beside him and wiped her brow with the back of her wrist. Her dark hair was tied back, her skin tanned from days under the sun. Scars crossed her forearms like old stories. One fresh cut on her knuckle still bled, a thin red line against the grime.

  “Still warm,” she added with a grin.

  Maruzan glanced up briefly, eyes following her hands as she unwrapped the hides. “I’ll double your cut this batch,” he said, quiet but sincere.

  “You always say that,” she replied, smirking. She leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “One day I might even believe you.”

  “One day I’ll be rich enough to make it true,” he said, and the two shared a short laugh, an old one, the kind that comes from years of working together and surviving worse.

  For a while, they stood in silence as Maruzan examined the hides. The basilisk skin gleamed faintly, scales tough but flexible under his touch. Xonya’s hunts always left him in awe, not that he’d tell her that directly. Each hide she brought in meant days of careful crafting, and her work had helped make his name known far beyond the city streets.

  In just two years, he had done what few would’ve believed possible. Once a refugee from Elzibar, a tradesman with nothing but burned hands and bad memories, Maruzan had rebuilt his life in Arnathe. He had taken his craft, once survival, now purpose, and made it something greater. The best armorers and knights in the city came to him for commissions.

  But Maruzan didn’t chase wealth. He wanted security.

  He had spent months building this shop, yes, but just as many preparing for something larger, something he felt deep in his bones. The world wasn’t done turning dark, and he knew better than most how quickly peace could shatter.

  That was why, tucked away beneath his worktable, lay a folded application sealed in wax: a request for a Letter of Martial Favor.

  Most guild members never dared to ask for one. It was rare permission from the crown, the right to form a sanctioned warband. Not just a company of bounty hunters or adventurers, but an official force under royal license. The kind sent to deal with matters too dangerous or political for the city’s guard.

  He wanted one reason only: to be ready.

  When the world came calling again, and he knew it would, he wouldn’t face it alone.

  He glanced at Xonya again. She was wiping the blood from her knuckle with a rag he’d handed her, muttering something about “stupid fangs and slippery rocks.” He smiled faintly.

  She had already agreed to join his warband once it was approved.

  Despite her tough talk, Maruzan knew she had a strong sense of justice. She’d grown up in the city’s low quarter, where the guilds never bothered to send aid. She had fought rats for coin and learned to track game just to eat. That kind of hunger left a mark, not just on the body, but on the soul.

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  Xonya didn’t fight for gold anymore. She fought for the kind of people who reminded her of herself.

  The list didn’t end with her.

  Ennett had already signed on as well. She worked now for the City Watch, though mostly clerical work, something Vane found a waste of her talent. When Maruzan first told her about the warband, she’d simply nodded and said, “Tell me when and where.”

  The dwarves had promised their axes too. Bram and Farrin had returned from the Kellen-Tir embassy not long ago, both restless and weary of diplomacy. They said the city’s marble halls were too quiet, too polished. They wanted to see the world again, and Maruzan didn’t need to ask twice.

  And Nethira, she had become a constant in his life since the battle. Not a lover, though their connection was deep in a way words couldn’t name. She came often to speak with him, to remind him that healing took time. She saw in him the same weariness that lived in all survivors.

  Her lessons often found their way into his thoughts while he worked. She talked of the dryads’ view of life, how labor was sacred because it was shared with the world itself. “To create,” she had said once, “is a kind of prayer.”

  He had never forgotten that.

  Velthur, meanwhile, had flourished at the King’s College. The boy studied under Nethira now, learning how to listen to the natural world, how to wield magic not as power but as understanding. Sometimes he visited the shop, sitting near the forge and listening to Maruzan talk about old days and old mistakes.

  He also made it a point to visit his grandmother and aunts, including Rinia, who, after a long and winding journey from Elzibar, had finally found safety in Arnathe. They had taken up residence with a family in the high quarter, nothing grand, but it was steady, with a roof over their heads and honest work to sustain them. When Maruzan first saw them again, the relief had nearly brought him to tears. For months, he hadn’t known whether they’d survived the attack.

  He was still young, but he had learned enough of the world to know that family was never something to take for granted. His mother’s death had left scars that time didn’t erase, only softened. He understood now that love could be fragile, and that made him guard it all the more fiercely.

  But the warband had become something like a family too. Not the one he had lost and refound, but one he had built. Piece by piece. Together.

  Maruzan turned another hide over in his hands. His fingers traced a ridge along its scales, and for a moment, his thoughts wandered to what might come next. He didn’t trust peace to last. He could feel something, a stirring, faint but familiar, like the pause before a storm.

  He needed this warband. He needed to be ready.

  The bell over the door jingled again, but it wasn’t Xonya this time.

  A young courier stood there, breathless and pale from running. He held a folded parchment sealed with green wax. The insignia of the Adventurers’ Guild gleamed faintly in the morning light.

  “Maruzan of Elizibar?” the courier asked, his tone formal.

  Maruzan stood, wiping his hands on a rag. “That’s me.”

  “Guildmaster Mylor requests your presence at the Guildhall immediately.” The courier extended the letter. “He said it was urgent.”

  For a moment, Maruzan didn’t move. He only stared at the parchment, the weight of what it might mean pressing down on him.

  Xonya looked from him to the letter. “Well?” she asked, voice low. “That it?”

  Maruzan took the letter carefully, his thumb brushing over the seal.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  Xonya smirked. “About time.”

  He looked up at her, a faint smile breaking through the steady calm that usually sat on his face. “Keep an eye on the shop,” he said.

  “Only if I get that doubled cut you promised.”

  He shook his head, chuckling as he slung his worn cloak over one shoulder. “We’ll talk about it when I get back.”

  As he stepped out into the street, the city moved around him, merchants setting up stalls, guards exchanging shifts, the sound of carts rumbling over cobblestones. Arnathe had grown on him in the past two years.

  He made his way toward the Guildhall, letter still unopened in his hand.

  He could already imagine what waited inside, the large table of stone, the banners of the Adventurers’ Guild hanging above it, the watchful eyes of Guildmaster Mylor studying him across the room.

  Maybe it was good news. Maybe it wasn’t. But whatever it was, it meant the next part of his life was about to begin.

  And deep down, in the quiet place that still remembered smoke and ash, Maruzan felt something he hadn’t in a long time.

  Purpose.

  He took a deep breath, straightened his cloak, and kept walking.

  The city’s bell tower chimed once in the distance, a slow, echoing note that rolled through the streets like a promise.

  Today would decide what came next.