The flight felt impossibly short.

  One moment John was settling into the rhythm of Frostfeather's wingbeats, the wind tearing at his borrowed clothes, the world spread below like a living map. The next, Greyford was rising up to meet them. Its thatched roofs and muddy streets that had seemed so foreign before now almost familiar.

  He was disappointed. Actually, genuinely disappointed that it was ending.

  Who knew flying on a giant murder-bird could be so—

  Frostfeather banked hard, and John's thoughts cut off as his stomach tried to exit through his throat. The griffin landed with surprising grace considering its size, talons scoring deep furrows in the packed earth just outside the north gate.

  Stormwind touched down moments later, Leon and Lia dismounting with the casual competence that came from years of practice.

  John's dismount was less graceful. He half-slid, half-fell from the saddle, landing in a crouch that was more accident than design. His legs felt like jelly. Whether from the flight or everything that came before it, he couldn't tell.

  He straightened, found himself face-to-face with Frostfeather's massive eagle head, and did the only thing that seemed appropriate.

  "Thank you," he said. "For not dropping me. And for the flight. It was amazing."

  The griffin made a sound somewhere between a chirp and a satisfied rumble, then turned her attention to preening a wing.

  "You're supposed to thank the rider too," Erin said, grinning from her perch in the saddle. "I did fly the griffin."

  "Right. Thanks, Erin. For not letting your griffin drop me."

  "Much better." She gathered the reins, preparing to take off again. "Try not to die while I'm gone."

  "Where are you—"

  But she was already airborne, Frostfeather's wings beating hard as they climbed. John watched them arc back toward the ravine, toward Marcus and the sealed dungeon, and felt a pang of envy.

  He'd just discovered flying, and already he was grounded.

  Below, their arrival had drawn quite the crowd.

  Villagers poured from houses and shops, eyes wide at the sight of a griffin in their modest square. Children pointed and whispered. A few of the braver ones crept closer, until their mothers pulled them back with sharp hisses.

  John scanned the gathering faces and spotted a familiar shaggy head munching grass near the inn's stable.

  "Bristle!" He jogged over, relief flooding through him. The mule looked up, regarded him with indifference, and went back to eating. "Good to see you too, buddy."

  "By the Light!" A voice cracked with shock.

  The villager who'd helped with Bristle before stood gaping. His eyes went wide as he took in John's appearance. The dried blood. The ichor. The shredded clothes. The general disaster that was his entire existence.

  "Garren said you’d found the dungeon" the man managed. "Did you go in yourself?"

  “Yeah. You were right about Bris-”

  A weathered hand grabbed John's arm from behind.

  Molly appeared, looking John up and down with the critical eye of someone inspecting a particularly disappointing cut of meat. "Dried blood. Again." She shook her head. "You must love the feel of it on your skin, boy. Otherwise, I can't explain why you keep showing up at my door looking like you bathed in a slaughterhouse."

  "It's not by choice," John said weakly.

  "Never is." She grabbed his arm with surprising strength. "Come on, then. Water's already heating."

  They'd made it three steps when Leon's voice cut through the square.

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  Molly stopped, her grip on John's arm loosening but not releasing.

  "The source of the overflow has been found and contained," he said simply. "Guards are posted. The immediate threat is over."

  A ripple of reaction went through the crowd. Relief, mostly. A few scattered prayers of thanks.

  "You may see unfamiliar faces in the coming days. Remain calm. Remain vigilant. But know that you are safe."

  That was it. No grand speech. No details about rituals or the Black Hymn or what they'd found in the depths. Just the facts people needed to hear.

  Leon nodded once, then turned back to Lia, already deep in quiet conversation.

  The crowd began to disperse, talking among themselves, the fear that had gripped them for days finally beginning to lift.

  John, now being frog-marched toward the inn by Molly, glanced back once, then let himself be dragged inside.

  The inn's back room was already prepared. Steam rose from a wooden tub in lazy curls. Molly thrust a bar of soap at him with the air of someone who'd done this too many times already.

  "Strip. Scrub. Don't come out until you're human-colored again." She paused at the door, looking back. "And boy?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I don't know what happened to you down there. But whatever it was..." Her expression softened slightly. "I'm glad you made it back."

  "Molly, wait." John stopped her before she could leave. "Do you have a journal? Or just... paper and something to write with? Anything?"

  She studied him for a moment. "Planning to write your memoirs already?"

  "Something like that."

  "Hmm." She disappeared, then returned a minute later with a leather-bound book, its pages yellowed but serviceable, and a small inkpot with a quill. "This was my husband's. Never used most of it. The ink's old but it should still work."

  "Thank you."

  "Don't thank me yet. You're paying for room and board once you've got coin." But her voice was gentler than her words. "Now wash. You're stinking up my inn."

  The door closed before John could respond.

  He stood alone in the steam, soap in hand, and began to strip off his borrowed clothes, wincing at the state of them.

  The water turned murky almost immediately as dried blood and dungeon filth sloughed away. John scrubbed mechanically, mind elsewhere, then ducked his head under until his lungs burned.

  When he finished, the water looked like something had died in it. Probably accurate.

  He dried off with the rough towel Molly had left, pulled on the clean clothes she'd laid out, and settled at the small table with the journal.

  The leather was worn smooth, the pages slightly warped from age. John opened it carefully, found the first blank page, and stared at it.

  Where to even start?

  He dipped the quill, tested it on a corner of the page. The ink spread out weakly.

  Things I know for certain, he slowly wrote at the top, in splotchy and barely legible chicken-scratch.

  Then stopped.

  While he'd spent years with Elder Veilfall, contributing to wikis and writing guides, he didn’t remember it all by heart. The game was huge, the wiki was thousands of pages. And the information was always there, a tab away, searchable.

  And now it wasn't.

  John pressed the quill to paper again, forcing himself to focus.

  Quests near Greyford:

  - The Broken Bell

  - A Daughters Misery

  - The Wayward Saint

  - Carting About Death

  He kept writing, pulling up what he could remember. The Miller's Daughter. Was she past the river or before it? What was the merchants name? When did he arrive?

  His stomach turned.

  To him, Greyford had been still smoldering rubble. A simple quest to find a child's doll in the wreckage and a ruin under the inn, unlocked through a quest chain that takes half the game to start.

  They were real here. The Miller's Daughter was a real girl. Ashford was a real village full of real people who would burn.

  The crushing weight of the future hit him all at once. His chest tightened. His breathing went shallow.

  He closed his eyes and let it come. Let it be in his body instead of fighting it. Will it help? He repeated the mantra silently. Will it help? Will it help? He rode it out. The pressure eased.

  He opened his eyes and looked down at the journal. Fragments and guesses where certainty should be. Quest names floating in time. No markers for when they'd trigger, when they'd expire. Places without details. People he couldn't save because he didn't remember enough to know how.

  But then he thought about Leon preserving the ritual chamber. About Lia's questions. About the scholars coming to investigate.

  Things were already different. Better, maybe. The ritual had been found early. Someone was paying attention.

  But different also meant unpredictable. The game's timeline was broken. His knowledge of what came next was less reliable than he'd thought.

  John dipped the quill again and wrote one final line:

  I'm going to have to wing it.