[Chapter 9] The Pactborn Guild

  Training with the bow slotted itself into the pattern of her days.

  Mornings for walking, afternoons for drills. Now, the chalk lines in the yard made lanes for her footwork, and the weighted bags shared space with a target board propped against the far wall—first marked with charcoal circles, later with arrows bristling from its surface.

  Haru watched her stance, corrected angles with two-finger taps to an elbow or shoulder, then wrote short, precise notes afterward.

  Day 33 – draw holds for three breaths.

  Day 36 – ten shots at ten paces, six within inner ring.

  Day 40 – audible panic response to Civic uniform, recovered without collapse, maintained aim.

  When she missed badly, he said nothing. When she landed a clean cluster, he only remarked, "Good grouping," and noted the conditions. Praise and criticism alike came in the same flat, measured tone—but the fact that he was measuring at all was its own kind of weight.

  One evening, as she wiped sweat from her brow and flexed aching fingers, he closed the notebook with a firmer snap than usual.

  "Next step," he said. "You’ve seen the streets. You can hold a bow. Time to see where the quests come from."

  She knew what he meant.

  The Pactborn Guild Hall.

  The place whose name had brushed the edges of their conversations for weeks, always as a distant fixture—source of Haru’s income, origin of the Lùmin Orb chit, a word written on forms she had never been allowed to read.

  Yssavelle swallowed. The Mark at her back lay quiet, but the idea of entering another institution with ledgers and rules made her skin prickle.

  Haru watched the small movement of her throat, the way her fingers twitched toward the feather-board that lay on the table.

  "You asked what comes after," he said. "The Guild is the next variable."

  He reached for his cloak and the simple, worn plaque hanging inside it.

  "For them, I’m an F-rank adventurer with a clean record and an inconvenient habit of writing too much. For you, for now, I’m still your registered owner. Both can be… used."

  He met her eyes.

  "You walk beside me. You listen. You decide, again, whether you want to keep going or turn back. But if you want that line on the board—"

  I don’t want disposal.

  "—to mean anything, the path runs through their doors."

  He didn’t promise safety. He didn’t promise success.

  He simply held out his hand to help her up.

  Outside, somewhere beyond the Rusted Perch and the market and the weapons quarter, the Guild Hall waited—wide doors, tall windows, walls plastered with contracts that weighed lives in ink and coin.

  Yssavelle’s legs still ached from training.

  She reached for his hand anyway.

  Lumendell’s Pactborn Guild Hall was less a building than a statement.

  Even from the street, it dominated the block—a broad fa?ade of pale stone, pillars carved with the stylized emblems of the Eight Races, banners hanging heavy between them. Above the main doors, a relief showed a ring of eight figures standing back-to-back against an indistinct tide of claws and teeth.

  People flowed in and out in a steady current.

  Armored adventurers with mud on their boots. Runners carrying satchels of documents. A merchant in good cloth, flanked by guards, arguing with a clerk on the steps. The air here smelled of metal, leather, ink, and too many different perfumes layered together.

  Yssavelle’s fingers brushed the edge of Haru’s cloak.

  He did not look back.

  "Breath," he said quietly. "In. Out. Same as the hallway. Same as the market."

  She obeyed. The stone under her boots was solid, the sky above distant. No chains, no Marks being burned in—not here. The Guild had its own ways of binding people.?

  They crossed the threshold.

  Inside, the hall opened up around them like the nave of some secular temple.

  Lofty ceilings arched overhead, supported by columns whose capitals continued the Eight Races motif—Dwarven hammers, Elven leaves, Garuda wings half-furled. Light spilled down from tall windows and from floating orbs of mana-light that drifted near the ceiling, runes glimmering faintly along their surfaces.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  The space was divided into islands of function.

  To the right, a long counter of dark wood where clerks in uniform moved with practiced speed, taking reports, stamping forms, answering questions. Behind them, shelves crammed with ledgers and scrolls. A board of smaller notices listed regulations in tight, neat script.

  Directly ahead, dominating most of the wall, hung the quest boards.

  The lower sections were crowded with parchment slips and wooden tags—F and E-rank quests, pinned and repinned, edges already soft from handling. Higher up, the paper grew sparser and the marks heavier: D and C. Above those, behind a band of decorative wood and a thin chain, a separate panel displayed B-rank and higher.?

  Those quests were fewer, written on thicker stock, stamped with seals Yssavelle didn’t recognize. A painted sign above that upper board read:

  AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  RANK B OR ABOVE.

  To the left, the hall opened into a broad space with sturdy tables and benches, the smell of food and ale drifting from a serving counter set into the wall. Adventurers laughed there, raised cups, argued over maps. A quiet corner near the far wall held a small shrine—nothing like the grand temples of Távandell?, just a simple stone altar bearing eight modest symbols and a bowl of candles, half-burned.

  The noise was a layered murmur rather than a roar. Boots on stone, voices calling names, the occasional clatter of dropped gear. Somewhere, someone cursed at a stuck drawer. Somewhere else, a clerk’s firm "Next!" cut through.

  Yssavelle’s heart beat faster, but it held.

  She was not invisible here. People glanced at her—at her ears, at the coat that wasn’t hers, at the Mark hidden under cloth that some could likely sense anyway—but most moved on. In this place, slaves, nobles, and sellswords all stood in the same lines, so long as the Guild’s ledger said they had business.

  Haru’s presence cut his usual trail through the crowd. He moved with purpose, angling toward the main counter.

  One of the clerks—a woman with cropped hair, a narrow face, and the faint scar of an old burn along her jaw—spotted him first. Her uniform bore the silver pin that marked senior staff. Her eyes flicked from him to Yssavelle, then back.

  "You’re making a habit of my desk, Suwan," she said as he stepped up. "I saw your report on the sludge nest. Efficient as always."

  "Lira," Haru said, inclining his head. "You wanted clean handwriting. You get clean handwriting."

  She snorted.

  "I want reports that don’t lie or waste my time," she said. "Your handwriting is just a bonus."

  Her gaze slid to Yssavelle again, sharper this time.

  "And this would be the reason you’ve been taking fewer solo runs lately."

  It wasn’t quite a question.

  Haru didn’t deny it.

  "Registering a party member," he said. "Temporary, under my plaque."

  Lira’s eyes narrowed faintly.

  "Slave?" she asked, in the same tone she might have said "Therian?" or "Deep-kin?"

  "Yes."

  Lira held Yssavelle’s gaze for a three-count. Whatever she thought about Civic Handling’s mark didn’t reach her face. She only nodded once.

  "Paperwork’s light for that as long as you don’t try to register her as independent," she said. "We log her under your ID, note her presence on quests for hazard evaluation. Any claims on pay go through you by default."?

  She pulled a slate toward her, dipped a quill, and wrote quickly, asking for the bare minimum of details—name, race, visible condition. When she reached "tongue," she lifted an eyebrow.

  Haru said, "Mutilated." Nothing more.

  Lira’s jaw tightened for a heartbeat, then she wrote that too.

  "Done," she said, sliding a small token across the counter. It was a thin strip of metal stamped with a simplified version of Haru’s plaque and a second, smaller sigil beneath it.

  "Keep that on her when you report a quest," she added. "If a party gets chewed up outside, we prefer to know who was chewed."

  Her tone was dry enough to sting, but not cruel.

  Haru pocketed the token.

  "Looking to upgrade your diet from sludge and sewer slime?" Lira asked. "You’ve burned through more F-ranks in a fortnight than some do in a season."?

  "Setting a baseline," Haru said. "Today, something simple but above ground. F-rank is fine."

  She huffed.

  "You say ‘simple’ now," she said. "Come back with three pages on rat behavior."

  She jerked her chin toward the quest board.

  "Infestation on Southside just went up this morning. F-rank, mutants, under a granary. Farmer’s cooperative posted it with verified payment. Nasty teeth, but they won’t chase you into the streets if you do your job right."?

  Her gaze slid to Yssavelle again.

  "Good starter run," she said. "Assuming she can hold a bow and not bolt at the first squeal."

  Yssavelle’s fingers twitched at the word "bolt," but she kept her chin level.

  Haru turned slightly toward her.

  "F-rank," he said, low enough that it was meant for her, not for Lira. "Inside city limits. Known threat, minimal variables. Good for testing how we move together."

  He didn’t ask if she was afraid. That would have been a pointless question.

  He did, however, give her that fraction of a pause in which she could, if she wished, shake her head.

  She didn’t.

  Her hand moved instead, a small, firm nod.

  Lira watched the exchange, then reached for a slip on the lower board. She stamped it with the Guild seal, wrote Haru’s name and plaque number, and pushed it across.

  "Bring back proof," she said. "Tails in a sack will do. If the mutation’s bad, a sample for the archivists. And don’t start a fire in the granary unless you want half the Southside on your neck."

  Haru slipped the quest slip into his notebook.

  "No fire unless unavoidable," he said. "Understood."

  Lira gave them both a final measuring look.

  "Then welcome to the part of the Guild where the work actually gets your boots dirty," she said, this time to Yssavelle as well. "Try not to die for your first job. It looks bad on my records."

  A laugh rose from a nearby group who’d caught the last part. Someone raised a cup in mock salute.

  Yssavelle’s shoulders tightened, then eased a fraction. People joked here. About death, about records, about rats. It was horrible and human at once.

  Haru turned away from the counter.

  "Southside granary," he said. "We’ll review on the way."

  They passed the tavern corner as they left the main hall proper.

  An adventurer with a bandaged arm was explaining loudly how a "small" wyvern had turned out to be less small than advertised. Another group argued over whose spell had singed whose cloak. A pair of F-ranks sat in the corner, elbows on the table, staring at a single mug as if calculating how many quests it would take to pay off their equipment debt.?

  Near the shrine, someone had left a strip of cloth with three names scrawled on it. The candle beneath had burned low.

  Yssavelle’s eyes lingered on it for a heartbeat.

  Boots, voices, laughter, grief. All in the same space.

  She followed Haru back toward the doors.

  Outside, beyond the inner streets and the ring of fields and low buildings between Lumendell’s two walls, the Monster Boom waited in its endless patience.

  Today, they would not go that far.

  Today, it was rats.