Ray woke to the scrape of a chair on timber and the low murmur of voices kept deliberately quiet. The storage corner Mara had pointed him to was barely a room, more a partition with a bedroll and a crate, but it was dry, and his ribs didn’t feel like they were tearing apart every time he breathed.

  He sat up slowly and took stock without making it obvious. Sword within reach. Pack where he’d left it. The daggers stayed in his personal inventory, where they belonged until he actually needed them. No point wearing everything at once. These might scare the villagers. The necklace lay cold against his chest when he brushed it through his shirt, still and harmless, as if it hadn’t warned him yesterday. Every movement he made had to be careful. It would be ridiculous if he ended up face down in a ditch because of a village right after fighting a lobster king.

  The quest message yesterday had put him on edge.

  [Global Quest Reactivated: Kill Ray Atton. Reward Upgraded: Special Title.]

  Ray remembered the village’s reaction. Everyone had been suspicious of him. Everyone had received the message and a lone stranger claiming to be a merchant had rocked up to the village. No point in pondering monsters in the closet. I’ve got to act carefully. Most importantly, I can’t forget that I’m Ryn.

  He stood, rolled his shoulders once, and stepped into the main room.

  Mara was at the table with a pot and a knife, scraping the bottom like she could bully it into giving up another meal. Hewin sat near the doorway, hands folded, watching the street through a gap in the wall. Layne was tying her hair back with a strip of cloth. Toren had soot on his forearms already, as if he’d woken up and gone straight to the forge without bothering to pretend he cared about mornings.

  Mara looked up. “You sleep?”

  “Enough.” Ray kept his tone neutral, kept his posture loose. He took the edge of the table instead of the centre, the seat closest to leaving if he needed to. Old habit. Don’t make it obvious.

  Layne snorted. “That means no.”

  “It means I’m not dead,” Ray said, and the line came out dry without him trying. He hadn’t meant to joke. It still got a quiet exhale from Toren that might’ve been amusement.

  “That’s a low bar,” Toren muttered, pushing a bowl toward him. Thin porridge, bits of dried fruit, and a chunk of fat floating at the surface. It smelled like smoke and stubbornness.

  Ray took it with both hands. “I’ll pay for this.”

  Mara waved the knife at him. “You’ll pay by not being trouble. Eat.”

  Hewin didn’t look away from the street when he spoke. “Are you leaving today?”

  Ray took a mouthful and didn’t rush the answer. He let the heat settle in his stomach first. “I was going to. Depends.”

  “On what?” Layne’s voice carried impatience, but there was something underneath it too. Not kindness, exactly. Interest that hadn’t decided what shape it wanted to take.

  Ray swallowed. “On whether Harrowfen is worth walking to with half-healed ribs.”

  Toren leaned an elbow on the table. “You’re really going to Harrowfen.”

  “If your map isn’t a joke.”

  “It’s old,” Layne said. “It’s not wrong.”

  Mara scraped the pot again, then pointed at him with the knife as if she could pin him in place. “You don’t go east. I don’t care what you think you can handle.”

  Ray didn’t flinch at the warning. “I’m not going east.”

  “Good.” Mara’s tone made it sound settled, as if she could decide direction for him by sheer force of will. “Then the next question is what you’re doing with yourself while you’re here.”

  Ray glanced at her. “I’m not planning to stay long.”

  “You say that,” Hewin muttered, “and then you’re here for a week because you twisted an ankle or got a fever.”

  Ray almost smiled. It didn’t land fully, but it was close, and he hated how easy it felt to let it happen. “I don’t get fevers.”

  Layne gave him a look. “Everyone gets fevers.”

  Ray ate another mouthful, then set the bowl down and let his hands rest where people could see them. That mattered. It always mattered with strangers. “Fine. If I’m here for more than a day, I’ll pull my weight. I can hunt. I can fix things. I can carry water. Pick one.”

  Toren lifted his eyebrows. “Can you fix things?”

  “I can try,” Ray said, and it was the truth. His idea of fixing usually involved rope, clamps, and forcing something back into place. He wasn’t going to pretend he was a carpenter.

  Mara stopped scraping long enough to assess him properly. “You’re offering because you’re grateful, or because you want us to like you?”

  Ray met her eyes. “Because if I sit still, I start thinking.”

  The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It was the sort of pause people took when they recognised something real and didn’t want to name it. Ray let it sit. He didn’t fill it with an explanation. He’d learned that explanations were where you bled information.

  Hewin broke it with a grunt. “If you’re hunting, you do it away from our trap line. You step in one of those pits and I’ll drag you out, then I’ll make you fill it back in with your hands.”

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  Ray nodded once. “Show me where they are and I won’t go near them.”

  “I’ll show him,” Layne said immediately.

  Mara’s eyes narrowed. “No, you won’t.”

  Layne rolled her shoulders as if she’d expected the push. “He’s going to wander anyway. Better he knows where he’s allowed to step. Better he doesn’t stumble into a pit and scream the whole forest awake.”

  Hewin looked between them. “Or better he’s out of here before someone decides the reward is worth a muddy road.”

  Ray kept his head down and ate. He let them argue because it told him more than any direct question would. Layne wanted control, wanted unknowns turned into routines. Mara cared about mouths and risk. Hewin cared about patterns, and he’d seen enough patterns to hate strangers on principle. Toren’s interest sat in the gaps between all of them, practical curiosity that didn’t pretend to be anything nicer.

  Toren tapped the edge of Ray’s bowl with two fingers. “What are you hunting?”

  Ray glanced up. “What do you normally take?”

  “Hares,” Layne said. “Small boars. Anything that doesn’t fight back too hard. We don’t go chasing the big stuff.”

  Ray didn’t correct her. He could chase the big stuff. He just couldn’t do it and keep this place quiet, and quiet was the closest thing this village had to a wall. “Show me what’s near. If we find something clean, I’ll bring meat back. You can keep most of it.”

  Mara made a sound that was half laugh, half warning. “You’re generous for a bloke who walked in here bleeding.”

  Ray kept his voice even. “I’m practical.”

  Hewin’s gaze sharpened. “Practical people don’t carry coastal chitin into a forest village.”

  Ray’s spoon paused for a moment. He didn’t let it become a tell. “Practical people take what they can get and trade it while it’s still useful.”

  Layne tilted her head. “You always answer around things.”

  Ray looked at her. “You always ask around them.”

  That got a small huff from Toren, amused despite himself. Mara didn’t smile, but the tension eased by a fraction. Ray felt it, that tiny shift when people stopped waiting for you to make a mistake and started waiting to see what you did next.

  “Fine,” Mara said at last. “Layne can go. You keep to the creek line and you don’t cross the old stones. If you see anyone who looks too clean, you come back. No hero nonsense.”

  Ray nodded. “No hero nonsense.”

  Layne grabbed her bow from where it leaned near the door and checked the string with quick fingers. “If you’re slow, I’m leaving you.”

  “I’ll try to keep up,” Ray said, and stood carefully so his ribs didn’t remind him they existed in front of an audience.

  Outside, the village looked different in the morning light. Still poor, still patched together, but busy in a way that made it feel alive. A child carried a bundle of sticks twice their size. A dog trotted along a fence line with the serious expression of something appointed to guard the world. Someone was repairing a roof with thin planks and rope, and it looked like the roof had been repaired that way ten times before.

  Ray had spent too long walking with nothing around him but danger and the memory of it. The sight of routine hit him harder than it should’ve.

  This is what it was back in Finrial, he thought, and the memory came with a warmth he didn’t trust. Before everything became running and hiding and pretending I wasn’t who they wanted dead.

  Layne waited until they’d walked past the last hut before she spoke again. She didn’t look at him while she did it, eyes scanning the treeline and the ground.

  “You’re actually a trader?” she asked.

  Ray kept his pace steady. “That’s what I said.”

  “You don’t look like you’ve got any trade goods except shells. Harrowfen traders carry bolts of cloth, tools, trinkets, and sweet stuff for kids. They carry a whole host of things.” Her eyes flicked to him, then away. “You carry a sword and a bad attitude.”

  Ray exhaled. He didn’t want to be having this discussion right now. “Trade is whatever people need.”

  “That’s a dodge.”

  “It’s also true.”

  Layne made a short sound, not quite a laugh. “So you’re telling me you’re the kind of trader who trades anything, goes anywhere, and never tells anyone anything useful about himself.”

  Ray shrugged. “I’m telling you you’re not going to get a clean story out of me.”

  Layne’s expression didn’t change much, but her shoulders loosened slightly. “Good. Clean stories get people killed.”

  They followed the creek line south for a while, then cut into thinner trees. Layne pointed at subtle signs as they walked. A patch of disturbed soil where a pit trap had been covered. A line of stones that marked where not to step. A broken branch low on a trunk that meant someone had passed through recently and hadn’t tried to hide it.

  Ray watched her work. She moved without rushing, bow held loose but ready. Cautious, but not scared. There was a difference.

  “You hunt alone?” Ray asked.

  “Most days. Sometimes Hewin comes if we’re low.”

  “Your family?” Ray kept his tone casual, the way you asked when you wanted the answer but didn’t want to look like you did.

  Layne’s mouth tightened. “No. He’s just old and hard to kill. He turned up one winter and didn’t leave. Mara pretended she didn’t like it. Now she’ll stab anyone who tries to take him.”

  Ray nodded once. “Fair.”

  They walked another few minutes before Layne spoke again, voice quieter now. “We don’t do the System thing.”

  Ray glanced at her. “I noticed.”

  Layne made a short sound. “People show up, they start talking about levels and quests and builds. They start turning everything into a ladder. Next thing you know, they’re picking fights they can’t win because they want to be stronger by tomorrow.”

  Ray didn’t answer straight away. He watched the creek glitter through the trees and thought about the way the world wanted to make everything into a metric. Hunting becomes grinding. Living becomes a number. If you don’t play, you still get dragged. He swallowed the thought and kept it inside.

  “And you think staying low keeps you alive,” he said.

  “It has,” Layne replied. “We don’t get stronger fast. We don’t get noticed fast either. Hunters pass through Harrowfen and they come out here sometimes. They take a look at the road, look at our huts, and they decide there’s nothing here worth their time. They want towns. Crystals. Walls. They want someone to cheer when they show up. We’ve got goats and mud.”

  Ray’s ribs ached as he breathed. He didn’t let it show. “You’ve never wanted more?”

  Layne glanced at him. “Wanting doesn’t build walls. Wanting doesn’t fill a pot. Wanting doesn’t stop a wolf at night. You want things, you keep wanting them. That’s how people end up walking east.”

  That was blunt enough that Ray believed her. He nodded and kept walking, letting the quiet settle again.

  They found a sign not long after. Fresh tracks near the creek where the mud held the shape clean. Layne crouched and ran two fingers along the edge, then sniffed her fingertips with a grimace.

  “Boar,” she said. “Small one. Might’ve been rooting around for shoots.”

  Ray crouched beside her and looked along the track line. “How far do they usually roam?”

  Layne gave him a sideways look. “Are you asking because you care, or because you’re trying to sound normal?”

  Ray’s mouth twitched. “Both.”

  Layne stood. “They circle back toward the old stones. We don’t go there.”

  Ray followed her gaze. Through the trees, a stretch of broken rock showed, half buried, the remains of a path or wall that had once meant something. It didn’t look dangerous on its own, but this world didn’t need to look dangerous to be lethal.

  “Why?” he asked.

  Layne’s tone stayed practical. “Because things live in the cracks. Because people used to go there and come back missing bits. Because I don’t want to drag anyone back to Mara and explain why there’s less of them.”

  Ray nodded once. “Fine.”

  Layne studied him for a beat. “You say ‘fine’ too easily.”

  Ray kept his eyes on the ground ahead. “I’ve had enough fights.”

  She didn’t push further. Instead, she moved along the tracks with quiet steps, and Ray matched her pace, letting her lead. He could’ve taken point and found the boar in minutes. He could’ve ended it fast and clean and made it all look effortless.

  And then I’m not Ryn anymore, he reminded himself. Then I’m something they measure. Something they whisper about. Something worth selling.

  They caught sight of it near a patch of ferns, head down, snout rooting through damp soil. It was bigger than Layne had implied, thick shoulders and bristled back. Tusks sharp enough that Ray’s ribs did a small, unhappy twist at the thought of taking a hit.

  Layne lifted her bow slowly and looked at Ray, waiting.

  Ray whispered, “How do you want it?”

  “I put one in the shoulder to turn it,” Layne murmured, eyes locked on the boar. “You finish it clean. Don’t chase it into the stones. If it runs that way, let it go. Meat isn’t worth dying for.”

  Ray nodded. “I won’t.”

  Layne drew. The bow creaked softly. The arrow flew and hit true, sinking into muscle. The boar squealed and spun, more angry than hurt, and for a second it looked straight at them as if it understood who’d changed its day.

  Ray stepped forward with his sword low, not raised, letting the boar commit. Layne shifted to the side, already nocking another arrow. The boar charged, head down, and Ray waited until the last moment, then moved left and drove steel into the neck where the hide was thinner. The impact jarred his arms and pulled at his ribs, but the blade bit deep. The boar stumbled, tried to keep running, then collapsed hard enough that the ground thudded.

  Ray breathed out slowly and didn’t move until he was sure it was done.