CHAPTER 18: DUST ON THE BOARD
The dormitory bunk felt smaller than Kael remembered.
He lay on his back, staring at the underside of Torven's mattress—sagging, stained, a topography of every night the big man had snored through it. The armband was gone from his sleeve, but the tan line itched like a fresh burn. His fingers traced the outline without thinking, as if expecting the fabric to somehow reappear.
Three days since they walked out.
No tribunal. No bounty. Just silence—an institutional silence, the kind that felt like a door quietly closing somewhere behind you. Not slammed. Just… shut.
Downstairs, the common room carried on without them. Same dice games, same off-key bard, same stew that always tasted faintly of river mud. No one looked up when they passed through earlier. No whispers. No questions. They were background noise again, the kind people had learned not to notice.
Kael closed his eyes.
'We saved a village. Killed a lake. And we're still ghosts.'
Ghosts didn't earn respect. Ghosts didn't get work. Ghosts faded.
He felt the weight of that thought settle on his chest, heavier than any dungeon stone.
Torven limped in at noon, crutch thudding like a slow heartbeat. He dropped a folded paper on Kael's chest.
"Board finally coughed up something. E-rank milk run. Grain caravan to Duskmire Ford. Ten silver a head. Hazard: goblins, maybe."
Kael sat up, joints stiff from a night spent arguing with a mattress. "They're sending us on E-rank?"
"Sending anyone who'll take it," Torven said, lowering himself onto his bunk with a grunt. "Good parties are up north chasing a wyvern contract. We're the leftovers no one bothers scraping off the pot."
Lysa leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, scar catching the light. "Caravan boss is some merchant named Jorrin. Never heard of us. Thinks we're green."
Dren appeared behind her, silent as smoke. "Pay's shit. But it's pay."
Kael unfolded the tag. Standard form. No special notes. Nothing to distinguish them from fresh recruits with shaky swords and borrowed armor.
'Back to square one. All because we were nosy where we shouldn't have.'
He stood. "We take it."
No hesitation. No theatrics. Just the next rung on the ladder—low, but solid.
The caravan assembled at dawn—six wagons, twelve oxen, and one merchant who looked like he slept in his ledger. Jorrin's mustache drooped like it was tired of being attached to him.
He frowned at Torven's crutch. "You sure you can walk the route?"
Torven grinned. "Walked out of a mine with this leg. You bet your wagons I'll be fine."
Jorrin nodded stiffly, already moving on. He never even processed the joke.
He turned to Kael. "You the leader?"
Kael nodded.
Kael had tacitly became the leader of the group. In actuality, from the very first day there was a change in leadership.
"Good. Keep the goblins off. Don't touch the grain. Don't scare the oxen."
He walked away without asking names.
Lysa lifted a brow. "Charming."
Torven shrugged. "At least he didn't ask for references."
They rode drag position—last wagon, dust sticking to sweat, turning their throats to parchment. The road wound through dry scrub and abandoned paddocks. Nothing glamorous. Nothing heroic.
Midday, a real party overtook them. Five riders, blue armbands with silver stripes. C-rank. The guild's mid-tier royalty.
The leader—a woman with a longsword strapped high between her shoulders—reined in beside Jorrin. Her horse was cleaner than most people in Branch 17.
"Merchant Jorrin? Iron Lark Contracting. We'll take lead escort. Your… auxiliaries can handle the flanks."
Auxiliaries. A single word that filed them neatly into a box.
Jorrin beamed. "Finally, professionals."
Kael's crew got waved aside like furniture being rearranged.
Torven spat dust. "Auxiliaries. Cute."
Lysa's scar twitched. "Let them chase applause. We'll take the quiet."
Night camp. Wagons in a circle, fire low.
The C-ranks told stories loud enough for everyone to hear—dragon teeth, necromancer duels, noble bonuses. One flashed a wyvern scale like a badge of superiority.
Kael sharpened the wing-shard slowly, methodically, the scraping of whetstone a counterpoint to their bragging.
A C-rank archer drifted over, casual curiosity in his eyes. "You the ones who cleared the Hollow Mine?"
Torven leaned on his crutch. "Heard of it?"
"Heard it collapsed. Owner's blaming drunk surveyors." The archer laughed. "Guild buried the report. Bad for business."
Kael kept sharpening. 'Of course they did.'
Truth had a way of sinking when coin was involved.
The archer eyed Torven's leg. "Bar fight?"
Torven smirked. "Something like that."
Second night, goblins.
Not bold. Not loud. Just six shadows sliding through the dark, eyes green and hungry. The C-ranks reacted first—flaring spells, hard steel, too much noise.
Kael watched the chaos stack up.
One goblin slipped past, low to the ground, heading for an ox's throat.
Kael stepped in.
He let the claws rake his eyes—slash—pain bright enough to erase thought.
'Enhanced sight. Give it to me,' Kael gleed with something akin to joy.
He blinked through the sting, sight sharpening, bleeding into a predator's palette—heat, motion, the shimmer of intent.
He caught the goblin's wrist, snapped it clean. Took the claws across his forearm to learn the edge, feel its bite.
Three seconds. Wounds closed.
He ended the creature with its own dagger.
No noise. No witness.
The C-ranks never knew.
Dawn. The caravan reached Duskmire Ford intact.
Jorrin paid the C-ranks twenty silver each with ceremony and flourish.
To Kael's crew: ten silver apiece, handed over like change from a market stall.
"No trouble," Jorrin said. "Good auxiliaries."
Torven pocketed the coin. "Auxiliaries. I'm carving that on my gravestone."
Back at Branch 17, the board was alive again—contracts stacked thick, most of them out of reach.
Kael pinned the E-rank tag back up, unmarked.
Lysa watched him. "We're nobody again."
Kael scanned the common room—the familiar stew-smell, the clatter of mugs, the same faces pretending not to know them.
"For now," he said.
He sat at an empty table, pulled the wing-shard from his belt.
Goblin claws had etched faint green lines across the glass—night vision, locked in.
He smiled, small, quiet.
'Nobody sees the knife until it's already in their ribs.'
Torven dropped into the seat across, crutch thumping. "Next one's D-rank. Stirges again. Pay's twenty-eight."
Kael nodded. "We take it."
Lysa slid in beside them. "Back to the fen?"
"Back to the fen."
Dren arrived with four mugs. "To auxiliaries."
They drank.
The ladder was still there.
They were still climbing.