The forest gave way to a cleared field, and there it was: Greyhaven.
A wall of sharpened timber logs, twice the height of a man, stretched into the distance. Torches burned along its length. A heavy gate, banded with iron, stood shut. It was the first thing built by hands that wasn't a cave that I'd seen here.
Kael: Stay close. Let me talk.
As we approached, a voice rang out from above.
Guard: Halt and state!
Kael: Kael's Vanguard. Returning from the Greypath. Three members, one escort.
A smaller door within the main gate swung open. The guard who stepped out wasn't human. He was a beastman—his features distinctly canine, with tall, furred ears and a muzzle, but his eyes were sharp and intelligent. He wore a leather brigandine and held a spear with practiced ease.
Gate Guard: Verification.
Kael, Brant, and Lira each gave a sharp, simultaneous nod. "Status. Party."
Three blue screens flickered to life beside their heads. The beastman guard's amber eyes scanned the air, reading the data. He gave a short grunt. Their windows vanished.
Then his eyes landed on me. His nose twitched slightly. "Escort. Verification."
Leon: I…
Kael: He's a new summon. Direct to Guild Master Albert. No verification yet.
The guard's muzzle tightened. "No status, no entry. The rule is for all races. No exceptions."
Lira: His interface is absent. It's a Guild matter. Albert expects him.
The guard's ears flattened back. He looked me up and down, his nostrils flaring as if he could smell my lack of a system. "Absent? Or masked?" His voice was a low growl. "Spies have tricks. Even human ones."
Brant: (Stepping forward) Does he smell like a Deep Hold infiltrator to you? He smells like sweat and fear. Call a runner. Now.
A tense silence hung. The guard stared, waiting for me to flinch, to prove I belonged. I said nothing.
Finally, he jerked his head toward a smaller, iron-banded door to the side. "The Side Entry. For goods, livestock, and… exceptions. He waits there. One of you fetches a runner."
Kael: Brant. Go.
Brant pushed through the main gate, disappearing into the noise beyond. The guard pointed me to the side door—a low, reinforced entrance. I stood by it, feeling the eyes of other guards on the wall. One had the sturdy, broad frame of a dwarf, another the slender silhouette of an elf.
After a long ten minutes, Brant returned with a young woman in a blue Guild tunic. She had the subtle, pointed ears of a half-elf. She glanced at a slate, then at me.
Guild Runner: Leon? Follow me. Guild Master Albert will see you now.
The beastman guard unlocked the side door. It opened with a groan. I had to duck to step through.
I entered Greyhaven not through the main gate, but through the servant's entrance.
The city was a roar of life. The smell of smoke, forging metal, and strange spices. The din was layered with voices—some guttural, some melodic. And they weren't all human.
My eyes struggled to take it in. A dwarf with a beard braided with copper rings bellowed over an anvil. A pair of slender figures with ash-grey skin and white hair—dark elves—moved through the crowd with silent grace. A burly man with boar-like tusks hefted a crate onto a cart. And everywhere, the human majority, all mixed together in a desperate, bustling tapestry.
And the flickers. A dwarf merchant and an elf customer touched hands, a blue flash between them sealing a trade. A human man muttered "Status," his face lit by his window as he checked something. A group of mixed species—human, beastman, dwarf—stood in a circle, each nodding as they muttered "Party," their interfaces syncing.
It was a system that included everyone. Everyone but me.
The half-elf runner led us swiftly to the solid Guild Hall. She took me straight to Albert's study and left.
The room was as before. Albert looked up. He was human, but his assistant, sorting scrolls in the corner, had the long, pointed ears and ageless eyes of a full elf.
Albert: So. You're the one who came through the side door.
He knew.
Kael: Sir. He has no status interface. And… he has this.
I placed the green goblin core fragment on his desk. It glowed, solid and unchanging.
Albert looked at it. He didn't touch it. He looked from the fragment to my empty hands.
Albert: You killed the creature that bore this?
Leon: Yes.
Albert: And the reward did not come to you.
Leon: No. It stayed like this.
He was silent. Then he picked up the fragment. He held it, focusing. Nothing happened. He placed it back.
Albert: It is real. But inert. For you.
He steepled his fingers.
Albert: You will stay in Greyhaven. You will come here at dawn tomorrow. We will begin to understand this.
He nodded to Kael. "Put him in the novice dormitory. See he's fed."
It was over. I was admitted. Not as a person. As a curiosity.
Kael led me back out into the roaring, flickering city of many faces. We didn't speak. The fragmented blue light of a hundred different species' status windows danced in the muddy streets, a universal language I would never speak, a club I would never join.
I was inside the walls. But in a city of a thousand races, I had never felt more alien.