"Mira!"
His mind was not able to picture her browsing stalls or a simple distracted admiration of armor.
His mind pictured the void anchor embedded into her spine, corrupting her being. Sending him into a blind tizzy, coins hit the table with a sharp thud, Jax left the food cart without thinking.
He looked in a few places before finding her in the courtyard, looking at weapons again.
Sunlight slid along polished steel in thin bands of gold, reflecting the morning light wherever they could. "This one can launch fire," Mira said without looking away.
"The details say the mana channel is pre-aligned to be compatible. Imagine frost and fire together. I'd totally be unstoppable."
The word landed heavy. Unstoppable had not been beautiful. It had been loud and wrong in the dungeon.
"Mira. Look at the price before you continue to ogle and possibly break it."
"What price?" She asked, her hands a bit firmer on the sword. The manila tag flipped.
Twenty-five million shards, the numbers were written in a massive black text. Excitement flickered and dimmed.
"We earned twenty-five hundred," Jax said. "That barely covers living costs this week."
"Are you sure that you aren't a secret noble from a family somewhere unknown?" she asked lightly. "Hidden inheritance maybe?"
"I grew up poor Mira, we didn't have much for anyone." The words settled between them like dust that never quite cleared. "I thought you'd be the wealthy one," he added, gaze still on the blade.
"No one where I grew up looked like you unless they had money."
"Looked like what?" She asked, anger rising as her frost began to creep out.
"Like someone who never had to count how many meals were left before winter."
Her grip tightened slightly around the hilt of the sword. "For what it's worth... we counted too. It was just different things."
The market noise pressed back in, voices rising and falling like waves against stone. For a moment, the world felt almost ordinary again.
The stall owner continued rearranging daggers with bored efficiency. Apprentices argued over polish. The market moved, unaware.
They followed the alleyway past the food carts, the narrow corridor cutting cleanly through the city's bustle. The shortcut to the guild hall was quieter than the main road. Life continued, indifferent.
"Think they'll have any exciting quests?" Mira asked, practically bouncing as she walked. "I can't wait to get back into that dungeon."
Jax adjusted his satchel tightening it to his back. "We still have a few days before the next dive. At most, they'll have a fetch quest or a poor farmer needing help clearing out pests."
"As long as I get to wipe out some more monsters, I'll be happy." Mira added, skipping along toward their destination. Like there was no care in the world.
Entering the guild hall together the air shifted, conversations were quieter than usual. More glances lingered. They headed toward the job board, but the receptionist stepped in front of them before they could reach it.
"I'm so glad you two showed up," she said panting from the sprint over to them. "The guild master… needs to speak with you… urgently." She hesitated. "He wants to discuss those… anchors you mentioned, they aren't a normal thing."
Jax felt his stomach drop, he had known something was wrong. Being summoned to the back of the guild meant this was no longer just a strange encounter. It was a record. His steps slowed, anxiety grabbing at his mind.
"Please, follow me," the receptionist said, already turning away.
"I'm scared, Mira," Jax muttered under his breath. "Authority makes my skin crawl. It's like all I feel is their judgment."
"You've got this," she said reassuring him. "You're the one who made the first call, in there. You were right." She nudged his arm. "That was harder than talking to some old guys."
They were led deeper into the guild hall, past the open training space, past the archive room, toward a door tucked in the far rear. As they approached, raised voices spilled through the crack beneath it.
"They can't be coming back," one voice snapped. "They don't exist. It's only a myth," another argued. "Then where do you think myths come from?"
The receptionist slowed as they neared the door, her pace losing the rushed confidence she had shown earlier in the hallway. The closer they came, the more the voices inside sharpened into distinct arguments instead of distant noise.
"…I'm telling you the patterns match," someone said through the wood, the words tight with restraint.
"Second floor sightings, three separate teams. That isn't a coincidence." Another voice answered immediately, older and heavier. "Or it's panic spreading faster than facts.
Adventurers see something unusual and suddenly the world is ending."
"Those were not normal dungeon growth people."
The words carried enough force that the hallway seemed to vibrate around them. Jax stopped walking, causing Mira to nearly bump into him from behind. "You good?" she asked quietly.
He nodded once, but his eyes stayed firmly fixated on the door in front of them. "They're already talking about it." "You hear them right? They seem pissed…"
Mira shrugged. "Good. Saves us from explaining it to them." But her voice had lost most of the earlier excitement she had while they traveled through the market. The energy that usually pushed her forward now landed somewhere between curiosity and caution.
Jax could hear paper sliding across the table inside the room. Maps, if he had to guess. Someone tapped a finger against the wood repeatedly, the sound sharp and impatient.
"We should seal the dungeon until we understand what we're looking at," another voice said. "-And kill the local economy?" someone else replied. "You want riots in the streets too?"
The low murmur of thought followed.
Jax felt something heavy settle into his chest. The anchors and the hobgoblin had already become more than just a strange encounter.
They were a problem large enough that the guild's leadership had been arguing about it before he and Mira even reached the building.
"See?" Mira said under her breath. "I told you it was going to be their problem."
"Not if we're the ones who found it first," Jax replied. "They're going to want answers that I don't have."
The receptionist lifted her hand toward the door but hesitated for a fraction of a second. Her knuckles hovered above the wood while the voices inside continued to rise and fall in uneven bursts.
For a moment the hallway fell very quiet.
Then she knocked.