Chapter 2:

  He took the charcoal stub between thumb and forefinger and scratched the word slow into the paper. Elf—then drew a line beside it. Wrote tentative. The mark was clean. Unbroken. He closed the journal and set it flat upon the table. The cover was stained with grease and broth and the edges curled. He didn’t mind. It was a working book.

  He leaned back on the bench and looked out across the tavern. Lanternlight swayed overhead from a low chain and cast long shadows against the floorboards. Men drank in corners. A bard with a broken harp slept near the hearth. The fire burned low. Somewhere outside the wind moved against the shutters.

  He didn’t like to dwell on a single protein for too long. Even when the yield was clean, even when the flavor was clear. There was always the risk of dulling the palate. And the Elf had not been clean. Not this time. The broth had gone bold. Covered what should’ve been light. The dish was good, but it could’ve been anything.

  There were other things in the region. Meat that walked on two legs and wore skin like men. Some of it smart. Some of it fast. All of it killable. That was the point. He preferred the simpler creatures—herbivores, runners, herd-dwellers—but that wasn’t always an option. Some things hunted you back. And those things, when killed clean, had flavors buried deep under the bitterness. Hard to reach. Harder still to keep. But if you could get to it, if you could drag that taste out from under the sour and the bile, then you had something worth remembering.

  He reached for the journal again and thumbed to a blank page. Wrote a name across the top in block letters.

  Congathala.

  He knew the name. Knew the shape of the thing. Red hair down the back. Tall. Primates, some said. But not the tree-swinging kind. These were forest hunters. Deep woods. Broad shoulders and fire in the eyes. He’d never seen one. Not with his own eyes. But he’d found what they’d left behind. Blood on bark. Bones crushed to powder. Adventurers too slow to draw their blades. Too loud. Too green.

  They didn’t travel in groups. They didn’t leave trails. They hunted and vanished.

  He tapped the end of the charcoal against the wood of the table and stared down at the name. A tough meat, most likely. Coarse grain. Muscular. Bitterness high. He’d need to cook low. Maybe braise. Maybe smoke. Something to bring the flavor out slow and draw the hate from the flesh.

  The floorboards creaked to his right. He didn’t look up.

  A small hand set a pint of honeyed mead beside the book. Foam licked the rim. The mug was carved from horn and banded in iron.

  “Here you go, Mister Sylas,” the barmaid said.

  “Thank you,” He glanced toward her. She smiled. Wiped her palms on the apron. Waited a breath, then moved off again, back into the low hum of tavern life.

  He picked up the mug and took a sip. The mead was warm and sweet. Thick with the taste of flowers. It would not pair well with predator meat. But it sat easy on the throat. He set it down again. Opened the journal. Wrote two more words beneath the name.

  High risk.

  Unknown yield.

  He reached beneath his collar and thumbed the plate that hung at his chest. The chain was iron, the links dull with age. The plate itself was bronze, thumb-sized, smooth from years of wear. The edges had gone soft. It caught the lamplight just enough to shine.

  It marked him. That was all. Bronze-tier. Low-level. Not worth watching.

  He didn’t care much for the ranking. Never had. The Guild liked its hierarchy, liked its order. Badges and papers and access codes. He understood it, but he didn’t live by it. Still, there were places he couldn’t walk into without the right color on his neck. Zones locked behind permissions. Wards keyed to plate rank. Trouble if you passed through without clearance. And not the clean kind either—bureaucrats, fines, Guild hearings, sealed kitchens. The kind of trouble that stacked up like mold on bread. You could scrub it away but the smell always lingered.

  He didn’t like that kind of trouble. Slowed down the work. Cut into the hunt. And if it cut into the hunt, it cut into the dish.

  So he had a goal. Not a dream. Just a goal.

  Platinum.

  The highest plate issued–at least, the highest one that he cared about. Full clearance. No locked gates, no barred borders, no Guild handler breathing through his nose in a quiet room full of ink and forms. Platinum didn’t mean safety. It meant permission. You could die wherever you pleased. Long as you signed the forms. Long as you paid your dues.

  He wasn’t there yet. Not strong enough. Not for that.

  He figured he had the strength for Silver. Maybe Gold. Hadn't tested it. Not really. Never sat for the Ranking Exam. Didn’t like being watched. Didn’t like show fights. That kind of strength didn’t matter in the wild. The only measure that counted was whether or not you came back. Whether or not you had something to cook.

  He looked down at the plate again. Let it fall back beneath his shirt.

  The zone he wanted was open to Bronze. Just barely. Most places that dangerous were locked down tighter, but the deep woods called home by the Congathalas didn’t hold any rare resources. No herbs. No crystals. No ancient ruins. No dungeons. Just trees and silence and blood in the brush. The Guild didn’t post guards there. They didn’t warn people off. They let the Bronze-rankers in, same as they let them out. If they could make it.

  Most didn’t.

  But the Guild never cared much about Bronze Plates gone missing. Cheap to replace. Good for statistics. Kept the monster population thin.

  He pulled the journal close again. Ran a line beneath High risk.

  Wrote another word below it.

  Open.

  He wasn’t reckless. He’d walked enough ground alone to know the shape of his own limits. Skill didn’t make you invincible. Prowess didn’t keep you from bleeding out in the dirt if no one was there to drag you clear. The deep woods were quiet and wide. They swallowed lone men whole and left nothing behind but a bronze plate half-buried in leaves.

  He needed a team. Four at least. Five would be better. He didn’t need them for the kill—he could handle that part if the moment came—but for the hours in between. The walking. The watching. The second pair of eyes when his were turned downward, looking for tracks. The hands to drag him back if he stepped wrong.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The Congathala lived out there, deep past the markers. But it wasn’t just them.

  The woods were full of teeth.

  Goblins moved in packs. Not smart, but clever enough. Knew how to circle a camp, how to crawl low under cover. Knew what steel looked like. Dire Wolves too, fast and lean, and their eyes glowed when the moon was high. Even the small beasts could turn deadly if you weren’t ready. They weren’t rare. But they were worth something.

  That was the draw.

  Adventurers didn’t go into the Congathala woods for relics or gold. There was nothing buried in the dirt but bones. No alchemical herbs. No dungeons. Just meat. Just blood. Adventurers went there to level up.

  Kill a beast. Get stronger. Kill another. Climb the ladder. That was the shape of it.

  Power came in pieces. Cut from hide and claw. Stripped from corpses and fed into the soul. You gathered it, slow, and the Guild marked your progress in numbers and plates and fees. Higher levels meant stronger arms. Stronger arms meant better quests. Better quests meant coin. The adventurers knew it. They came for that. Not the danger. Not the meat. At least, that’s how it was for most adventurers, though he [System] also gave away levels for other things, like if he came up with a new recipe or discovered and used a new ingredient.

  If it was true for him, then it was true for others. That said, most people gained levels by killing monsters. It was easier. Simpler. And, at times, fun. Many adventurers joined the Guild for the thrill of it.

  He would find them. The ones willing to go. Maybe not for the Congathala—few ever knew what that was—but for the wolves. For the goblins. For the numbers. He’d let them kill what they wanted.

  Maybe he’d take the Ranking Exam afterwards.

  He rose from the bench and slid the coin onto the table. Silver. Flat and worn. It clicked once against the wood, then stilled. The barmaid glanced over from behind the counter but said nothing. He adjusted the strap of his pack, tugged his cloak loose from the hook, and walked toward the door.

  The tavern murmured around him. Voices low, heads tilted close. Tankards clinked. Cards slapped the tables in the back. A few men turned as he passed, just for a moment. He didn’t meet their eyes. He moved through the hush like a shadow in shallow water. Outside, the cold waited in the gaps between the boards.

  “Gone, just like that,” someone muttered near the hearth.

  “Haven’t found the body.”

  “Heard there wasn’t much blood, either.”

  “The Guild’s asking questions.”

  He pushed open the door and stepped out. The hinges creaked. The wind caught the edge of his cloak and threw it wide behind him.

  They were talking about Bruntt. Everyone was. Elf. Gang leader. Local troublemaker, full of noise and knives. Called himself the head of the Razor Gang. Ran cards and cut purses and made noise where noise didn’t belong. Had a temper. Had a name. Now he had nothing.

  He’d gone missing three nights past. Vanished from his own hideout. No signs. No witnesses. The kind of disappearance that left men whispering over drinks and locking their doors with both hands.

  He wouldn’t be found.

  He wouldn’t wash up in a ditch. Wouldn’t turn up in some drainage pipe with the life wrung out of him. No bones left for the crows.

  The body had gone to the river. Cut to pieces. Cleaned. Shared. The fishes took what they could. The rest flowed with the current until it was no longer a body. Just scraps. Just memory. The skin had gone to the soil. Folded and buried. It would feed the roots come spring.

  And the rest of him—the best of him—had already passed through the flame and the tongue.

  The Guild House wasn’t far.

  Grahsbad was a frontier town, small and weatherworn, built on flat ground between the hills and the dark woods. The cobbled roads were uneven and narrow, patched with gravel where the stones had come loose. The buildings leaned slightly into the wind, timber-framed and clay-packed, their roofs mossy and low. The walls that circled the town were hardly walls at all—knee-high in places, waist-high in others. Meant to mark the boundary more than defend it. The watchtower was little more than a shed on stilts.

  Everyone knew everyone. Faces got remembered. Names stuck. Outsiders came and went but didn’t stay long, and those that did were looked at twice. Sometimes three times.

  The Guild House stood near the center of town, between the old well and the ironmonger’s shop. Two stories tall, stone on the bottom, wood up top. The windows were small and shuttered. The crest of the Adventurers’ Guild was carved into the doorframe—circle, sword, and flame. He walked up the short steps and pushed the door open.

  The noise met him first.

  Bootsteps. Voices. Barked laughter. Armor creaking. The smell of sweat and leather and wet cloaks. Adventurers moved in groups across the floor, some gathered around tables, others pacing in front of the walls. The west wall was covered in parchment and board, a mess of postings and quests and summons. Some pinned with daggers, some nailed, some hung with string. Scraps of paper fluttered under the draft from the chimney. Notices scrawled in a dozen hands. Kill contracts. Escorts. Lost sons. Missing mules. A merchant had lost a cart of glass bottles two towns east. Another claimed to have seen a troll near the river pass.

  The eastern wall was cleaner. A long counter ran beneath it, worn smooth by years of elbows. Behind it stood the receptionist. Dark uniform, polished badge, a stack of ledgers on the desk behind her. She was taking a pouch from one adventurer, handing coin to another, ticking boxes in neat rows. Monster parts were traded here. Quests were turned in. Payment processed. Ranks adjusted.

  He stepped aside and let a pair of wet-cloaked archers pass by. One of them was limping. He moved toward the board first, weaving through the noise, eyes scanning the postings for names, tags, markers. Some teams left notices. Looking for a mage. Need frontliner. No amateurs. Talk to-

  He would check with the receptionist first. Names were kept. Records. He could ask who’d gone into the Congathala woods before. Who’d made it back. Who hadn’t. The Guild kept track of those things, even when tHe walked across the hall to the counter, boots thudding soft against the worn wood floor. The receptionist had seen him before he reached her. She always did. Eyes like glass bead buttons, sharp and quick.

  “Ah, Mister Syras,” she said, voice smooth and practiced, like the words had been spoken a thousand times before to a thousand different men. “How are you? I trust you’re doing well for yourself? Interested in a quest today?”

  “I’m doing well,” he said. His voice was low and flat. He stopped at the counter, rested his hand on the edge. “Not a quest. I’m looking for a team.”

  She nodded and turned without another word. Her name was Muriel. She wore the Guild’s dark blue, sleeves rolled to the elbow, ink on her knuckles. Her hair was pulled back in a tight braid that hadn’t moved once in the time he’d known her. She moved with the certainty of someone who’d seen every kind of adventurer come through that door and leave in pieces. She reached beneath the counter and pulled out the tome.

  The ledger was thick, bound in heavy hide. The cover was cracked and dark from oil. She flipped it open and ran her finger down the page. Then to the next. She moved quick, faster than his eyes could follow. Each page held names and marks, updates scrawled in the margins. Deaths noted in black ink. Rank shifts. Team formations. Disbandments. Muriel’s finger moved through it like a knife through cloth.

  “Specifications?” she asked.

  “Bronze Plates,” he said. “Used to the deep woods. No tracker. No assassin.”

  Her finger paused. She tilted the page toward the light and tapped it once.

  “Here,” she said. “Red Sparrows. Registered last year. Four-man team. Archer, mage, warrior, support. Still Bronze, but consistent. Never failed a contract. No deaths. Not yet. Known for venturing into deep woods.”

  He leaned in, eyes passing over the line she’d indicated. The writing was tight and angled. The margins beside the name were clean.

  “They lost their Thief two months back,” Muriel said. “Trap runes outside a ruin. Cracked the whole leg open. Had to be carried back. Didn’t stay with the group after that. They moved here from Dunsbad about three weeks ago. Took on a few local bounties. They’re looking for a tracker. Haven’t posted it yet, but I keep records.”

  He looked at her. She waited, eyes steady.

  He gave a small nod.

  “They drink at the Bellringer,” she added, eyes on the tome. “Corner table, near the window with the blue flower pot. Always after sundown. They’ll be in Grahsbad for another week before they move on.”

  He nodded, but didn’t thank her. Just placed down five silver coins and turned and walked away. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her wave.

  Time to join a team.