After that began my days of a someone "normal", who is living by rules and do tries to be not a hindernice for others. "Normal life of a mercanary", not counting my secret training. But, I guess that is normal too, who doesn't have them? Not normal it becomes only when everybody knows how "audacious" or "bad" you are, or which rules you broke. We are stupid if you think about it in terms of normality.
So. My dear diary.
Day One
The Old Drain smelled of rot and shit. A rusted iron grate, taller than a man and bolted into the city's eastern foundation wall, separated the underground canal from the open air. Behind it, darkness. Somewhere deep inside, water dripped in a slow, patient rhythm.
My job was to stand here for twelve hours and kill anything that crawled out.
Forty-five coppers.
I leaned against the wall and waited.
Around noon, the grate rattled. Something pale and glistening squeezed between the bars. Blind, eyeless, the size of a large dog, with a flat head and a mouth full of blunt teeth. It wriggled through the gap and flopped onto the cobblestones, moist skin steaming faintly in the daylight.
I crushed its skull with a single overhead swing. Dragged the body to the drainage ditch. Went back to the wall.
Two more came before sunset. Same routine. Swing, drag, wait.
Forty-five coppers.
I walked back to the compound in the dark, washed the slime off my boots, and lay down on my cot. Someone was snoring. Someone else was arguing about the price of arrows.
Normal sounds. A normal life. Someone else's life.
I closed my eyes and let the mask settle.
* * *
Night One
The cave was cold. Silas had laid out a fresh semicircle of river stones, each one the size of an apple. He was sitting on his boulder, legs crossed, pipe already lit, watching me with one eye like a cat watching a mouse it wasn't hungry enough to chase.
"Go," he said.
I picked up a stone. Pulled mana. Pushed.
Nothing.
Again. Nothing. The stone stayed cold and whole. My fingers burned. My jaw tightened.
Silas blew a smoke ring and watched it dissolve against the cave ceiling.
"You know what the problem with the problem is?" he said, not looking at me.
I didn't answer.
"It's not the problem. It's you." He pointed his pipe stem at me. "You're looking at the rock and thinking 'rock.' Stop thinking 'rock.' Think... nothing. Absolutely nothing. Can you do that?"
"No," I said.
Silas grinned. Gold tooth. "Perfect. That means you're on the right track. Because if you'd said 'yes,' I'd know you were lying. And I am very, very good at spotting liars, savvy?" He tapped ash from his pipe. "I'm dishonest, Marshal. And a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. It's the honest stones you want to worry about."
"The honest stones."
"The ones that look easy to crack. Those are the ones that break your fingers." He wiggled his own fingers for emphasis. "Now. Again. And stop trying so hard. Trying is the enemy."
Three out of twenty cracked that night. My fingertips were raw and blistered by the time I stumbled back through the ravine at dawn.
Three hours of sleep. Then another twelve hours at the grate.
* * *
Day Four
The contracts board in the mess hall was a large slab of cork nailed to the wall, covered in pinned parchments sorted by rank. The F-tier section — my section — was at the bottom. Drain patrols, wall watches, warehouse escorts. Forty to sixty coppers each.
Above it, E-tier. Solo hunt permits. Targeted exterminations. Eighty coppers to two silver.
Above that, the good stuff. C and B ranks. Caravan escort through the Thornwood. Route clearance for the merchant guilds. Three to five silver a day. Some even paid with gold. The paper was thicker. The seals were real.
I was studying the board after dinner when Renn appeared at my shoulder, chewing an apple.
"Doing some shopping?" he asked.
"1st Company," I said. "How do they pull the gold contracts?"
Renn leaned against the wall, crunching loudly. "They've got Karl."
"Karl."
"Karl." He took another bite. "You know those people who sit down across from you, smile, and somehow by the end of the conversation you've agreed to something you definitely didn't want to agree to? Karl's one of those. He walks into a merchant's office, talks for an hour, and walks out with an exclusive escort contract at triple the standard rate. And the merchant thinks he got a bargain." He shook his head. "We don't have a Karl. We have Veyra. Veyra looks at merchants like she's calculating how much their boots are worth. Unsurprisingly, they don't come back with repeat business."
"What about materials?" I asked. "Beyond contracts."
Renn spit a seed into his palm. "Sure. That's where the real margins are, if you've got the hands for it. Monster hides — cave crawler skin, properly treated, makes lightweight armor that traders from the coastal cities will fight over. Bones from some of the deeper creatures conduct mana. Mages pay silver for a good set of bone plates — they build them into staffs and foci." He pointed with the apple core. "And then there's crystals. Elemental stones, deep in the old mines. Like that black pebble you carry around, but weaker, more common. Alchemists would sell their mothers for a clean one."
"And the extraction?"
"Ah." Renn grinned. "That's the part where you ruined three perfectly good lurker glands, if I recall. The materials are worth more than the contracts. But only if you don't mangle them getting them out. It's a skill. Takes practice."
He tossed the apple core into a bin and walked off, waving over his shoulder.
* * *
Day Seven
I saw Greyve in the corridor outside the Guild registrar's office.
He was coming out. I was going in. We nearly collided in the doorway.
"Marshal!" His face broke into a warm, easy smile. Like seeing an old friend. "How have you been? Taking contracts, I hear. Good man."
"Keeping busy," I said. My voice sounded calm. It surprised me.
"Good, good." He adjusted his cloak — the silver clasp catching the light. A sigil, turned sideways. House Verant. Now that Idris had told me, I couldn't unsee it. "Stability is important. Especially for someone in your... position." He clapped me on the shoulder. "Keep it up."
He walked away. His footsteps echoed down the stone corridor, confident and unhurried.
I stood in the doorway. The smile faded off my face like wax off a burning candle. I could taste bile at the back of my throat. My legs wanted to follow him. My arms wanted to reach for the hammer. Every nerve in my body was screaming a single, very simple command that I was choosing to ignore.
The one who betrayed you — maybe it was you. Maybe it always was. Bending. Waiting. Smiling on command while someone else decided what your life was worth.
The thought mixed with the first memory — the only memory that existed before the forest.
"I was betrayed."
For the first time, I wasn't sure who had betrayed whom.
* * *
Night Eight
Seven out of ten.
The stones cracked cleanly now. I could feel the exact moment the heat stopped being mine and became the rock's — a subtle shift, like the difference between holding your breath and breathing out. The orange glow along the fracture lines was brighter. Steadier.
Silas watched from his boulder, legs swinging. When the seventh stone split, he reached behind him and pulled my hammer from where it leaned against the cave wall. He held it out.
"Try."
I took the hammer. The weight was familiar — two pounds of iron on a hickory shaft, balanced for speed. I had swung it ten thousand times. But never like this.
I walked to the large stone block Silas used as an anvil. Set my feet. Drew mana — not to my hand, but through it, down through my wrist, along the shaft, toward the iron head.
First swing. Nothing. Just a dull clang and a chip of stone.
Second swing. A faint warmth in the metal, but it dissipated before the hit. Close. Not close enough.
Third swing. I stopped thinking about fire. Stopped thinking about mana. I just swung, and the iron head flashed dull orange for a split second as it connected. The stone cracked deeper than it should have. Much deeper. As if the hammer had weighed three times more.
Silas hopped down from his boulder and crouched by the crack, poking at it with a long finger.
"Well," he said. "That was terrible." He stood up, stretching. "But yesterday was even more terrible. So technically, we're moving forward." He yawned broadly. "Go sleep. Tomorrow we'll do it again. And the day after that. And the day after that. Until you stop being terrible and start being merely... bad." He waved his hand in a so-so gesture. "Savvy?"
* * *
Week Two
The alchemist's shop on Candlewick Street was small, dark, and reeked of something that gave me headache.
An old woman with thick spectacles sat behind a counter covered in labeled glass jars. She didn't look up when I entered. She was grinding something green in a brass mortar.
"I want to know prices," I said. "Monster materials."
She still didn't look up. "Be specific."
"Cave crawler hide. Clean."
"One silver per skin. Undamaged. No punctures, no acid burns. I get maybe one good hide for every four butchered ones people bring me. Don't waste my time with garbage."
"Bone spider plates."
Now she looked up. "You've seen bone spiders?"
"Not yet."
"Two silver for a full set of dorsal plates. Three if they're from an elder — the larger ones, deeper underground." She pushed her spectacles up her nose. "They're fragile. One bad swing and the plate shatters."
"Elemental crystals?"
She set the mortar down and studied me for a long moment.
"Three silver to a gold piece, depending on purity and elemental alignment. Fire-attuned are the most common. Earth and wind are rarer. Dark crystals—" She paused. "If you find a dark crystal, don't bring it here. I won't buy it due Academy regulations." She picked up her mortar again. "Anything else?"
"No. Thank you."
I left. The numbers were already running in my head. One deep-cave expedition with the right skills could net five to ten silver. Two weeks of drain patrol earned the same. The math was obvious.
But the math required rank E for solo contracts or a team willing to go deep. I had neither. Yet.
* * *
Day Fourteen
The abandoned mine shaft, three hours north of Ashford. Timber supports framed the entrance, most of them cracked and sagging. A cold draft blew outward, carrying the smell of damp stone and something sour.
Renn, Pol, Terro, and I stood at the entrance. Renn was adjusting his twin swords. Pol was already holding his tower shield. Terro was counting something — bolts, arrows, I didn't ask.
"So," Renn said, peering into the darkness. "Who exactly wants this hole reopened?"
"Craftsmen guild," Terro said without looking up. "New vein. Copper."
"Copper." Renn's face fell. "We're crawling into a monster den for copper? Not even silver?"
"Copper alloys." Terro slotted a bolt into his crossbow. "Smithing guilds pay well for pure copper."
"Great." Renn drew both swords and stepped into the dark. "Let's go die for someone else's doorknobs."
The upper levels were quiet. Old rails, rusted carts, collapsed side tunnels packed with debris. Our torches threw dancing shadows against rough-hewn walls.
We found the first signs of habitation fifty paces in: scratches on the walls. Low, repetitive, deliberate.
"Kobolds," Terro said, dropping to a crouch. He pointed his torch at the floor. Tiny clawed footprints in the dust, going in both directions.
"How many?" Renn asked.
Terro studied the tracks for three seconds. "Twelve to fifteen. Maybe more deeper in."
We moved forward in formation: Pol on point with his shield, Renn and I flanking, Terro behind with the crossbow. Standard tunnel sweep.
The kobolds hit us at the first junction.
They were smaller than goblins but built differently — leaner, with scaled skin the color of wet slate and narrow, reptilian faces. Their eyes caught the torchlight and flashed yellow-green. They weren't stupid. They'd prepared.
The first thing that happened was Renn stepping on a tripwire.
A shower of loose rocks cascaded from a shelf above the tunnel entrance. Pol raised his shield and caught most of it. A stone the size of my fist bounced off my shoulder. Behind us, three kobolds charged from a side tunnel we'd already cleared — they'd been hiding in a niche we'd missed, waiting for us to pass.
Terro put a bolt through the first one's chest before it covered half the distance. The second lunged at Renn, who sidestepped and opened its throat with a casual backhand. The third skidded to a halt, hissed, and scrambled back into the darkness.
"Smart little bastards," Renn muttered, wiping his blade on his thigh.
We pushed deeper. Two more kobold ambushes — both using the same tactic of pre-positioned traps and flanking attacks. They'd built crude barricades from overturned mine carts, creating chokepoints that forced us to advance single-file. Pol's shield ate most of the thrown stones and crude javelins.
The kobolds broke and scattered after we killed six of them. They vanished into cracks and side tunnels too narrow for us to follow.
Below the kobold level, the mine changed. The air got colder. The stone got smoother. And the walls began to shine with faint threads of something pale and iridescent.
"Web," Pol said. He touched a strand with the edge of his shield. It held — thick, rubbery, translucent. Not spider silk. Harder. Like dried glue.
We found the bone spiders in the lowest chamber.
They were nothing like surface spiders. Pale, flat-bodied, with six jointed legs covered in plates of dense, off-white bone. They moved in absolute silence, clinging to the ceiling and walls in the shadows just beyond torchlight.
Pol walked into a web strand and it snapped taut around his ankle. He grunted, stumbled, and hacked at it with his mace. A spider dropped from the ceiling onto his shield. Renn slashed it away.
Three more appeared on the walls. They scuttled sideways, circling, trying to herd us toward the thicker webs deeper in the chamber.
I took the left flank.
The tunnel narrowed to a passage barely wider than my shoulders. A large kobold — larger than the others, with a crude spear decorated with bone fragments — was waiting in the dark. It had positioned itself where my hammer had no room to swing.
It jabbed. I twisted sideways. The stone spearhead scraped across my chest plate. In the narrow space, I couldn't wind up. I choked up on the hammer, gripping it just below the head, and jabbed it forward like punching with a brick.
The kobold raised its spear to block.
My hammer hit the shaft. And in that moment — that fraction of a heartbeat where iron met bone — my body did the thing I had spent two weeks failing to do on purpose.
The hammer head flashed with dull orange pulse, there and gone in the time it takes to blink. Splinters flew sideways, trailing thin wisps of smoke. The kobold stumbled back, clutching its chest where a red-hot fragment had embedded itself. It squealed once and collapsed.
I stood in the narrow tunnel, breathing hard, staring at my hammer. The iron head was warm to the touch.
Behind me, quiet footsteps. Terro appeared in the passage. He looked at the dead kobold.
His eyes widened. Just for a second. Then he blinked, turned, and walked back toward the main chamber.
On the way out, when the others were ahead of us, Terro fell into step beside me. We walked in silence for thirty paces. Then, without looking at me, he said:
"I saw."
Pause.
"Not bad."
And that was it.
After the sweep was declared complete, I knelt over one of the dead bone spiders while Renn supervised.
"See the plates along the dorsal ridge?" Renn tapped them with his knife. "Those are the money. Careful — they crack easy. Slide the blade underneath, flat against the body, and peel up. Like skinning a fish, but slower."
I ruined the first one. The plate split clean in half the moment I tried to lever it free.
"Slower," Renn said patiently.
The second plate came loose with a soft click. I held it up. Off-white, translucent at the edges, warm to the touch. It hummed faintly against my fingers — a resonance I could feel in my teeth.
"Mages go crazy for these. Two silver for a clean set. And you just made—" He counted the plates in my hand. "—two silver. Congratulations. You've officially learned the only useful skill in this profession."
The third plate came out clean too. Two plates. Four silver. More than a week of standing at the drain.
* * *
Day Seventeen
Morning assembly. Cold grey light. The 4th Company lined up in the yard for Veyra's daily briefing.
A boy appeared at the gate. Maybe twelve years old. Clean clothes. A livery I hadn't noticed before Idris pointed it out, but now recognized instantly — the cut, the color, the simple embroidered crest on the breast pocket.
House Verant.
The boy walked directly to me, ignoring everyone else. He held out a sealed envelope.
"For you," he said. "From Master Greyve."
I took it. The boy turned and left without another word.
Renn glanced over. "Love letter?"
I broke the seal and unfolded the parchment.
It was a contract. A personal contract, not a Guild one. Just a single page of neat handwriting.
Assignment: Escort a sealed crate from Ashford's south warehouse district to a waypoint on the Thornwood road. Three miles outside city walls. Alone. Night transfer. No documentation required.
Payment: Three gold pieces.
Three gold. More than I'd earned in the entire three weeks combined.
At the bottom, in a different hand — looser, slanted, unmistakably Greyve's:
"Consider this your trial assignment. Refusal will be noted as your second and third formal violations. You have two days. The choice, as always, is yours."
I folded the parchment and slipped it into my coat.
Renn was watching me. "Bad news?"
"Business," I said.
That night I lay on my cot and listened to the barracks wind down. Renn was telling a story — something about a bone spider the size of a carriage (it was the size of a stool) — waving a chicken leg for emphasis. Laughter rippled through the room.
I stared at the ceiling.
Every morning I put on someone else's face and go do what I'm told. Take a contract. Smile. Come back. And at night I crawl to a necromancer's cave and learn to break stones with my bare hands.
Why do I do that?
"I was betrayed." The first thought. The only thought from before the forest. I still don't know who did it. But I'm starting to understand how it feels. Because every time I nod and say "yes, of course" — I'm doing the same thing. To myself.
Will there be anything left of me by the time I can finally hit back?
Was there ever a "me" to begin with?
And who are you — the voice asking me this question right now? Who are who tells what I like and what I dislike?
The laughter died. The candles went out one by one. The barracks settled into the rhythm of sleep.
I lay in the dark, holding a folded piece of parchment worth three gold pieces and everything I had left to lose.