“Of course I picked the Harem-Master subclass. …Yeah. I know how that sounds.”

The night keeps rolling.

The Feisty Dwarf is louder now, warmer too, the kind of tavern noise that only happens once enough mugs have gone empty that nobody remembers what volume used to mean. The Half-Drunken Dwarven Bard is well past half at this point, hammering at his dulcimer like he’s personally trying to bludgeon sobriety out of the room, while the Busty Barmaid bobs through the chaos with the practiced grace of someone who long ago accepted that this place runs on spilled ale and poor decisions.

At our booth, the mood has gone soft and pleasantly crooked. Kit is sprawled sideways with one boot off and zero shame, Raka is deep into her cups and arguing with Perri about whether chairs can, in fact, start fights, and Perri...

Perri is glowing.

Not with subclass light this time. Just drink, laughter, and the stunned joy of finally being allowed to celebrate something she bled for. Her cheeks are pink, her ears loose and happy, and every time she laughs through the bond it hits me like warm sunlight through a window.

I am not letting this moment go.

So when the next wave of music crashes through the room, I push up from the booth and head for the bar.

The innkeeper is manning it himself, broad hands moving with the rhythm of someone who has spent half his life pouring drinks for men who swore they were done after the last one. I’m about to ask for a bottle of the good stuff when I realize he’s trapped in exactly the kind of conversation that could make a saint start drinking harder.

The Haggling Fighter.

I recognize him immediately.

Some things never change.

He’s half-leaning over the bar, arguing in the strained voice of a man convinced persistence is a substitute for coin. The innkeeper is giving him the patient look usually reserved for people too drunk to find their own mouths.

“Seriously,” the innkeeper says, deadpan, polishing a mug that does not need polishing, “aren’t you lot a seasoned party now? Hunting in Bushman Forest and all that? This pinching copper nonsense needs to stop.”

That gets my attention.

So they’ve been leveling too.

The Haggling Fighter puffs up at once, offended in the special way only cheap people can be when their cheapness is publicly noticed. He opens his mouth to fire back, but before he can, voices call across the room.

“Enora, we’re over here!”

“Get him to hurry up with those drinks!”

I glance toward the sound.

They’ve found a table already, the rest of his party wedged together in a corner like they’ve been making noise there for hours. The Bright-eyed Priest is waving both her halfling arms. The Burly Warrior looks resigned, an Ox-kin, I think. The Witty Bard is already halfway into a drink and probably responsible for at least one of the louder laughs in the room.

But there, beside the Haggling Fighter at the bar, is the mage in the wide-brim black hat.

Slinky black robe. Pale curled hair. Presence.

The sense that the room shifts a fraction around her even when she’s doing nothing at all.

That’s when our eyes meet again.

At least I think they do.

I’m buzzed enough that certainty feels expensive.

For the briefest second, violet flashes beneath the brim of her hat.

Then she lowers it almost immediately, hiding her eyes.

The Haggling Fighter sucks in breath, probably to continue his campaign against the concept of paying full price, but I cut across the whole problem by dropping a few silvers onto the bar.

“For their drinks too,” I tell the innkeeper. “And whatever bottle you were about to pretend you don’t keep under the counter for special occasions.”

The innkeeper snorts, but it sounds a lot like gratitude.

The Haggling Fighter blinks at the coins like he’s not sure whether to be grateful or insulted. Gratitude wins. Barely.

“Well,” he mutters, clearing his throat. “Appreciate it.”

Honestly, he seems like a decent enough guy.

Just terminally afflicted with adventurer poverty.

But it isn’t him I’m watching.

It’s her.

She looks up again, just enough for me to catch the curve of a small, crooked smile beneath the brim of that hat.

“Thank you,” she says.

Soft.

Certain.

Maybe.

Maybe I’m just drunk.

But for one strange little heartbeat, with the bard murdering his dulcimer in the corner and the whole tavern warm around us, it feels like the room narrows to that smile and the way she says it like she already knows something I don’t.

Then the innkeeper slides the bottle toward me, and the moment breaks.

They drift back toward their table.

I head for mine.

And somehow, even through the ale, the music, and the warmth of my own little family waiting for me, I can still feel the ghost of violet eyes under that hat.

Morning comes easy for once.

Sunlight spills across the kitchen table in warm gold bars, catching steam off coffee and the last crumbs of breakfast. Kit is half-curled in her chair with that lazy post-drink look she gets when she’s comfortable, Raka is eating like the world might run out of bread, and Perri sits between us with both hands around her mug, still bright-eyed in a way that makes the whole apartment feel lighter.

“We’re taking the day,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “No caverns. No grinding. No proving anything. Tomorrow, we head into Bushman Forest together and take it slow.”

Kit snorts softly. “Slow,” she repeats, like the word sounds suspicious in my mouth.

Raka points a piece of toast at me. “You’re the one most likely to forget that.”

“That’s slander,” I mutter.

“It’s pattern recognition,” Kit says, smirking.

Perri laughs into her cup, small and warm. “I think you all might be a little rusty.”

That gets a grin out of me. “Probably. Which is why we ease back in. Feel the rhythm. No heroics.”

Perri nods, and there’s something new in the way she does it now. Not nervousness pretending to be bravery. Just quiet certainty.

“I’m ready,” she says. Her fingers tighten on the mug, but her voice stays steady. “Not because I have to do it all myself anymore. I can actually heal now. Protect. Stay with you.”

The table goes soft around that.

Kit reaches over and steals a bite off my plate. “See? She’s the smart one.”

Raka rumbles her agreement. “About time one of us was.”

Perri blushes, but she’s smiling.

Tomorrow, we go back to the forest.

The crisp edge of mid-fall air meets us when we step outside, cool enough to wake the blood without biting yet. Marrowpine is alive with the season, wood smoke drifting between rooftops, leaves skittering along the road, and the scent of pine and damp earth hanging under everything.

Perri moves with us easily now, her iridescent cloak catching the morning light in faint shifting colors. Kit looks sharper than rested, the way she always does when a hunt is finally back on the table, while Raka’s steady presence keeps the whole group grounded before we’ve even left town.

Ahead, Bushman Forest rises dark and thinning beneath a pale sky, its branches half-bare now, its deeper shadows somehow easier to see and less trustworthy for it.

I glance at Kit and Raka, then at Perri, and feel the familiar thrill settle into something steadier.

No more training

Time to move.

I lift my hand.

“Hold.”

The edge of the forest stills as we approach.

Then I twist my ring. “Sanguis.”

The Ring of Sanguis hums—low, hungry—and the earth beneath us parts without breaking. Thorns bloom upward in a slow, unnatural unfurl, and Ed rises from it like a nightmare remembering its shape. Petals drift from his shoulders as he straightens, hollow gaze settling on the trees.

He doesn’t speak.

He doesn’t need to.

He seems to know this place.

Kit exhales softly and taps the locket at her throat.

“Lorica Noctis.”

Midnight smoke spills from the silver chain, slow at first, then eager—coiling around her shoulders, her arms, her waist. It doesn’t harden into plates. It clings, hugging her form like a second skin made of shadow and breath.

The dark sheen settles over her, subtle, shifting, drinking in the light rather than reflecting it. Edges blur. Movement softens.

She rolls her shoulders once, testing the weight, then flashes me a quick grin. “Missed this.”

I look her over with a half-smirk. “So did I.”

Raka swings her shield forward with a heavy clang, the surface catching the light.

Starburst hums to life, faint arcs of energy crawling along the rim. She plants it once against the ground, satisfied, then settles into stance.

Perri says nothing.

She just tightens both hands around the Ashwood Prism Staff.

The faint glow answers her. Steady and waiting.

I take a breath and point.

“Raka, front. Hold center.”

She steps forward without hesitation.

“Perri, just behind her. You’re watching the line. No panic casting.”

She nods, ears flicking—but her stance holds.

“Kit—”

She’s already gone.

A flicker through brush and shadow, gone before the word finishes.

“…Scout.”

I exhale.

Some things don’t change.

We settle into formation, the forest pressing in around us again. Ed drifts to the flank, silent as thorns in winter.

A heartbeat or two.

Then Kit’s voice cuts back through the bond, low and amused.

“Got something.”

She slips back into view, eyes bright.

“Four Bushmen. Small pack. Outskirts patrol.”

Her grin sharpens.

“Perfect warm-up.”

I nod once, feeling the rhythm click back into place.

“Alright,” I say, lifting the spear.

“Let’s do this clean.”

Two Bushman Scouts slip from the underbrush.

I move.

Too slow. Too careful.

Kit moves at the same time.

Too fast. Too eager.

We both hit the same target.

Stormcast snaps forward in a low silver line, lightning already crawling down the shaft toward the tip. At the exact same heartbeat, Kit blurs in from the side, daggers flashing violet-white with Veilstrike, her whole body folding into the strike like she’s trying to cut through the thing before I can even touch it.

My Arc Lightning cracks loose a fraction too early.

The Bushman folds between us like it offended two people at once, thorny chest bursting open under spear, steel, and light.

Kit twists away just in time, a blue snap of lightning kissing past her shoulder hard enough to frizz a few dark strands of hair.

We both stop mid-motion.

Look at each other.

Kit snorts. “We sharing kills now?”

“Warm-up,” I mutter.

Behind us, Raka stops mid-barrel toward the second one, apparently too late, axe already swinging through empty air. The heavy crescent blade whistles through the space where a Bushman Scout used to be.

Sacred Flame.

“Sacred Flame!”

“HEY!” Raka accuses as the scout she was aiming for is swallowed in gold fire and flash-fried where it stands.

We all turn.

Perri stands there, staff still glowing.

“…I panicked,” she admits.

Raka stares at her. “You just roasted my fight.”

“He looked scary!”

Kit deadpans, “Everything looks scary to you.”

Perri’s ears droop. “…Fair.”

Two more Bushmen slip through the trees, low and quick, bark-hide blending with root and thorn until they’re almost on us.

We try to adjust.

Try being the key word.

Raka charges left, shield-first, boots tearing up wet leaves as she lowers her shoulder and goes in like a battering ram. Kit disappears right in a flicker of black leather and smoke-dark shimmer, daggers low and hungry. I step center, Stormcast coming up to split the lane, and Perri throws Sacred Flame again.

Wrong target.

But now crispy.

The blast catches the Bushman Kit and Raka were already lining up, reducing a clean flank to a smoking inconvenience. The second one breaks through the line untouched, thorn spear whipping low for Perri’s leg.

Light Barrier.

Too late.

Gold flares, but the vine snare snaps tight around her ankle first and yanks her clean off her feet. She yelps as she flips upside down, dangling from a branch like the world’s most offended rabbit, skirt and ears both losing the battle with gravity.

We all freeze.

Raka doesn’t.

She pivots on one heel, shield driving up to knock the Bushman off-line while her axe comes through in a brutal green sap-blur.

Savage.

The first strike hacks through the vine holding Perri. The backswing catches the Bushman across his viney ribs hard enough to fold it around the haft. Raka catches Perri under one arm before she can slam into the dirt, then finishes the thing with a short, ugly chop that leaves it twitching in the leaves.

As it drops, Ed rises behind it through root and shadow, a moment too late to matter.

Then Kit bursts out laughing. “We are so rusty.”

“You good?” I ask Perri who is trying to use Healing Word on her bruised ego.

Perri brushes leaves out of her hair, upside-down dignity only half recovered. “I hate this forest.”

“Good,” Kit says. “It hates us too.”

Raka sets Perri back on her feet and points the axe at the rest of us like an angry schoolmaster. “You all do remember how a frontliner works, right? If I’m charging one, you attack the other.”

I drag a hand down my face and point with the spear. “Alright. Reset. No more heroics. Raka holds center. I break the lane. Kit takes what I don’t. Perri, you stop trying to win the whole forest by yourself.”

Perri straightens, ears hot. “I am not trying to win the whole forest.”

“You set two Bushmen on fire in under ten seconds,” Kit says.

Perri huffs with a smirk. “…Maybe just the outskirts.”

Even Raka snorts at that.

We spread out again, slower this time, the laughter still hanging around us while the forest waits for us to make another mistake.

Kit slips ahead in a blur of leather and smoke-dark shimmer, spectral armor still hugging her like midnight made obedient. She vanishes into the trees so completely that for a few heartbeats all I hear is wind slipping through half-dead branches and the soft, ugly creak of vines tightening somewhere deeper in the brush.

Then her voice brushes the bond.

“Four again.”

She appears on a root above us, crouched low, tail twitching once. “Two standard Bushmen. One Thorn Hunter. One Scout. Deadfall ahead.”

The others catch it with me through the bond. Not just the words. The shape of the field. Where the roots bunch. Where the deadfall narrows the approach. Where the Hunter is perched above the lane like a spider waiting for something soft to pass beneath it. Where the Scout will peel wide and bark the second we give it air.

Good.

Now we stop being funny.

I lower Stormcast and point. “Raka, center push. Hunter’s yours until I call otherwise. Kit, hold the flank until I break left. Perri, watch angles. Don’t chase kills. Save the line.”

Perri exhales once and nods. “Got it.”

Then, a heartbeat later, I feel it again through the bond.

“Got it.”

Ed drifts at the edge of the formation, silent as winter thorns.

We move.

The deadfall comes into view as a knot of broken trunks, hooked vines, and old rot. Bushmen like places like this. Terrain that catches boots. Roots that bunch underfoot. Fallen timber they can perch on, crawl through, or launch from. They are not graceful creatures, but they are made for ugly ground. Standard Bushmen move with that same wrong mix of lumbering bodies and quick, whiplike strikes, bark-hide flexing over vine-cord muscle. The Thorn Hunter above them is worse, longer-limbed, heavier through the shoulders, thorn tendrils opening and closing around its arms like grasping fingers. The Scout is leaner, twitchier, already lifting its lash-tendrils to warn the others.

“Now,” I call.

Raka hits the centerline like a dropped wall.

Lunar Bulwark.

Her shield blooms with force just as the first Thorn Volley slams into it. Splinters burst wide. Sparks spit off the rim. The whole deadfall shudders under the impact, and the Thorn Hunter launches from the shadowed trunk above, thorned tendrils spread for her face and throat.

“End that one,” I snap through the bond.

Raka doesn’t even answer. She meets it with shield, shoulder, and axe in one brutal collision that turns the leap into a crash. Wood cracks. Bark explodes. Then Savage comes through in the same motion, her axe hacking across its side hard enough to drive it sideways into the deadfall.

The left Bushman tries to use that opening the way Bushmen always do, slipping around the frontliner’s bulk, thorn-whip arm already curling for the softer line behind her.

Stormcast comes up.

Arc Lightning.

Blue-white force punches through its chest and chains across the roots beneath it, blowing its tendril arm clean off in a spray of sap, sparks, and shattered bark. It jerks backward, reeling, and that is all Kit needs.

“Kit.”

She is already moving.

Echo Step. Veilstrike.

One blink. One violet-white flash. Then she is behind it, daggers carving a bright seam across its back. The Bushman stiffens, groan cut short, and folds into the leaves before the death really catches up to its body.

The second standard Bushman pivots immediately. They adapt. They pressure. They feel weakness and turn toward it like roots to water. It darts for Perri, low and mean, bark-plated shoulder first, thorn-lash already whipping toward her staff arm.

“Barrier right,” I call.

Light Barrier.

Gold snaps into place at exactly the angle it needs to, not broad, not wasteful, just enough to catch the lash and turn it into a shower of scorched thorns. Perri doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t panic-cast. She sees the opening the way I wanted her to see it.

Sacred Flame.

The fire drops hard, clean, and centered. Not too much. Not too soon. Just enough radiant judgment to take the thing through the chest and burn it hollow before it can recover its footing.

The Scout finally gets its bark out.

Too late.

Ed’s vine lashes from the brush.

Thornlash.

The thing jerks out of the tree like the forest itself changed its mind. It hits the ground hard, flailing in a tangle of its own limbs, and Kit lands on its ribs a heartbeat later, dagger punching down through throat and thorn with neat, vicious precision.

“Mine,” she says.

“Timed better,” I shoot back.

At the center, the Thorn Hunter regains its feet and comes in hard on Raka. This is where Bushmen get dangerous, not in the first exchange, but in the second. When you think they are broken. When their pressure starts stacking. It drives claws and hooked tendrils across shield and haft, forcing her backward a half-step at a time, trying to create exactly the kind of chaos the rest of the pack was built to exploit.

“Vincent,” Raka growls.

“On you.”

I cut in from the side, spear high.

Lightning Smite. Stormlight erupts down the shaft and into the point in a white-blue burst, the crack of it sharp enough to split the clearing.

The Hunter twists just enough to keep the spear out of its throat.

That is all Raka needs.

Savage. Her axe caves through its ribs in a wet, ugly burst. Bark plate splits. Bone gives. The thing folds around the strike before it even hits the leaves.

Then silence.

Not total.

Just the breathing kind.

Mine. Raka’s. Perri’s. Kit’s light footfall as she drops from the deadfall and flicks sap from one dagger. Ed standing quiet at the edge of it all, petals drifting lazily from one shoulder like the fight bored him.

No one’s upside down.

No one’s on fire by accident.

Perri is still glowing faintly, but from adrenaline now, not panic. Her cloak shimmers once in the filtered light as she lowers the staff and looks around at the bodies. Not shocked. Not shaken. Measuring.

Raka plants her shield and grins. “That felt right.”

“It did,” I admit.

Because it did.

Bushmen are mean when you give them room. Fast in the wrong places. Built to punish hesitation and bad spacing. But this time we never gave them the shape of the fight they wanted. The bond made the whole thing sing. I didn’t need to guess where Kit would be. Raka felt the push before I finished calling it. Perri saw the angle before the threat became a wound. Even Ed moved like punctuation instead of rescue.

Kit twirls one dagger, then looks at Ed, who is still standing at the clearing’s edge like a rose-covered omen waiting for someone to disrespect the line again.

She squints.

“Nah,” she says at last, smirking as she looks back at the rest of us. “Never mind.”

I raise a brow. “What?”

Kit jerks her chin at Ed, then at us.

“We still got it.”

Raka laughs.

Perri smiles into her relief and amazement as she kneels to loot the bodies, a handful of silver coins glittering in her palm. More than any kobold drop, and enough to make her ears perk all over again.

And just like that, the outskirts stop feeling like a warm-up.

They start feeling like ours.

Real hunts. Real coin. Real levels.

For all of us.

Because deeper in Bushman Forest, the real dangers are still waiting.