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

The words hang there in front of me.

[Vincent Locke Subclass Evolution: Harem Guildmaster]

And before I can stop myself, I blurt it out loud.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The warm chaos of the Feisty Dwarf dimmed around the edges, laughter, music, clinking mugs, and half-drunken conversation all slipping farther away beneath the blue-white glow of my HUD.

Kit reached for me first, fingers closing gently around my wrist. “Master?”

Her ears had angled back, not flat with fear, but sharp with attention.

“What’s wrong?”

I stared at the notification like the letters might rearrange themselves into something less damning if I waited long enough.

They did not.

“I’m not sure,” I conceded, the words coming from doubt rather than understanding.

That got Raka’s attention more than panic would have. She leaned forward across the table, one hand still resting possessively near Frostreaver, the war axe she couldn’t use yet, her mug of ale paused halfway to her mouth.

I swallowed once, then read the words aloud. “Tier 2 Subclass Evolution. Harem Guildmaster.”

Kit and Raka both went still, then looked at each other just long enough for something to pass between them through expression, instinct, and the bond. I felt the echo of it more than heard it, not words, exactly, but a shared weight of concern, curiosity, and reluctant pride circling the same question none of us knew how to answer yet.

Kit found her voice first. “Guildmaster?” she asked, carefully, like she wanted confirmation that she had heard the impossible part correctly.

“I know,” I replied.

“What does that mean?”

Raka took a slow drink of ale, as if giving the word time to settle properly before she judged it. Then she leaned back in the booth and let it roll around on her tongue.

“Guildmaster.”

She considered it a moment longer. Then her eyes narrowed.

“That sounds bigger than Master.”

“Obviously,” Kit said, giving Raka a flat look. “Thank you for solving that complex mystery. But what does that mean exactly?”

I tried to form a reassuring answer to Kit’s question.

The problem was that I really had no idea.

“It means you’re ready to move on,” a familiar voice said over my shoulder.

I looked up and immediately discovered the answer had arrived before the woman attached to it. Ample, generous, and far more in my face than expected.

Kit noticed at the same time I did, her concern over my subclass evolution briefly overtaken by a much more immediate concern over the generous obstruction hovering beside me.

A moment later, the Busty Barmaid leaned just far enough into view for her smile to join the conversation, gathering drained mugs from the table with one hand while somehow dropping life-changing information with the other. Fiery red curls spilled over one shoulder as she gave the empty plates a professional glance, then gave me one that was much less professional.

“Marrowpine is a frontier town,” she said, as if this explained everything. “Tier 2 means you’ve outgrown it.”

Kit’s ears angled sharply. “Outgrown it? But I’m not Tier 2 yet.”

The Busty Barmaid winked. “Better keep up, kitten.”

Kit’s look could have curdled cream.

Unbothered, the Busty Barmaid shrugged and stacked another plate. “That’s what happens. Folks grind slimes, kobolds, bushmen, maybe something nastier if they’re very lucky or very stupid. Then, if they survive long enough to hit Tier 2, they move on to the big city.”

“What big city?” Kit asked.

The Busty Barmaid paused like she had to think about it, one mug balanced against her hip.

“Thronstadt, I think.” She made a vague little motion with the mug. “Not sure, really. Not many adventurers make Tier 2, and the ones who do leave…” Her smile turned smaller. “Well, they don’t usually come back. Probably not much reason to.”

That struck harder than I expected.

The Feisty Dwarf felt warm around us. Familiar. Ours, almost. The booth. The smell of ale and old wood. The Half-Drunken Bard in the corner. The Innkeeper behind the bar. The Busty Barmaid clearing plates like she had not just cracked open the floor beneath us.

She tucked the last empty mug under her arm and smirked, fully aware she had sent us spinning.

“More ale?”

Later, upstairs in what had once been our room, the whole conversation felt smaller and larger at the same time.

Smaller because the room was still exactly what it had always been. Same narrow bed. Same worn floorboards. Same little table beneath the window. Same tavern warmth rising through the boards from the Feisty Dwarf below. It wasn’t our comfortable little apartment, but it was familiar enough to hurt in a gentler way.

Larger because there were more of us now, and the world had apparently decided Marrowpine was no longer enough.

Kit sat cross-legged on the bed beside Raka, ears still angled with restless thought. Raka had Frostreaver laid carefully across her lap, one hand resting on the haft like she intended to convince the System through sheer stubbornness.

Perri returned from checking on Enora next door with quiet steps and worry still tucked into the corners of her face.

“She’s resting,” she said. “Still pale, but breathing easier. I think she’ll sleep through the night.”

That loosened something in my chest.

“Good.”

Perri crossed the room, close enough for the bond to fold her back into the warmth of the conversation. Her eyes moved from Kit to Raka, then to me.

“What happened?”

Kit leaned back on her hands, tail flicking once. “Apparently, Master became something more complicated while you were busy being responsible.”

Perri blinked.

Raka grunted. “Guildmaster.”

Perri’s ears lifted. “Guildmaster?”

“That,” I said, rubbing a hand over my face, “is the question.”

Her ears dipped slightly as she looked between Kit, Raka, and me. “Master… there aren’t any guilds here?”

“Not that I’ve seen,” I admitted. “But in Thronstadt, there might be.”

“Thronstadt,” she repeated carefully, like the name itself felt too large in her mouth. Her eyes grew wider. “Where is that?”

Kit answered before I could, her voice already edged with deep personal betrayal. “Several hundred miles north, past the Shivermaw Mountains, into frozen, snow-covered terribleness.”

The Innkeeper had filled in more details before we came upstairs to talk to Perri.

“It’s where the Tier 2 adventurers go,” I added.

“It’s cold,” Kit said.

“You mentioned that,” I replied, not unsympathetically.

“Important detail.”

Raka leaned back against the wall, arms folded, clearly not sharing Kit’s horror. “Open spaces. Frost-laden pine. Crisp air.” Her mouth curved with the faintest hint of approval. “Sounds refreshing.”

Kit turned slowly to stare at her.

Raka did not retreat.

Perri looked between them, torn between the absurdity of the disagreement and the enormity of what we were actually discussing. Her hands curled lightly in her lap. “Enora can’t travel that far.”

The room went quieter.

“She can’t,” Perri repeated, softer now. “Not like this. And… I’m not sure I could either.”

“We wouldn’t travel it like that, Perri,” I said gently. “Apparently Marrowpine and Thronstadt are linked by some kind of ancient portal system. The Innkeeper said Tier 2 adventurers can use it to travel between the two instantly, at least every so often.”

Perri picked up the problem faster than I wanted her to.

“But you’re the only one of us who’s Tier 2.”

The room went still around that. Her ears lowered.

“You aren’t going to leave us?”

The emotion crashed through the bond so raw and sudden that Kit’s head snapped toward her, and even Raka straightened against the wall. Fear. Not doubt exactly. Something older than doubt.

I crushed it immediately.

“Perri, not ever!”

It came out sharper than I meant it to. Almost chiding. Too hard for the softness she deserved.

Her eyes widened.

My chest tightened at once.

I reached for her hand and lowered my voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant… no. Never. I am not going anywhere without you.”

Her fingers trembled in mine.

“We’ll wait until Enora’s better,” I said. “We’ll see what she wants to do. We’ll hunt Bushmen Forest again, get you all to Tier 2, and then we’ll go together.”

Kit’s voice cut in softly. “What if we don’t want to go?”

That hit nearly as hard as Perri’s question.

I looked over at her. Kit was still sitting cross-legged on the bed, tail still except for the very tip, eyes fixed on me with that sharp, wounded intelligence that had seen through every easy answer I had ever tried to give her.

The room felt smaller again.

“I…” The answer I had been building died before it reached my tongue.

Because she was right.

I had said together.

But I had still said go.

Raka’s hand stilled on Frostreaver. Perri looked between us, fear and hope tangling through the bond in a way that made my chest ache.

Kit’s ears angled back.

“We just got a home,” she said.

My eyes dropped from hers as I felt the bond stretch between us, pulled tight by fear, uncertainty, and the shape of a future none of us had chosen yet.

Then I looked back up and met her gaze as the simple truth fell from my lips.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I won’t make that choice for you.”

The next two days passed under a blanket of things none of us quite knew how to say. We took turns at Enora’s side in the little room beside our old one at the Feisty Dwarf, trading watches between there and the apartment so she would not wake alone.

In the end, it was Perri who was there when Enora finally woke.

Our heart.

That was lucky, or mercy, or some strange kind of karma that had not shown much mercy lately. Enora woke to the darkened room, to the ache of mana burn, to the unfamiliar feeling of being in a party that was not hers, and then to the realization that the party that had been hers was gone.

All of them.

Dead.

It was not a loud moment at first. Not from what Perri later showed us through the bond. It was worse than loud. Enora simply stared, pale and hollow beneath the shadows, while understanding crawled back into her one piece at a time. Then the grief hit.

Perri caught her when she broke.

She held Enora in that shade-laden little room while remorse, anger, guilt, and disbelief poured out of her in shaking, breathless pieces. Enora was not part of the bond, but Perri felt it so clearly that the shape of it bled through to the rest of us anyway. The loss. The fury. The awful survivor’s question that did not need words.

Why me?

Why not them?

Why was I the one carried home?

No one had an answer for that.

Perri only held her tighter.

Another two days passed in darkness.

Not literal darkness. Not entirely. The Feisty Dwarf still had hearths below, lamps in the hall, voices rising through the floorboards, and the old familiar smell of ale, bread, smoke, and stew. But Enora’s room had become its own little pocket of shadow, and the rest of us kept sitting inside it with her like grief was something that might become polite if we waited long enough.

We did not talk much. We did not ask much. We just stayed, because none of us knew what words were supposed to do against that kind of loss. Most of her time was spent in bed beneath layered blankets, pale and still from mana burn and grief. When she did rise, it was only to sit in the chair by the little table, small hands wrapped around a cup of tea she rarely drank, her wide-brimmed black hat settled so low over her face that the shadow swallowed everything beneath it.

She did not speak.

She barely ate.

Some days, I was not sure she was really looking at anything at all.

I sat with her more than once. Kit did too. Raka took her turns in heavy silence, guarding the doorway like grief might try to break in from the hall. Perri stayed the longest whenever she could, soft-voiced and patient, never flinching from the pain in the room even when it made the bond ache around her.

At one point, I tried conversation.

At another, I brought out the Crystal Skull of the Spectral Choir.

That, at least, drew Enora’s attention.

Not much. Not enough to call it interest. But her head lifted slightly beneath the brim of her hat, and the pale glow of the skull caught along the edge of her cheek. She stared at it the way someone might stare into a fire after a funeral, not because it had answers, but because looking anywhere else required too much.

The skull murmured faintly in the quiet.

An eerie choir warming up somewhere deep inside crystal and memory.

Maybe she heard something in it I could not.

Maybe she heard echoes of the party she had lost.

Or maybe that was just my own dark thoughts crawling where they had no business going.

Either way, she watched it for a long time.

And we kept sinking with her.

Not all the way. Not like she was.

But enough.

Then, on the fourth morning, the door opened without a knock.

The Busty Barmaid stepped inside carrying a tray large enough to qualify as architecture, braced expertly between hip and bust.

“Absolutely not,” she said.

None of us had spoken.

Apparently, that did not matter.

She kicked the door shut behind her with one heel, crossed the room, and set the tray down on the table with a heavy wooden thunk. Steam rolled off bowls of thick stew, buttered bread, hot tea, sliced fruit, and something sweet enough to make Perri’s ears twitch despite herself.

Then the Busty Barmaid went straight to the window and threw the shutters open.

Cold morning air rushed into the room.

Enora flinched beneath the brim of her hat.

Kit hissed.

Raka’s hand moved halfway toward her axe before realizing the enemy was fresh air.

I blinked at the sudden gray light spilling across the floorboards.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“What someone should have done yesterday,” the Busty Barmaid replied. She turned back toward us, hands on her hips, fiery curls bright in the cold light. “You lot can mourn in here all you want. Cry, curse, stare at walls, hate the world, fine. But you do not rot in my inn without eating.”

Enora did not look up.

The Busty Barmaid’s voice softened, but only slightly.

“I have seen this before, love.”

That felt tired, true, and honest.

“Adventurers come back with empty chairs all the time,” she said, reaching for a bowl. “Sometimes they scream. Sometimes they drink. Sometimes they pretend they’re fine so badly even the mugs look embarrassed for them. And sometimes they sit in the dark until someone reminds them their body is still alive, even if the rest of them hasn’t caught up yet.”

She set the bowl beside Enora.

Steam curled between them.

“So. Eat.”

Enora’s hands tightened around her untouched tea.

“I’m not hungry.”

“I know.”

The Busty Barmaid pushed the spoon closer.

“Eat anyway. Yes, you lost friends. And no, that doesn’t become smaller because there’s soup in front of you.” Her voice stayed firm, but not cruel. “But you’re not alone either. Look around you. You have people who care.”

Her eyes flicked to me.

“And from what I heard, people who need you.”

She gave me a quick wink, then looked back to Enora before I could decide whether to be grateful or offended.

“You probably saved this lot as much as they saved you. Don’t squander that.”

Enora listened.

Not all the way, maybe.

But enough.

Her head lifted slightly beneath the brim of her hat, just enough for the shadow to shift across her face. Her eyes dropped to the bowl, then to the spoon, then back to the steam curling between them like the smallest possible argument for staying alive.

The Busty Barmaid, annoyingly forceful in her particular brand of necromancy, put the spoon directly into Enora’s hand.

“Sometimes life is nourished one soulful spoonful at a time.”

Enora’s fingers tightened around the handle.

Nothing happened.

The Busty Barmaid waited.

Then added, “And I will spoon-feed you if I must.”

That got the faintest flicker from Enora.

Not a smile.

Not even close.

But something moved.

I smirked despite myself at the woman’s beautiful tenacity because I believed she would.

Then it happened.

One tiny mouthful.

Barely anything.

A surrender so small it almost wasn’t one.

But the Busty Barmaid nodded like Enora had just won a boss fight.

“There we are.”

The second mouthful took longer.

But it came.

By the end of the week, we found ourselves on the road to Bushmen Forest.

All of us.

Enora too.

Not because she had suddenly decided she was ready. Not because any of this was fixed. The Busty Barmaid and the Innkeeper had simply reached the limit of what they were willing to let grief do inside their tavern. They did not say it cruelly. They barely said it at all. A packed lunch appeared. A cloak was pressed into Enora’s hands. The door was opened. Then, with the sort of firm kindness only people who had seen too many adventurers rot in rented rooms could manage, they kicked her out for her own good.

So she followed us.

She did not speak. She did not ask where we were going. She just walked a few steps behind Perri, wide-brimmed hat low over her face and staff in hand. The Crystal Skull of the Spectral Choir, still beyond her use, was tucked into her pack

The rest of us needed that too.

Nothing had been decided. Not Thronstadt. Not the portal. Not whether any of us actually wanted to leave Marrowpine, or whether staying would mean slowly shrinking until the world forgot we had ever been meant for more. The questions were still there, circling the bond like wolves beyond firelight.

But hunting was something we understood.

Bushmen Forest was something we understood.

At least the edges of it.

We were not going deep. Not toward the ruins. Not toward anything that smelled like Briar Witch roots or bad decisions dressed up as confidence. Just the outer scouts. Small pulls. Familiar ground. If things went wrong with Enora, the rest of us could handle that much easily enough.

Probably.

The morning air was crisp, carrying the faint bite of early frost without the full threat of winter behind it. Sunlight spilled across the road bright enough to make most of us squint after too many days indoors. Perri blinked against it like the sky had personally offended her. Kit muttered something unkind about chilly weather. Even I had to shade my eyes for a moment.

Raka, naturally, looked pleased.

Enora said nothing.

But she kept walking.

We reached Bushmen Forest by early morning without hurrying.

Its familiar dark tangle waited on the horizon, all twisted branches, thorn-thick shadows, and memories I would have preferred not to poke too deeply. I stopped in the clearing on the safe side of the road and took a long breath of crisp air.

Then I let confidence flow through the bond.

Not bravado. Not certainty. Just enough steadiness to remind all of us what we already knew. We had done this before.

To my surprise, it worked better than I expected. Kit’s restless edge sharpened into focus. Raka’s anticipation settled into something solid and hungry. Perri straightened slightly, worry still there, but held behind resolve. Even Enora’s silence seemed less like sinking and more like listening.

I looked to Raka first.

“Raka, you have point. No Elders. Easy hunting. You’re less than one level away from putting Frostreaver in your hand.” I nodded toward the forest. “Let’s make that happen.”

Raka’s answering growl carried approval, impatience, and the deep personal offense she still seemed to feel toward the System for keeping the axe out of her hands.

Then I turned to Kit.

“Kit, nothing is decided. We choose as a family.” I held her gaze for a moment longer. “But today, I’m asking again that you stand at my side.”

Kit smirked, rolled her eyes, and bumped her hip against mine as she drew her daggers. Her tail flicked once behind her, sharp with old affection.

“You never have to ask for that.”

The bond warmed around the words.

I smiled despite myself, then looked to Perri.

“Perri, keep Enora close. Keep her and us safe.”

Resolve settled through our little rabbit like light finding its shape.

“That’s what I do, Master.”

I nodded.

Enora said nothing. Her hat remained low, pale and quiet in the morning light.

But when Perri stepped nearer, Enora did not move away.

I was not risking anything today.

If Enora froze, if grief caught her at the wrong moment, if the forest decided to punish us for pretending this was simple, I wanted someone beside her who did not hesitate.

“Sanguis.”

The ground rippled. Tendril-vines, old bone, and blood-red roses bloomed from the earth near us, curling upward in a familiar, horrifyingly beautiful shape. My will rode the summons clearly. Protect Enora.

The thorn revenant unfolded beside her, skeletal and vine-bound, roses opening along ribs and shoulders as hollow eyes turned toward the forest.

Enora’s hat snapped up the instant he appeared, and for the first time in days, she moved without hesitation.

“Ed!”

She rushed forward and threw her arms around him so tightly I could see his thorns catch against the dark fabric of her robes. Her hat nearly slipped from her head as she clung to him, face buried against bone, vine, and roses like she had found something impossible still standing from a world she thought she had lost entirely.

The rest of us just stared. I looked from Enora to Ed, then back again.

“You two know each other?”

Enora did not answer immediately. Her fingers tightened in the black vines across his ribs.

“Not him,” she whispered, voice rough from disuse. “Not exactly.”

That made absolutely nothing clearer.

Ed did not return the embrace.

Not exactly.

His thorned arms remained still at his sides, careful in the way only something dangerous could be careful. But his head bowed toward her, slow and solemn, as if recognizing grief. As if honoring it.

Then his hollow eyes turned to mine.

“Love.”

Enora let out a broken little breath against his chest.

“Yes,” she whispered. “That’s what he always says.”