The Vorik place was barely a five-minute walk.

It sat at the far end of a narrower street branching off the main road, small in footprint but wide, spreading further back than the front wall suggested. The sign above the entrance looked recently made, the wood still pale, not yet darkened by Creslan’s perpetual cold and moisture. The lettering hadn’t settled the way old signs settled. Fresh nails in the registry plate beside the door. The blackboard propped outside had a list of quest hunts written in chalk, the handwriting careful in the specific way of someone who had copied the format from somewhere else rather than known it naturally.

Theodore stared at it.

Cael stared at the door.

Arthur breathed in once through his nose, out through his mouth. "Alright let’s do this."

Cael walked in first.

Inside was warmer than the street by a significant margin, a fireplace lit at the far left wall. Monster heads covered every surface that had a wall behind it, different sizes and species, positioned at deliberate intervals that suggested someone had thought about how this was supposed to look. Candles burned on the long desk running across the back of the room. Brown paper pinned flat to the desk surface. Two chairs. Two doors behind the desk that were closed.

The man behind the desk looked up.

Well-built, long dark brown hair pulled back in a bun, forearms visible below rolled sleeves. A jagged scar ran from his forehead down across his left eyebrow, old and healed clean. His left eye was brown. His right eye was blue. Both of them moved to the sack Cael was holding within the first second.

"Welcome to Vorik Monster Trading." He smiled. "Looks like you took one of our quest listings. Set it down over there and I’ll prepare the assessment and your payment." He gestured left.

Cael moved toward the indicated spot. His eyes were already traveling the walls in the specific scanning way that might look casual to someone who’d never seen Cael operate and wouldn’t look casual to anyone who had. Theodore had drifted two steps right and was looking at the far door with the sideways attention of someone trying not to look like they were looking at it.

Arthur breathed through his nose.

God they are so obvious.

"Actually," Arthur said, letting his voice land easy and slightly apologetic, "we’re pretty new to this. To Vasker work in general. Would you mind walking us through the process? We’ve never done an assessment before."

The man’s smile widened at the edges. "Of course. Always happy to help new Vaskers find their footing." He gestured toward the desk. "If you’d place your guild sigils on the table for me, we can begin."

Cael set his down first. Theodore followed. Arthur placed his last, the bronze face catching the candlelight.

"You’re mages." The man said it without weight, looking at the sigils. "We don’t get many through here."

"Figured it was time to see what this side of the work looked like," Arthur said.

"And?"

"Cold. And there was a very large turtle."

The man laughed, short and genuine. "That’s Creslan for you." He pulled the assessment sheet across the desk. "Where are you traveling from?"

"Ishkral. Academy break."

"Long way to come for Vasker work." His eyes moved to Cael, then back. Not suspicious. Just noting.

"One of us had family reasons," Arthur said easily. "The rest of us came along."

Theodore, to his credit, kept his face entirely neutral. Cael asked, as if the thought had just occurred to him: "What’s been active in the northern reaches lately? We saw tracks on the way back but couldn’t identify them."

The man leaned back slightly. "Northern sector’s been busy this season. The cold drives the bigger ones down from the ridgeline. Krugurs, mostly. A few Pale Walkers reported two weeks back, though nobody’s confirmed a sighting."

"Pale Walkers." Cael’s voice stayed flat. "In Moncruir."

"Further in than usual. Whatever’s up in the ridgeline is pushing things down." He shrugged, moving to the assessment. "Stick to the listed quests for now. We write them because they’re manageable. Everything else out there currently is not."

"Any disappearances?" Cael asked.

The man eyes flicked toward him.

"A few."

Theodore glanced over.

"A few?"

"This is Creslan." The man spread his hands. "People go missing every season. Hunters push too far. Travelers ignore warnings. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they don’t."

"Recently?" Cael asked.

"You’re asking a lot of questions for someone new."

The words were light.

The smile stayed.

But Arthur caught the shift.

Not suspicion.

Interest.

Cael didn’t seem bothered.

"Just trying to learn the area."

"Then learn this." The man tapped the desk once. "If locals tell you not to enter a forest, don’t enter it. Outsiders always think we’re exaggerating."

"And are you?" Arthur asked.

"No."

The answer came immediately.

"So which one of you brought down the Krugur?"

Cael pointed at Arthur.

Arthur pointed at Cael.

Theodore immediately pointed at both of them.

For a second, the man just stared.

"Very helpful."

"We do our best."

"Clearly."

The smile lingered as the man looked down at the shell fragments. "Still, not bad. Eastern variants are stubborn. Most first-time hunters come back with damaged plating and a story about how things almost went horribly wrong."

"It did go horribly wrong," Theodore said.

"We’re alive."

"That doesn’t contradict what I said."

The man chuckled and shook his head.

"You’ll fit in with the local Vaskers just fine."

’I think you should listen to that man.’ Vexis said.’

Noted.

’Arthur.’

I said noted.

"Assessment confirmed." The man tapped the brown paper once. "Based on the remains, this is a Krugur, eastern forest variant. High-grade shell plating, intact. Good hunt." He produced a medium-sized pouch and set it on the desk. "One thousand silver credits."

Arthur reached across and picked up the pouch.

His other hand, hanging loose at his side, sent the anchor out below the desk, moving it along the underside of the table surface, threading through the grain of the wood and the stain of old polish, settling into the shadow where the candlelight didn’t fully reach. Clean. Undetected.

One point of contact established in this room that wouldn’t leave with them.

"Thank you," Arthur said, pocketing the payment. "And if it’s not too much to ask, we’re not from here. We don’t really know the traders yet. If you’d be open to it, we’d like to keep working with Vorik while we’re in Moncruir. You seem to have a solid operation."

The man paused for a beat. Just one. "How long are you planning to stay?"

"A month. Maybe slightly over."

"Mages committing to a full month of Vasker work." His tone wasn’t skeptical. Something lighter, closer to interest. "What’s the draw?"

"Honestly?" Arthur let a half-smile through. "The pay’s better out here than people said. And the quests are harder. Better training than anything the academy’s running during break."

The man studied him for a second. Then the smile came back, fuller this time.

"We’d love that. Young Vaskers with strong results are exactly the kind of partners we want here." He rested both hands on the desk,smiled, easy. "I’m Sable. Manager."

"Vexis." Arthur gestured. "This is Cael and Theodore."

Cael nodded once. Theodore offered a small wave that he immediately seemed to regret.

"Pleasure." Sable looked at all three of them in the specific way of a man taking inventory.

"We’re actually starving from the hunt." Arthur turned toward the door. "We’ll be back for the next listing."

"Of course. Pleasure doing business."

Outside, the Creslan cold landed immediately, mist forming at every breath.

Theodore pulled his coat tighter. "That place was kind of... normal."

"That’s what’s weird about it," Arthur said. They kept walking. "Nothing wrong with it by itself. But we can’t conclude anything yet. We need more before we do anything."

"No." Cael’s voice was flat. "The place is not normal."

Arthur looked at him.

"The smell," Cael said. "When the door first opened. A sweet alkaline scent. Underneath the fireplace smoke." He didn’t elaborate on how he knew what that meant, but Arthur remembered. The Patriarch’s raids. The lab at the Creslan border. The first thing that hit them in that room before they saw anything. "I was present during both raids. That scent is specific. It doesn’t come from monster remains."

Arthur stopped walking.

Theodore stopped beside him.

"Which is why we look further," Arthur said.

Behind them, the door of Vorik Monster Trading opened with a creak. "Who was it?"

"Oh, it was just three new customers, Malvric."

Sable’s voice, carrying through the gap.

Arthur didn’t turn. He kept his face forward, kept moving, kept his breathing even.

A slender pale figure stood in the doorway at his peripheral edge. Black hair. Black eyes. Slight frame.

The door didn’t close immediately.

Sable’s voice again, quieter, and the lips curling upward in the split second before the door swung shut.

"Just customers."