Outside, the armed gate guards snapped to attention as the carriage rolled to a stop. The driver cleared his throat. "Looks like we’re here." He paused, glancing over his shoulder with the weary patience of one who has seen too much. "Good luck... with whatever this is."

Aero City rose from the horizon like a broken jaw of stone and sky.

Liam stood at the crest of the ridge, his boots planted in the dirt, and watched the city unfold below him in semicircular rings. The outer wall was rough-cut grey granite, twenty feet high and patched with moss, the kind of wall built by people who expected to be attacked. Beyond it, the second ring was cleaner white limestone buildings with tile roofs, market stalls stacked tight along cobbled streets, the smell of bread and sewage drifting up even from here. The third ring climbed higher, all spires and balconies and hanging gardens, the stonework so fine it looked carved from butter. And at the centre, they keep a dark tower that punched up through the clouds like a fist.

People moved between the rings like blood through chambers. Below, commoners in roughspun pushed carts through narrow alleys. Above, nobles in silk robes drifted between the upper balconies on feathered wings or rode the backs of dino looking things with leathery skin and hooked beaks that circled the spires in lazy spirals. One of the beasts screeched overhead, and Liam felt the sound in his chest.

"Midnight." He glanced at the small black dragon perched on his shoulder. Her claws flexed against his collarbone. "Stay."

She chittered, pressing closer to his neck. Good.

The rest of the group was already filtering down the path.

Ruby-Eyed in their crimson tunics and Iron Hearth in black and bronze, plus the strays they’d picked up along the road.

Elizabeth was somewhere in the middle, her pink hair catching the light, her sword bouncing against her hip with each step. She walked like she was fighting the ground.

Liam caught up to her in three strides. The crowd thickened at the gate: merchants, guards, a woman selling roasted nuts from a cart, three kids chasing a chicken between the legs of a draft lizard. Bodies pressed from every direction. He reached out, found Elizabeth’s wrist, and pulled her in against his side.

She looked up at him. Her ears flattened.

"Don’t get lost," he said.

"I wasn’t going to..."

He kept walking. She stayed pressed against him, her arm warm where it touched his ribs, and he felt her fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt without her seeming to notice.

The gate guard barely glanced at them. Johan, third in Iron Hearth, a huge rabbit man with a scar across his face, flashed a guild token, and the guard waved them through with a bored flick of his hand.

Inside, the noise doubled. Voices in three languages, the clang of a blacksmith somewhere close, the wet sound of a butcher’s cleaver, a bard playing something mournful on a lute while a child threw coins that missed the hat. The streets were barely wide enough for two carts to pass, and they didn’t; one cart was wedged sideways, the driver arguing with a man in a flour-dusted apron while a line of people stacked up behind them.

Johan led them left, then right, then through an archway into a wider street that climbed toward the second ring. The buildings here were taller, the stonework smoother.

Berry walked ahead with the guild officers, her tiger tail swaying, her shoulders set in that way she had when she was three steps ahead of everyone or had no idea where she was going.

They turned a corner, and the guild hall appeared.

Liam stopped. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

It was three stories of dark oak and iron, built into the side of the second-ring wall with its own private courtyard and a wrought-iron gate that stood open. The roof was slate. The windows were leaded glass. A brass plaque beside the door read IRON HEARTH in letters big enough to read from across the street.

Two stone gargoyles, actual gargoyles, not decoration, their eyes tracking the group as they approached, perched on the eaves.

Johan pushed the door open and stepped inside. The others followed.

The interior was worse. Marble floors. A chandelier that looked like it had actual candles. Tapestries on the walls depicting battles Liam didn’t recognise. A bar along one side stocked with bottles he could smell from the doorway, oak, honey, something smoky. The ceiling vaulted up two stories to exposed beams thick as his thigh.

Berry stood in the centre of the main hall with her arms crossed, looking at everything except him.

Liam walked over to her. "How’d you buy this without seeing it?"

She turned her head and looked at the wall.

"Berry?"

"Hmph."

He waited. She didn’t turn around. Her tail was doing that stiff thing it did when she was pretending not to care about something she definitely cared about.

Liam shrugged and kept walking.

He found the kitchen through a door at the back of the hall, wide, stone-floored, lit by a row of windows along the outer wall. A prep table ran the length of the room. Shelves held copper pots, wooden bowls, a mortar and pestle the size of his fist. And against the far wall, set into the stone with iron fittings and a chimney that climbed up through the ceiling.

[TOOL TIP]:

Status: New Home Base Unlocked

The Zebra’s Farewell Blessing: The carriage conductor wishing Liam luck "with whatever this is" has permanently logged a [Successfully Dumped Baggage] notification in the transport logs. The system notes the driver accelerated away so fast he nearly drifted his lizards on the main turn.

The Gargoyle Security Audit: The living stone gargoyles on the roof of the Iron Hearth hall tracking the party’s entrance have suffered a [Target Acquisition Error] trying to calculate why a huge albino chef is travelling with a highly territorial pink cat warrior and a tiny dragon spitting invisible vanilla custard properties.

The Berry Real Estate Diversion: Berry refusing to explain how she purchased a three-story marble-and-oak guild hall completely sight-unseen has locked her into a [Stiff Tail Avoidance Loop]. The system suspects she spent 100% of the guild’s liquid budget on premium kitchen grates just to bait Liam into cooking for her forever.