The gates of Blount loomed ahead—tall, steel-framed and weatherworn, set deep into thick walls of pale gray stone. The closer they came, the clearer the signs of strain became. Reinforcements patched where stone had cracked. Banners flew, but dulled by sun and soot. Guards in studded leather and half-plate eyed them sharply from their posts, hands already resting on the hilts of short blades or leaning into long-hafted spears.
Koda raised a hand in greeting as they neared, the group slowing just enough to signal peace. Their cart creaked behind them, lighter than when they began but still bearing the weight of their journey—and the scars of what they had faced.
"State your business," called the lead guard, a young man with a square jaw and a tired look in his eyes. His gaze flicked from their dust-covered boots to the heavy blades on Koda's back, lingering a moment longer on Seta's drone as it quietly perched on the cart's edge.
Koda stepped forward, voice firm. "Travelers from Oria. Seeking rest and resupply."
That gave the guard pause. "Oria? You came from the east?"
"We did."
The man exchanged a look with his second, a woman whose expression remained unreadable beneath the iron shadows of her helm. He cleared his throat. "Strange reports out of that direction. Bonewalkers. Unnatural things. Just a day's ride south."
Maia stepped forward beside Koda, her voice calm but edged with quiet exhaustion. "We dealt with some of that. Whatever tore through this land—it left a scar, but we passed through."
Another silence. Then the second guard gave a nod, lifting one arm and motioning toward the inner gate. "Stables are just inside the western quarter. You can leave your cart there. Quartermaster will help with any trade."
The gates groaned open, slow but steady.
Before they could move, the first guard added, "One more thing—Blount's record hall will want your report. They're logging all confirmed encounters. Head there once you're settled."
Koda gave a short nod. "Understood."
As they entered, the sound of the city swelled around them—steel on anvils, voices raised in haggling, the clatter of hooves and carts on cobbled streets. Blount was alive.
But not unafraid.
The people moved with purpose, but with glances over shoulders. Shops bustled, but windows bore freshly carved sigils of protection. Children played in alleyways, yet stayed close to home. Soldiers—real ones, not just gate guards—marched in small units along the main roads. Armed, armored, eyes wary.
Terron grunted as they passed under a low archway into the western quarter, unlatching the yoke from his shoulder. "Feels like a city waiting for a storm."
Eno offered a half-smile, gaze darting from rooftop to alley. "Or pretending one already passed."
The group pulled their wagon to a stop beside the stables—large wooden buildings with open-roofed pens and pens of restless livestock. A stablehand, maybe fifteen, hurried over with wide eyes at the sight of them and their battered cart.
Koda handed him the reins. "Cart needs rest. So do we."
The boy nodded quickly, already calling for help.
As they stepped away, Blount welcomed them with open arms and watchful eyes—each footstep taking them deeper into a city that stood ready, but uneasy. And somewhere in its streets, answers and obstacles both waited.
———
Like they had observed from the gates, the streets of Blount still pulsed with life, but the energy lacked the jubilance of safety. Vendors barked half-hearted calls beneath colorful canopies, their wares more practical than flashy—dried meats, iron nails, thick boots. Carpenters repaired wagon wheels not out of routine, but haste. Farmers from outlying lands spoke to guards at checkpoints with too-stiff shoulders and darting eyes.
Koda walked ahead with Terron beside him, the wheels of their now-unburdened cart clicking against cobble as they made their way deeper into the city.
"They're tense," Terron muttered, arms crossed. "More than they let on."
"Something's rotting under the surface," Elise added, drifting up from the rear, eyes scanning rooftops. "Look at the rooftops. Extra guard posts. Someone's expecting a siege."
"Not just expecting," Eno said quietly. "Preparing."
Seta's drone—still winged and silent—hovered low, now hidden beneath a veil of magic. "Undead activity has shaken their routes. No caravans in or out for the last two days."
Renn exhaled through his nose. "And yet they're still selling meat and mead like it's market week. Trying not to scare the civilians, I'd bet."
The group passed a crumbling stone statue of a riderless horse, once proud and poised in the city square, now partially covered with a draping cloth, as though mourning.
"Over there," Maia said, pointing to a modest inn tucked between a tannery and a gear shop. The Hooked Fang, painted in flaking red across a tilted sign. "We're not going to do better without wandering deeper in."
The place was close to the wall, and the smell of dust and treated leather clung to its front steps. But the lights were warm. Welcoming, even. They stepped inside to find a small atrium that opened into a single long hallway of rooms. The innkeeper, a thin man with a nose that could cut glass, greeted them with eyes that had long learned not to ask too many questions.
"Seven rooms," Koda said, still holding the pouch at his belt.
The man hesitated, then nodded. "Down the hall. Two silver a room, up front. Meals extra."
Koda paid, surprised at how cheap it felt in his calloused palm. For the first time in his life, he could afford solitude, and that somehow unsettled him more than it pleased him.
They dropped their packs into their rooms with the silence of seasoned travelers, and soon found themselves settling into the inn's eatery—a long, narrow space with creaking benches and a line of cracked-glass windows. A hearth burned in the corner, and the smell of roasted roots and mild ale drifted in the air.
They sat close together, boots scuffed and plates steaming in front of them, when voices from a nearby table caught their attention.
Two off-duty patrolmen sat with their backs to the hearth, hunched over cups and speaking in low, nervous tones.
"I'm telling you, Thomar saw it himself. A field full of bones—just… moving. Rebuilding themselves."
"That's just caravan talk. Spook stories from the wall watch."
"No, it's not. We're pulling double patrols now. Half the town council's ready to seal the gates entirely."
Near the bar, a waitress whispered to her co-worker as she scrubbed mugs. "They say the road from the east is dead. No one's come through but scattered refugees. Most of them won't talk."
A third voice joined. "I heard someone saw the sun swallowed. Not by clouds—by something else. Like a wound in the sky."
Maia's eyes drifted toward Koda, who quietly chewed his food. He was listening. All of them were.
Blount was alive, yes—but behind every eye in that crowded room was a shared fear no one wanted to speak too loud. Something was creeping closer.
——
The Record Hall stood tall and narrow against the midday sun, its roofline arched like a cathedral but without the ornament. Stone, unadorned, pressed tightly against itself—thick walls made for time, not beauty. And even from the outside, the clatter inside could be heard. Not chaos, not disorder—but a rush of minds too busy to speak aloud.
They crossed the small courtyard, boots tapping against old brick. At the doors, two clerks in patchy vests and ink-stained sleeves glanced up from a ledger and nodded them through without ceremony. The guards had clearly passed along word.
Inside, the temperature dropped a few degrees. The air smelled of paper, candle wax, and damp stone. Shelves ran ceiling-high and wall-to-wall, filled with scrolls, bound ledgers, and maps stretched tight in frames. A long central desk stretched across the main hall like the spine of the building, staffed by a dozen or more recorders. Each one scribbled, flipped pages, or whispered to messengers who darted like bees from desk to desk.
"Damn," Terron muttered under his breath, eyes flicking over a man at the far end who was cross-referencing two dozen maps at once, muttering numbers in time with his pen strokes. "I figured we'd talk to one scribe, maybe two."
"This is the largest city within the region," Seta said quietly. "And the undead are active. Every scrap of knowledge matters."
The noise wasn't loud—no shouting, no footsteps—but the buzz of it, that endless scratch-snap-flip, filled the hall. One could almost feel it vibrating in the stone. Information didn't sleep here.
A clerk with thin spectacles and an oil-stained vest waved them over to a smaller desk beside the wall, already clearing space.
"You came from the east?" he asked, quill already angled, eyes flicking from face to face. "Report. Spare no detail."
Koda stepped forward, then glanced to Seta and Elise. "You both tracked most of the route," he said. "Start there."
Seta nodded once and began speaking, calm and precise. Elise chimed in with geographic references, distances, weather patterns. The clerk scribbled furiously, occasionally barking to an assistant to bring a specific ledger or past report.
When they reached the bone field, more clerks arrived—quietly, subtly—eavesdropping while pretending to review nearby scrolls.
By the time they described the lich, half the front office had fallen silent.
Another clerk leaned in from the side. "Was it tied to a scar?"
Koda nodded. "Anchored to it. We closed it from the outside."
The man blinked, as if doing mental math on something he had no scale for. "That's… new."
"A fragment remained," Maia added. "A piece of something older. Maybe from before the gates even opened."
The room stilled again. A single pen dropped somewhere in the back.
And then, without fanfare, the scribe at their desk said, "We'll file this under Red Tier Anomalies. It will reach the capital by dusk."
As if nothing more needed to be said, the work resumed.
As they stepped away from the desk, the hush that had fallen began to splinter. Quills resumed their scratching, but it was no longer the mechanical frenzy of bureaucracy. The rhythm had changed—deliberate, more purposeful now. Pages flipped with urgency, not panic. Conversations that had once been terse and low became clipped but focused.
They could feel it in the air, the tilt.
The scribe they'd spoken to stood for a long moment after they left, eyes staring through the record before him, lips moving without sound. Then he turned and barked a list of citations to a runner. "Start cross-referencing southern Ridge reports. Look for any similarities in scar decay. Go back two years."
Another clerk muttered, "They closed a Red Tier anomaly. Outside the seal." He didn't whisper it, not quite. He wanted to be overheard.
"You think they'll reach the capital?" someone else asked from behind a column of ledgers.
"They have to. If they don't…" A shrug. "Then we're already finished."
Koda glanced over his shoulder as the group made their way toward the exit. Eyes were following them now. Not with fear—though some had that too—but with recognition. Not adoration, not worship. Just the raw gravity that came when strangers carried impossible things on their backs and walked upright all the same.
"They know," Renn said under his breath, hands tucked behind his head. "They know we're not just another warband."
"We never were," Elise replied, voice quiet. "But now the story's on paper. It's real."
Even in the narrow street beyond the hall, the air felt different. The city's noise still rang—carts rattled, hawkers called, metal clanged—but something beneath it had shifted.
Maia walked just behind Koda, watching the tension in his shoulders, the way his head tilted slightly toward every shout, every clang. She reached out, not to stop him, not to comfort—just to be there.
"You alright?" she asked softly.
He nodded, but his voice was low. "They think we're hope."
"Maybe we are."
Terron clapped him on the back as they rounded a corner. "Hope or not," he said with a lopsided grin, "we're still broke and short two mules."
That pulled a soft laugh from a few of them.
But behind the laughter, behind the hopeful eyes of the recorders, a truth had taken root: the undead weren't a fluke. This wasn't a storm to wait out—it was the next horizon.
And now… the city of Blount knew.