The dungeon yawned before me, a black wound in the stone, its breath cold against the evening air. Behind me, the scrape of shovels and the grunt of effort marked where ten recruits hacked at the earth, deepening the trench that would anchor the fort. They worked with the desperation of men who wanted a wall between themselves and what waited inside. I let them be.

My gaze drifted instead to the treeline, to the direction Hal had vanished with his pack. The bond hummed faint and steady, stretched taut across distance like a bowstring. Not fading. Just… different.

And I felt it—his Dao. Not guided by me. His own. The realization struck harder than any blade.

Pride swelled first, hot and sharp. The shivering pup, defending his abandoned mother, I'd branded was gone; in his place stood a wolf who had carved his own path, leading others as an Alpha should. A Dao of Pack—his Dao—calling him forward with every step.

But under the pride came dread, heavy and bitter. Because I knew what that meant. I'd seen it in the eyes of soldiers who found their own callings, who outgrew orders and marched to the beat of something greater. Whatever that was. You can fight beside them. You can bleed with them. But you can't chain them to your side forever.

Hal was mine. My Brand, my first anchor in this world. And yet—he wasn't mine to keep. That was his own kind of freedom in its own way.

The recruits shouted as stone gave way, the trench deepening. I barely heard them. My eyes stayed on the horizon, my hand tightening around the haft of my axe.

Hal wasn't just following me anymore. He was walking ahead.

The recruits were mud-streaked, sweat dripping into their eyes, shovels biting into the trench line. Their movements had the clumsy rhythm of men trying to learn labor after a life of killing. I walked over, boots crunching the loose stone, and one of them straightened too quick, snapping to something that looked like parade rest. The others followed, awkward as a herd of startled deer.

"Relax," I said, setting my axe down and grabbing a spade from the dirt pile. "If you keep pretending I'm a commander, I'll actually start giving orders. And none of you want me telling you how to shovel."

That broke the tension. A ripple of chuckles, even a muttered, "Wouldn't be worse than Daran."

I hefted the spade and dropped into the trench beside them, sinking it into the ash-laden soil. It was heavier than I expected, clumps sticking, but I pushed through. "See? Even I've got to eat dirt with the rest of you."

The youngest of them—a wiry lad missing two front teeth—snorted. "Never thought I'd see a Calamity digging trenches."

"Never thought I'd be one," I shot back, and their laughter came easier this time.

The work rolled on, punctuated by crude humor. Someone muttered about how the trench looked like a piss channel more than a defense. Another swore the stone dust worked better than powder if you rubbed it in the right place, which sent half the line into wheezing laughter and the other half into mock outrage. I let it ride. Dirty jokes kept shovels moving better than orders ever could.

In between, real questions surfaced.

"What is this valley really? Why drag us here instead of letting us rot in the fort?"

I leaned on my spade, wiping sweat with the back of my hand. "Because rotting was the easy road. Here—you get a chance to make something. I'm not asking you to love it. Just build it. You live, you work, you fight who we need, maybe you even get remembered for more than blood."

A silence followed that, heavier than the laughter had been. But I saw their shoulders square just a little more.

Another asked, quieter: "And if we fail?"

"Then we fail together," I said simply. "But we won't."

For a while, there was only the scrape of shovels. I moved down the line, swapping crude jokes, asking names, nudging them when they slacked. It wasn't command—it was presence. The kind that bound men tighter than rules.

Then the tether snapped taut in my chest. Oathsense blazed. Kelan. His signal wasn't words, just a desperate pull.

"Brandflare," I whispered, forcing my will into the bond feeling the resistance. Light and heat erupted in the distance, even from here I felt the feedback slam through me. Lighting my frame in a light blue flare.

The recruits startled, some dropping shovels, but I didn't stop—Kelan's need hadn't lessened. It shifted, urgent in a new way. I clenched my fists, breath ragged. Brandsurge.

It was harder this time, like ramming my will through stone. For a heartbeat I thought I'd lose it—then the tether lit like fire, Kelan's pain dulling as strength poured back into him.

I sagged against the trench wall, recruits staring wide-eyed. One finally asked, voice hushed: "What did you just do?"

I straightened slowly, spade still in my hand. "My job," I said. "And yours is to keep digging."

The trench work had stopped dead. Every recruit was staring at me like I'd grown a second head. My chest still heaved from the effort, sweat slicking down my spine despite the cold air, but I forced myself upright, shoving the spade back into the soil like nothing had happened.

One of the older men swallowed audibly. "You… you weren't even looking at him. And he—he's inside the dungeon. How in all the hells did you touch him from here?"

"Magic," another muttered, but the word came out hollow, uncertain.

I gave them nothing but a thin smile. "Doesn't matter how. What matters is he's still standing. So pick up your damned shovels before Daran finds out you paused to gape."

A few laughed nervously, the sound brittle. Still, they obeyed, tools scraping dirt again, though every pair of eyes kept flicking back to me when they thought I wasn't looking.

The brand pulsed faintly in my chest, easing as Kelan's pain dulled. Then, through Oathsense, Lira's voice brushed against me—gentle but taut with strain. We're headed back. No more pushing today.

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. Good. They'd made it, at least.

The recruits exchanged glances, shoveling slower now, until the youngest finally blurted out, "What are you? A man who can't kill, but can still… do that? Are you even human?"

The question hung there, heavy.

I rested my forearms on the spade and met their wide, uncertain stares. "I'm Harold. That's enough. You want something else? Then dig. Build. Prove you're worth more than the men we buried to get here."

They flinched, but this time, when they bent back to their work, there was a different weight to it. Not fear exactly. Not respect either. Something rawer. The look men give to a storm—terrified, but willing to follow it because it's the only thing breaking the horizon.

The trench digging slowed again as the recruits' eyes kept dragging back to me. I leaned on the spade, sweat slick on my palms, breath ragged from mana work and fatigue. Their stares pressed in—not contempt, not respect, but that same wary confusion I'd seen since they first laid eyes on me.

I let out a humorless laugh. "You're waiting for me to give some speech, aren't you? Some grand sermon about strength and certainty." My voice came rough, tired. "Truth is, I don't have certainty. I never did."

The wind hissed through the treeline. A log cracked in the firepit nearby. Their faces—hard, young, scarred—waited.

"I once read words, back before all this, from a man named Oscar Wilde. He was an author, and poet where I'm from. He….led a hard and rewarding life..but hard. He said: 'I am not a noun. I am a verb.'" I paused, letting it hang there. "Not fixed. Not finished. Just moving. Learning. Always changing. Do you know what that means? It means we don't get to rest on easy answers. We don't get to be safe little words on a page. We have to keep walking, even when every step hurts."

One recruit snorted under his breath, but he didn't look away. These men had probably never heard of anything like this, the recent flare of mana empowering my words in way whatever teachers in their past hadn't.

"Don't feel ashamed for not knowing everything," I said, softer now. "Not knowing—hell, that's the most wonderful thing you'll ever carry. Because it means you're still a student of life. Still moving. Still becoming. Most men your age are already dead inside. Fixed in place. Nouns. But you…" I jabbed the spade into the dirt between us. "You've still got the chance to be verbs. To act. To change. To grow into something more than what this world told you you were worth."

A silence settled over the trench, heavy and sharp. One of the younger men looked down at his callused hands like he'd never seen them before. Another gripped his shovel tighter, a flicker of something raw sparking behind his eyes. I felt it ripple faintly through the air—like Oathsense, but not. Their Daos stirring, cracking through the surface. One felt light and flowing and another like the furious roar of a mountain.

I exhaled, letting the moment stretch, then added with a bitter smile: "Don't mistake me for some prophet. I'm just tired. I've survived more rooms I should've died in than I can count. But that survival taught me one thing: the hardest paths? They're the ones that make the hardest people. You bleed, you sweat, you crawl through the dirt—and on the other side, if you're lucky, you're something new. Something sharper, hopefully better."

For a moment, no one moved. Then a recruit spat into the dirt, muttering, "Guess we'll keep digging, then." His tone was different though—lighter, almost fierce. The other, the young one, just nodded once, silent, but I could feel it—his Dao sparking to life, faint as a candle in the dark, but there.

I leaned back on the spade, tired to the bone but smiling faintly. "Good. Because I'm not done learning either. Not by a long damn sight."

The recruits bent back into their work, though a few of them still shot me sidelong glances, like they weren't sure if they'd just been lectured or blessed. I stayed with them another half hour, digging, trading rough jokes, letting them see that sweat and dirt didn't make me any different than them.

By the time the dungeon party finally returned, boots grinding ash and armor dusted from the fight, the trench had taken shape. Daran strode out first, scanning the line of recruits with that hard soldier's eye of his. I saw the rest of the party come out looking exhausted and beaten but also victorious. Three more undead walked out carrying several bags and one carrying several crates.

I wiped my hands on my trousers and stepped toward him, lowering my voice so only he could hear. "Two of them," I said, nodding subtly toward the pair still bent to their shovels. "Something I said must've struck. I felt it—both of them brushed their Dao. Initiate tier, raw, but it's there."

Daran's brows lifted, the faintest crack in his stoic mask. He followed my gaze, studying the two like they were weapons he hadn't expected to find in the armory.

"You're certain?" he asked, blunt.

I shrugged, exhaustion dragging at me but conviction steady. "As certain as I've ever been. They woke something up in themselves today. Don't let them lose it. That one, I said nodding at him, awakened something fierce. I don't know what it was, something angry from the earth."

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For a long moment he didn't answer. Then he gave one short nod, sharp as a blade tap against steel. "I'll see to it." His eyes cut back to me, unreadable. "You've a way of pulling sparks out of people, Harold. Dangerous, that. But useful."

He turned away to bark orders at the recruits, and I felt the faint weight of his words settle into my chest.

I left Daran to his barking and cut across the churned ground toward the others. Lira sat on a flat stone near the dungeon mouth, shoulders slumped, face pale beneath the soot and grime. Kelan hovered close, keeping her steady, while Auren and Ferin sorted through the bags and crates the undead kobolds had carried.

"You're upright," I said, crouching in front of her. My eyes flicked to the faint tremor in her hands. "That's more than I expected after yesterday."

Her lips twitched, halfway between a tired smile and a grimace. "Don't sound so surprised. I told you I wasn't fragile."

"Didn't say fragile," I countered. "Just running yourself thin." I let my gaze drift to the new undead—kobolds with cracked armor and empty eyes. "Looks like you pushed again."

Lira followed my stare, then exhaled slowly. "They were too many in the second chamber. Shamans weaving hexes, berserkers charging in waves. We held the line, but only barely. I bound what I could… more than I should have. It cost me."

Kelan spoke, his voice low. "She's the only reason none of us broke in there. Even with me shaping, their blows almost split me through."

Auren gave a sharp nod from where he knelt, picking over a broken crossbow. "Traps too. Subtle, layered. If Kelan couldn't shift the stone, and if I hadn't spotted the triggers…" He shook his head. "We'd be corpses in there. Every one of us."

Ferin grunted, scratching one of his hounds behind the ears. "And even then, it was close."

I reached out, laying a hand briefly over Lira's. She didn't pull away, but her gaze stayed on the ground. "You're pushing boundaries no one else even sees, Lira. Just don't let it tear you apart in the process."

She finally looked up at me, eyes rimmed with exhaustion but burning steady. "I'll hold, Harold. That's what the Brand is for, isn't it? To push us where we couldn't go alone."

I let the silence sit, then stood, glancing over the crates. "Then let's make sure the cost was worth it. What'd we bring back?"

Kelan shifted his weight, wincing slightly as his stone armor cracked and sloughed away. "First chamber wasn't just a room—it was a guard post. Kobolds had racks of a few crossbows and food supplies stacked in the corners. We tried to end it quickly, but… we weren't fast enough. One slipped the alarm."

Daran's jaw tightened. "Which meant the second room was reinforced before we even reached it. That's where the shamans and berserkers waited." He glanced toward Lira, then back to me. "Without her, we'd have left half our number in that chamber. We were on the verge of being overrun, their shamans can cast a spell that enlarges and empowers the beserkers, enough that two of them can hold me off. Without that silence you can cast we would have lost people."

Lira gave no reply, only a faint shake of her head, but her exhaustion spoke enough.

Auren leaned his bow against a crate, grim satisfaction in his voice. "We stripped everything worth taking. Non-perishables, salted meat, dried root. Enough to stretch us another week further, if we ration right. We grabbed every bit of metal we could pry from their weapons and armor."

Ferin spat to the side, his dogs bristling at the scent of kobold gore still clinging to the crates. "Axes mostly. Some sharp, some not worth the sweat it'd take to swing. Still, they'll cut once Illga's done with them—or arm the recruits as they are."

I nodded slowly, letting the weight of their words sink in. Food. Metal. Weapons. More than I'd dared hope for, even if the cost had come close to bleeding us out.

"Good," I said finally, voice low but carrying. "Everything useful gets stacked and counted. Illga can melt down the junk, keep what'll swing. The recruits will need steel in their hands sooner than later."

I looked over them again—the crates, the recruits, the weary lines in each face—and felt the coil of responsibility tighten in my chest. Survival wasn't glory. It was one chamber at a time, one desperate haul of food and steel.

"You all must have gained levels from this, the next time will be easier right?"

Daran shifted his stance, wiping a gauntleted hand across his jaw before answering. His eyes were flat, but not unkind—just the eyes of a man who'd seen too many battles.

"You're not wrong," he said at last. "We gained levels. Strength, endurance, a sharper edge on what we can already do. That matters. But don't mistake it for closing the gap."

He glanced toward the crates, then back to Harold. "Those kobolds in there? Experienced Tier Threes. Not just the number on their status. They've got Dao to match it—lived in it, bled in it, made it theirs. That's what makes them dangerous."

His tone hardened, voice carrying like the crack of a drillmaster's staff. "Levels offset the difference, sure. Enough to keep us alive, maybe to push another room deeper. But we'll never truly match them until our Daos do. Until every man and woman here finds that path and hones it to a blade."

He let the words hang, then added, quieter but no softer: "This group is too green. Too untested. If you want truth instead of comfort, here it is—we'll never make it past the second chamber as we are. Not unless more of us find the kind of breakthroughs you and Lira stumbled into. Otherwise, the dungeon will keep breaking us, one room at a time."

Daran's gaze swept the recruits nearby, then settled back on Harold, steady as bedrock. "Don't confuse surviving with winning. Not in there. I have never seen a dungeon this intricate before, I have more experience with battlefields but I have never heard of a dungeon with a starting challenge this hard."

I let his words hang there, the weight of them grinding against the inside of my chest like stone on stone. Surviving wasn't winning. I knew that truth too well. But hearing it laid out here, in this place, with these people looking to me—it hit sharper than I wanted to admit.

My eyes drifted back over them again. Kelan leaning heavily on his pick, the recruits worn to the bone but still upright, Lira pale but steady with her undead hovering close. Crates of scavenged food and bent metal tools stacked like trophies at our feet. Not much, but not nothing. Enough to live another day.

"We'll need to prepare better if we're to run it again tomorrow," I said at last, voice carrying over the group. "It's too important not to. That dungeon's the difference between scraping by and building something. But tonight—we rest. We'll eat. We take what victories we can claim, because tomorrow it starts all over again."

I straightened, forcing the stiffness out of my shoulders, and turned my gaze toward the plateau. Even from here, I could see the smoke rising above the forest hinting at a safe place in the valley.

It wasn't finished. But it was ours.

"Let's head back," I said quietly, almost to myself, but they all heard.

And with weary steps and the faintest flickers of resolve in their eyes, we began the march uphill—toward the settlement, I drifted next to and beside Lira. Kelan's eyes glanced at me as he smiled and walked ahead a little leaving me with Lira.

Lira leaned more of her weight against me, and I shifted to steady her without thinking. Her hair brushed my shoulder, and for a moment the cold felt a little less sharp.

"You sure you're alright?" I asked quietly, glancing down at her.

Her lips curved faintly. "Tired. Not broken."

I let out a low breath, half a laugh. "Good. Because if you fall over, I'll have to carry you. And if I carry you, you might start rumors."

She snorted, the sound soft but real. "Rumors?"

"Yeah," I said, keeping my gaze forward. "That I like having you this close."

Her cheeks flushed despite the cold, and she looked away quickly. But she didn't move an inch farther from me.

Through Oathsense, I let a flicker slip—unintended but too strong to hold back. Pride at how far she'd come. Worry that she kept pushing herself too hard. And something quieter, something I didn't want to name, but it was there in the tether all the same.

Lira stiffened, just slightly, then tilted her head up toward me. She didn't say anything, didn't need to—the faint curve of her lips told me she felt it. She didn't shut me out. That was answer enough.

We trudged on in silence, our steps crunching through snow and ash until the valley's rise gave way to a sight that eased the weight in my chest. Smoke curled steady from the longhouse. Timber walls gleamed with fresh axe marks. Progress. Home.

Shouts carried on the wind, high and bright. The first of the children came sprinting out, bare feet kicking up powder as they spilled down the slope. "They're back!" one of them hollered, and more followed, a dozen little figures racing toward us.

"Alright, alright, form up!" Master Olrick's voice cut through the laughter, sharper than I thought a gnome that stooped could manage. He stood at the base of the slope, beard twitching as twenty-odd children milled around him like startled birds. "Don't make me count you twice! Line up—yes, you too, boy, put the stick down before you poke an eye out!" Mana swirled off him as he used some kind of skill to enforce his will on the unruly kids.

The kids groaned, but they shuffled into line, shoulders brushing as Olrick went down the row, lips moving as he ticked them off. The two newest recruits he'd brought with him—the youngest, barely old enough to run—clung to the older ones' sleeves. He herded them like he'd done it every day of his life, which he probably had. By the time he raised a hand to signal the count was finished, the laughter had dimmed into a steady hum of children's chatter.

Rysa was talking softly and checking over Auren, Kelan was already talking to the brothers, muttering about stone being needed to reinforce something. Daran had gone to correct some issue he saw. On the way he had said he wanted to talk to me about something this evening but that could wait.

I lingered at the edge, gaze drifting past them to the plateau.

The forge's finished now, stone base stacked high with timber walls braced against the winter wind. Smoke curled from a smaller firepit beside it where Illga's two apprentices hammered at nails under her sharp eye. Past that, the barracks' outline stretched wider than I'd expected, a trench cut for the walls and a frame slowly rising from it. Not much work had been made to it since a large part of the work had gone towards finishing the forge then starting the second longhouse. It was already starting to rise next to the original longhouse. They might be able to finish it late tomorrow. The lumber piles Brenn's crew had dragged in were already thinning—good. It meant work was getting done.

Near the longhouse, Maela had lines strung with drying meat, and the smell of stew drifted even from here. Joran and his brothers had scraped raw plots into the valley floor, their boots caked with frozen earth. And by the stream, the miners had started cutting into the bank for stone, but had transitioned to the mountain walls in order to carve out a space for the mushrooms and get to the ore.

It wasn't pretty yet. But it was growing.

The valley wasn't just smoke and noise now.

Master Olrick's steady voice was gone when he came hustling toward me, beard bobbing with every step, eyes sharp with worry. "Harold—we're missing one."

My stomach tightened. "Who?"

"One of the oldest boys. Jerric. He's near sixteen, and I fear…" Olrick's hands twisted in his beard. "I fear he's gone to do something drastic before his class awakens. Some think a dangerous feat, a brush with death, can earn them a stronger start. Foolhardy tales—but he's the sort to believe it."

"Shit," I muttered, heart spiking. I didn't even have Hal here to keep watch—he was still out chasing that pull from his Brand. My mistake. I should've had him leave a wolf behind.

I raised my voice, sharp enough to cut through the longhouse noise. "Ferin! Auren!"

Both men appeared within breaths—Ferin with his hounds circling at his heels, Auren still carrying his bow strung, eyes narrowing as he saw my face.

"Missing boy," I said flatly. "Almost sixteen. Jerric. Might've run off to try something stupid and 'earn' a better class."

Olrick stepped forward, voice tight. "He's clever, but desperate. He spoke of proving himself. I fear he's run toward the valley's edge—or worse, toward the mountains."

Ferin spat to the side, already crouching to ruffle one of his dogs' ears. "Tracks'll still be fresh. My hounds will pick him up."

Auren's jaw set as he slung his bow into place. "And I'll shadow ahead. If he went for the ridges, he's as good as dead unless we find him first."

Ferin glanced up at me, face grim. "Best case, he's just sulking in the brush. Worst case…" He didn't finish.

I met both their eyes. "Bring him back alive. If he fights you, knock him out. I don't care if he thinks it's unfair. Better bruises than a grave. Take whoever you need. Use the signal arrows we gave you when you find him or need help. The platoon will be formed."

They both gave curt nods—Ferin already snapping orders to his hounds, Auren scanning the treeline as if he could pull the boy from it by will alone.

As they moved out, I stood there with Olrick beside me, the recruits still working in the distance, and felt the weight of it again. This valley wasn't just stone and timber. It was fragile lives and stupid choices. And all of it rested in my hands.

"Daran!"

The veteran strode over, already sensing the weight in my tone. His scarred face gave nothing away, but his men fell into a rough cluster behind him.

"One of the boys is gone," I said, voice low but carrying. "Ferin and Auren are tracking him already. If trouble follows them back, I want us ready."

Daran's jaw tightened, then he turned on the recruits with a sharp gesture. "Form ranks!"

Boots scraped the ash as the thirty half-trained men pulled into lines, some gripping nothing but practice wood. I stepped forward, raising my voice.

"Enough playing soldier. If it comes to a fight, you'll fight with steel." I reached into the nearest crate, yanking out one of the axes we'd stripped from the dungeon's dead. The iron edge was nicked and dulled, but still lethal.

"File through Illga's forge," I ordered, handing the weapon off to the nearest recruit. "Get her to put an edge on every one of these axes. What we looted is what you'll use."

The recruits shuffled as more weapons were dragged from the piles. The sergeants already enforcing order and discipline as the moved through the lines, checking and rechecking equipment. Talking to and reassuring the platoon. Its amazing what used to be a hardened raider force was cast down to this after one defeat. Shields were stacked in a rough heap—crude wood and bent iron, but better than bare arms. I pointed at them.

"Front line with shields and spears. Everyone else, axes. No exceptions."

Daran's gravelly bark cut over mine: "Move! Weapons sharp, ranks steady. If it comes to steel, you'll be ready or you'll be corpses."

The recruits surged, energy snapping into motion as they filed weapons through Illga's forge. Sparks hissed, the clang of iron filling the air as she hammered edges back into shape.

I stood in the midst of it, chest tight, listening to the organized chaos. Above it, the only thing missing was the sound of Ferin and Auren—they were already shadows racing the valley, hunting a boy who had no idea what he risked. Preparation for battle sounded in the valley for the first time.

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