Kael.
Our first official quest as Nobody's Party paid three silver.
Three silver.
I want to be clear about what that number did to me standing in front of the quest board.
Three silver is thirty copper. Thirty copper is more than my entire first week in Erdvael.
I looked at that number and felt something dangerous.
Hope.
I should know better by now.
The quest was simple.
Farmer outside Breth. Strange activity in his barn. Livestock refusing to enter. Tools moving. Sounds at night.
C-rank investigation.
Three silver.
No fine print.
I checked twice.
"No fine print," I told the others at breakfast.
"There is always fine print," Rael said, sharpening her axe at the table.
SHNK. SHNK.
"Not this time."
"Check again."
"I checked twice."
"Then check a third time," she said calmly. "Because three silver for a barn is either a trap or something is very wrong with that barn."
I checked a third time.
Nothing.
I felt incredible.
The farm was an hour south.
Big barn. Good crops. Healthy fencing. Not the kind of place that screams curse or tragedy.
Doret met us outside.
He shook hands like he was trying to test structural integrity.
"You're Nobody's Party," he said slowly.
"We are," I said confidently.
He looked at us the way a man looks at a roof he is ninety percent sure will collapse but is trying to be optimistic.
"Half payment if you can't clear it."
"Half?" I said.
"Three silver if cleared. One silver fifty if you don't."
"Define cleared."
"No more activity."
That felt like a detail that mattered.
We shook on it anyway.
Hope is loud. Logic is quiet.
The barn was large, dark, and too quiet.
Not peaceful quiet.
Wrong quiet.
We spread out.
Rael rolled her shoulders back after the walk and stretched.
I looked at a very interesting nail in the wall.
"You're staring," Senna said.
"I'm assessing airflow."
"You're looking at Rael's shoulders."
"I'm performing a wide structural scan."
SCRITCH.
She wrote something down.
"Don't write that."
"Done."
"The Vein reading is strange," Senna said.
Her detection spell spread violet across the floor.
Then died.
Like someone erased it.
"Again," she muttered.
Spell. Spread. Dead.
"It's canceling," she said. "Something here is actively suppressing detection."
"So something is in here that does not want to be found," I said.
"Yes."
"That's new."
"That's rare," she corrected.
"Is rare good or bad."
"Bad."
Good. Excellent. Three silver.
The next four hours were humiliating.
We would see a rake move.
Spin. Nothing.
A bucket appear in the middle of the floor.
Turn. Nothing.
Hay shift in the rafters.
Look up. Nothing.
Rael swung her axe at empty air until her arms trembled.
WHOOSH. WHOOSH.
The fourth time she stopped mid-swing and just stood there breathing hard.
I pretended not to notice.
Senna burned through detection spells like she was personally offended by physics.
Every single one collapsed.
She was muttering field theory under her breath.
I tried walking the perimeter with my sword drawn.
Arc affinity sometimes reacts to weird things.
It reacted to nothing.
Then I walked directly into a support post.
Full speed.
Face first.
THUNK.
The post did not move.
I stood there with my forehead against the wood.
"Structural integrity test," I said.
"You walked into it," Rael replied.
"With intention."
"You bounced."
"It was a soft bounce."
Senna closed her book.
"Can I say something," she asked.
"No."
"You have walked into two beams, thrown hay in the wrong direction three times, and you are holding your jacket closed for no functional reason."
"They are unrelated."
"They are not unrelated."
I felt something approaching danger.
"You are being a pervert," she said calmly.
The barn went silent.
Even the wrong quiet changed shape.
"I am NOT—"
"I have been observing for four hours," she said. "There is a pattern."
"I am trying to focus—"
"You are not focusing."
"I—"
She looked me dead in the eye.
"There is something invisible in this barn. I need you present."
That did it.
I shut up.
"You're right," I said.
Rael had turned toward the wall.
Mira was looking at the floor.
I gripped the sword.
Actually looked.
Actually thought.
Another hour.
Nothing.
Then Mira put her sword away.
Sat down in the middle of the barn.
Hands on her knees.
Completely still.
"What are you doing," Rael asked.
Nothing.
We waited.
Thirty seconds. One minute. Two.
From the far corner, hay shifted.
Small. Careful.
Then a fox appeared.
First outline. Then color.
Rust red. Pale eyes.
It sat two meters from Mira.
Another appeared.
Three in the rafters. Two near the door.
Seven total.
Seven void-affinity foxes watching us like we had just completed the dumbest performance they'd seen all week.
One in the rafters yawned.
Then curled up and went to sleep.
"Void-affinity foxes," Senna breathed. "They're real. Nested behavior. Field suppression. This is—"
"Senna."
She looked.
Behind a hay bale.
A wooden bowl.
Worn smooth.
Her pen stopped.
"Oh," she said.
The smallest fox walked to the bowl, sniffed it, looked at us with profound disappointment, and returned to its corner.
"Someone's been feeding them," Rael said.
"Long enough for them to settle," I added.
"Long enough to make this their barn," Mira said.
We all looked at the farmhouse.
And the math changed.
Doret listened without interrupting.
"Not haunted," I said. "Void foxes. Seven. Nested."
Silence.
"That'd be my daughter," he said eventually.
"How old."
"Eight."
We all thought about that quietly.
"Are they dangerous?" he asked.
"No," Mira said. "Just foxes."
He stared at the barn.
Then handed us one silver fifty.
Not angry. Not grateful. Just tired.
On the road back, Rael walked in silence.
Then—
"I hit a fox."
"You did."
"With my axe."
"Yes."
"Six years of training," she said.
"The fox was fine," Mira said.
"I KNOW THE FOX WAS FINE," Rael snapped. "THAT IS NOT THE POINT."
"What is the point."
"I hit a fox."
She walked a few more steps.
"I hit a fox," she repeated, softer.
No one had a useful response.
"You sat down and they appeared in two minutes," I said to Mira.
"Yes."
"We were in there four hours."
"Yes."
"You could have done that immediately."
"Yes."
I stopped walking.
"Mira."
"You all seemed like you needed to try first," she said.
"We did not need to try for FOUR HOURS."
"You did," she said simply.
That was worse.
That night at dinner, Senna cried.
Not loudly. Just steady.
"Void resonance side effect," she said.
"That's not real," Rael said.
"It is," Senna insisted.
"It's not," Mira said.
"They were very small," Senna whispered.
Rael stared at the table.
"I hit a fox," she said again.
The one silver fifty sat in the middle of the table.
I looked at the coin.
"We're getting better," I said.
Silence.
"We found them."
"Mira found them," Rael said.
"We were there."
"That's not the same."
No one argued.
Mira quietly tore off a piece of bread and put it on Senna's plate.
Nobody's Party.
One silver fifty.
Yeah.
It fit.
Far above, warm light.
She had laughed earlier.
At the post. At "you are being a pervert."
Now she watched in silence.
Rael not over hitting a fox. Senna quietly crying. Mira fixing what no one else could. Kael staring at the coin.
The smile stayed.
But softened.
Just a little.
She stayed longer than she needed to.
The stream was still good.
She told herself that was why.
She almost believed it.