I woke without an alarm for the first time in… my brain tried to calculate and gave up.

  Light already pushed through the shutters. No pager vibrating on my hip. No nurse at the door with, “Dr Easton, they’re crashing in three.” Just the soft ache of ribs and the stupid luxury of a second pillow.

  I stretched until pain bit under my sternum.

  “Fine, fine, I’m up,” I grunted at the ceiling.

  Washing involved a jug, a basin, and not thinking too hard about how much I missed hot running water. I splashed my face, scrubbed sleep grit from my eyes, ran wet fingers through my hair until it decided on some approximation of order. The clothes Elspeth had lent me still smelled faintly of woodsmoke and yeast. They hung looser today. Either swelling had gone down or I was finally losing the adrenaline bloat.

  The noise of voices drifted up the stairwell—low, familiar. Something savory rode with it, eggs and… onions?

  I followed the smell.

  “There she is, the village hero."

  Elspeth stood at the hearth, flour on her forearm, hair pinned up in a knot that leaned more to one side than the other. A pan hissed over the fire. At the table, Mara hunched over a mug, a basket at her feet.

  “Careful,” Mara tapped the bench beside her with one knuckle. “That’s how they catch you. First they let you sleep, then they make you lift something heavy.”

  “Tragic,” I dropped onto the bench, ribs complaining, “rescued from monsters only to die doing farm chores.”

  Elspeth slid a plate in front of me. Fried eggs with frayed edges, thick slices of bread, something that might have been stewed apples.

  “You missed the first round,” she nudged the plate closer. “Figured you’d earned the second.”

  My stomach made a choice for me. I picked up the bread.

  “What brings you by this early?” I glanced at Mara’s basket.

  She crooked one foot, hooked the basket closer, and flipped back the cloth. Pale bars, neatly cut, filled it. They carried a clean, sharp scent that shoved aside the inn’s usual stew-and-ale background.

  “Your beast gives us meat, your resin makes our fence stand.” Mara nudged the basket my way. “Seemed fair to make the village smell less like a goat’s backside in return.”

  Elspeth snorted.

  “She’s been up all night over that cauldron,” Elspeth pointed with her chin. “Grumbled the whole time, too.”

  “The lye came out right in the end.” Mara lifted one bar, turned it in her fingers with something close to pride. “Boar fat takes well to it. Better than sheep. Less scum. Here.”

  She set the bar next to my plate. Faint swirls marbled the surface, not pretty exactly, but deliberate.

  “I was just thinking yesterday that your old soap smelled like despair,” I picked it up. It didn’t leave a film on my fingers. “Upgrade unlocked.”

  “Try it on your next wash,” she sipped from her mug. “If your skin peels off, we’ll know I misjudged the ash.”

  “That’s very comforting.”

  Elspeth wiped her hands on her apron, then seemed to remember something. Her face brightened; she bustled to the far corner and dragged out a bundle I hadn’t noticed, wrapped in checked cloth.

  “I near forgot,” she dropped it on the table in front of me. “This is for you.”

  I eyed the bundle.

  “If this explodes into more grumbleboars, I’m moving out.”

  “Open it.”

  The cloth unfolded under my fingers. First layer: a dress, soft-worn, the blue faded but not patchy. Someone had let out the seams and then taken them in again, careful stitches on the inside where no one would see.

  I traced the hem before I realized I was doing it.

  “Elspeth, I can’t—”

  “You can. Hesta from up the lane did the stitching. She near hopped through my door when she heard you were shorter than her niece.” Elspeth’s mouth fought a smile and lost. “She wanted to do something useful.”

  Mara’s eyes stayed on her mug, but her shoulders had gone still, listening.

  There was more. A wrapped parcel tucked in the dress’s folds—when I opened it, the smell hit first: butter, sugar, spice. Little rounds of biscuit, rough-cut, studded with what looked like candied peel.

  “That’d be from Old Bran’s granddaughters,” Elspeth leaned on the back of the chair opposite. “They used half their week’s honey for that batch. Told me not to tell you in case you felt obliged to eat it all at once.”

  My laugh came out thin.

  “At least they understand my core values.”

  “And these,” she bent to fish under the bench and came up with a pair of boots. Good leather, freshly oiled, soles thick enough to ignore most stones. Slight scuffing on the toes; the tongues had been re-stitched by someone who knew what they were doing.

  “Kael found them in his back room. An adventurer left them seasons ago and never came back for them. He near twisted my arm off pressing them on me.” Her gaze flicked up to mine. “On us.”

  The boots weren’t anything special. No glow, no tooltip hovering, no +Agility in tiny text. Just solid, well-made gear from people who would never see a raid, never care about loot tiers.

  My fingers tightened around the cloth. For a second my throat did that pre-sob constriction thing I usually only saw from families outside ICU rooms.

  “I thought… I mean, you already gave me a room, food, hot water that one time,” I managed. “You don’t have to keep throwing loot at me.”

  Elspeth frowned, confused.

  “No one’s throwing anything. They’re just… grateful,” she shrugged. “You fixed the fence, you saved our boys. People like to put their hands to something when they can’t swing a hammer as hard as Kael.”

  Mara finally looked up, eyes sharp.

  “Not everything’s a bargain, girl. Sometimes folk give because they can’t bear feeling useless. Let them have that.”

  I cleared my throat, pushed the lump down where it belonged and reached for the boots like they were the interesting thing here.

  “So,” I knocked one heel against the table leg, “who’d these belong to? Adventurer lose them in a tragic broom?closet accident or what?”

  Elspeth’s mouth twitched.

  “He was no broom?closet hero. Called himself Toren of the Westway. Had a way of leaning on the bar like the whole inn belonged to him.”

  “Tall, loud, smelled like steel oil and cheap perfume,” Mara added without looking up. “Thought every girl under forty wanted to hear about his scars.”

  “Please tell me someone corrected him on that,” I tore off a corner of bread.

  “I did,” Mara sipped. “Charged him double for a salve. He still bought it.”

  I grinned, let the banter cover the heat behind my eyes.

  “You get many like him before?” My voice came out lighter than it felt. “You know. Swords, attitude, dramatic cloaks. People passing through to farm your local wildlife for experience and rare drops.”

  Elspeth and Mara traded a look over my head. Quick, but not quick enough to miss.

  “We used to,” Elspeth rested her wrists on the chair back. “In the old days you’d hardly have a quiet week. Pairs, little bands. Some passed on to the marshes, some to the old ruins past the hills. Some came back with purses heavy enough to bend my floorboards.”

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Mara’s gaze went to the window, the lane beyond.

  “They hunted our wolves without being asked. Cleared the worst of the boars from the south fields. Helped when the river jumped its banks. Always for a price, mind, but they were there. Then one year there were fewer. Then fewer again. Then… none.”

  “How long has ‘none’ been?” I dragged the egg through a smear of yolk and tried to sound like a disinterested tourist.

  “Elric’s boy was still small,” Elspeth glanced toward the ceiling where Finn snored on most nights. “Couldn’t see over this table. So… eight years? Nine? Mayor Brody wrote to Brookhaven, then to the city. Asked for patrols on the road, a pair of guards at least. Always the same answer. ‘Resources stretched. Trouble nearer the capital. Hold tight.’”

  “‘Hold tight,’” Mara snorted. “Easy to say from a stone house behind walls three men high.”

  Elspeth’s jaw worked.

  “We managed. We still do.”

  “You do,” Mara corrected. “But you leaned on outsiders so long you forgot some things. Men stopped setting snares because some shining fool would clear the foxes while they slept. Old Joram let his knowledge of traps go to dust because he could trade perches to a bow?woman instead. The lads on the road stopped learning how to read tracks because, ‘Oh, a hero will come by if there’s real trouble.’”

  She huffed, the sound sharp as a cough.

  “This is what happens when you start relying on other people instead of yourself. When they leave, you’re left with soft hands and hungry bellies.”

  “That’s… a little harsh,” I picked up one of the biscuits so I wouldn’t clench my fists. “Pretty sure you don’t want Finn’s hands any rougher than they already are.”

  “I want him alive,” she shot back. “Alive and not watching his mother look to the lane every time the pigs grunt too loud, hoping some stranger in polished metal walks up it.”

  Elspeth flinched, just a little.

  “Mara.”

  “No. You asked.” Mara’s gaze hooked me now. “You want the nice story, you go to Brody, he’ll tell you we’re blessed you fell out of the sky. You want the truth, it’s this: we got used to help we didn’t earn. And now the woods remember we’re small.”

  I set the biscuit down, palms greasy.

  “Okay, but the heroes didn’t exactly form a union and sign a contract with you.” My ribs pulled when I leaned forward. “They drifted in, they drifted out. That’s on them.”

  “No,” Elspeth shook her head. “She’s right, some. We let it happen. Was easier to throw coin at a passing blade than teach every child how to string a bow. Faster to ask an adventurer to haul medicine from the city than walk two days each way ourselves.”

  “You walked,” Mara muttered.

  “Aye, I walked.” Elspeth’s eyes softened at her. “And I got older. And then Finn came. And my legs don’t love the road the way they did.”

  The room felt smaller for a heartbeat. Hearth crackle, clink of crockery from the kitchen, distant shout from the green. Normal sounds.

  “So what changed?” I nudged the boot with my toe. “Adventurers don’t just… vanish. Word get around that Oakhaven’s loot table is trash?”

  Blank looks.

  “Sorry. I mean—did the roads get worse? Bandits? Some lord started charging extra tax on anyone with a shiny sword?”

  “Roads always had thieves,” Mara waved that off. “Some years heavier than others. No new lord, no decree.”

  “There was talk,” Elspeth frowned, searching memory. “Traders said the big guilds were called east. Fighting in the Border Marches. Strange lights in the sky, they said. Rifts opening. Some nonsense about the gods stirring. Maybe that pulled them.”

  Border Marches. Raid zones, high?level events, late?game. Content that made my old paladin feel like an undergeared intern.

  “If the work’s better there, they go there,” Mara shrugged. “I don’t blame them. I blame us for acting like they’d always come back.”

  Her gaze flicked over the boots, the dress, the parcel of biscuits, then up to me.

  “And now we have you. Another stranger to lean on. Lucky us.”

  The words weren’t soft, but her hand nudged the soap bar closer to my plate, just enough that my fingers brushed hers when I took it.

  I left the last of the biscuits on the plate and climbed back upstairs.

  The dress Elspeth had given me was not my size, but near enough. I eased out of the tunic, every pulled bandage a small betrayal, then worked the dress over my head. The cloth brushed my bruises like cool hands. The new boots waited under the bed, leather still stiff, toes blunt and sturdy.

  I laced them slow, feeling like Peasant No. 4, Background Villager.

  Downstairs, Elspeth lifted a hand without looking up from her ledger. I stepped into the square.

  Sunlight hit my face. The air smelled of smoke and wet earth where they’d patched fence posts. I’d taken three steps toward the chapel’s crooked spire when Finn barreled across the green, hair wild.

  “Emily! Emily!”

  He skidded to a stop, chest heaving.

  “Your bird’s gone. He’s not in the paddock.”

  “He does that.” I kept my voice light. “Hunting trip. He’ll wander back when he’s full.”

  Finn squinted at the empty sky.

  “He didn’t even squawk goodbye.”

  “That’s just how he is.” My smile held. My stomach didn’t. “Trust me, Finn. Beakly always comes back.”

  I turned toward the chapel, boots thudding over packed dirt, and counted my breaths while the space at my back felt too wide.

  The Sunstone Chapel rose at the far edge of the green, half wrapped in ivy, half wrapped in light.

  Up close, the stone blocks looked rough as old knuckles, but veins of something golden ran through them, catching the morning sun and throwing it back in soft, honeyed streaks. The door stood open, warped and thick, its hinges worn shiny with use.

  I stepped inside and forgot how to breathe for a second.

  The air changed. Cooler, but not cold. Dust motes drifted in solid shafts of light from high, narrow windows set with colored glass. Not the garish, over-saturated panes from the game loading screens—these held soft blues and ambers, slices of green like river weed, worked into simple shapes: a sheaf of grain, a hand cupped around a flame, a tower on a hill.

  A single stone at the far end drew everything around it. The “sunstone,” I guessed. Bigger than a person, set upright behind a plain altar table. The thing glowed under the light as if it held its own ember, not bright, more like coals under ash. Heat pressed against my face, faint but steady.

  Benches lined the nave in two crooked rows. They didn’t match. One had a carved edge with flowers; another looked like Kael had knocked it together in an afternoon with scrap planks. All scarred, all used. Someone had left a half-woven wreath on the front bench, sprigs of dried lavender stuck through it.

  I moved down the center aisle, boots tapping, ribs giving their usual muted protest. My gaze kept dragging back to the stone.

  “You’re gaping, child.”

  The voice came from somewhere to the left.

  Sister Myriam knelt by a side table, sorting through a basket of tallow candles. Robes hitched up to her knees, showing birdlike shins and sturdy boots dusted with wax flakes. Her silver hair twisted in a knot, held with what looked suspiciously like a whittled spoon handle.

  I closed my mouth.

  “Occupational hazard,” I walked closer. “I like…architecture.”

  She flicked me a glance, eyes bright, then returned to her candles.

  “No. You like how things fit together. Different affliction.”

  “Guilty.” I stopped a few paces away. “I’m here for that, actually. The…fitting together part.”

  She straightened with a small grunt, brushed crumbs of wax from her hands, and planted them on her hips.

  “Are you hurt again?”

  “Still hurt. Not the problem.” I hesitated, words jamming. “I want to learn about the gods. Properly. I don’t…know anything.”

  Her mouth quirked.

  “Nothing?”

  I lifted a shoulder.

  “In my world, we didn’t have gods that answered back. Here, I get…” I gestured vaguely upward. “Connection error. So. Remedial divine education?”

  A laugh burst out of her, quick and delighted. The sound bounced against the stone.

  “Remedial. Oh, Sun above, you are going to trouble me.”

  She wiped at one eye with her thumb, amusement still sparking around the corners.

  “There is a great deal to learn. Too much for one morning. If I poured the whole cistern on your head, you’d drown and I’d have to pretend it was an accident.”

  “Slow, then,” I leaned against the nearest bench, easing some weight off my back. “Drip irrigation.”

  “Good.” She nodded once. “We go slow.”

  Myriam crossed to the front and touched the edge of the altar with a familiarity that looked like habit, not reverence. Then she turned and leaned against it, facing me.

  “There are those who built the bones of the world,” she started. “Not just the land and sky. The rules underneath. The way time moves, how fire eats and water soothes, how souls cling to flesh and how they come loose.”

  “Physics.” My brain grabbed the nearest peg. “Cosmology. Operating system.”

  Her brows rose.

  “Operating…yes. A grand loom, perhaps, with many wheels, and those ones wove it. They spun the first threads, fixed the pattern so the cloth did not tear the moment it left their hands.”

  “So, creator gods.” I watched the dust move in the beam between us. “But I never heard anyone talk about them in Oakhaven.”

  “Have you heard anyone in your village praise the man who laid the first stone of the road two hundred years ago?” Her voice stayed mild. “You bless the one who patches the hole today.”

  I snorted.

  “Fair.”

  “They stepped back, those first shapers,” she went on. “Their work is too large to bend down to every broken toe, every hungry belly. If they answered every cry, the cloth would snarl, the pattern twist. The world holds because they do not tug at every loose thread.”

  “Detached gods,” I murmured. “Non-intervention policy.”

  “Framework,” she corrected. “If you prefer your strange words, they wrote the…rules, then set them to run.”

  “And the others?” I shifted, ribs flaring, then settled. “Because people here do get answered.”

  “Oh, yes.” A fond smile creased her face. “There are those who tend what was built. They do not change the bones, they mind the blood and breath. Rain on the right day. A spark that takes in a cold hearth. A thought in a stubborn head that turns toward mercy instead of spite.”

  “Middle management.”

  That pulled another laugh from her.

  “You insist on these ladders of yours.”

  “You’re describing a chain of command.”

  “Very well. There are those close enough to hear us knock on the door. They do not hold the whole sky. They hold a valley, a river, a craft, a promise. They take oaths. They make bargains. They accept offerings, not because they are hungry, but because people need to give something when they ask.”

  Images lined up in my mind: raid bosses with themed loot tables, faction shrines, the pantheon menu on the old character sheet. It felt similar and completely not.

  “So the first group built the engine,” I rubbed my thumb along the back of the bench, feeling the grain. “The second group runs maintenance. Local patches, bug fixes, feature updates.”

  Myriam watched me, expression somewhere between patient and amused.

  “If you like. The high ones breathe once, and a mountain range rises. The nearer ones lean down and show an old woman which root eases her neighbor's pain. Both are divine. One you notice more often.”

  “And the prayers go to…which?”

  “That depends on what you ask.” Her gaze flicked up to the sunstone, then back. “And on who you are.”

  My chest tightened around something that wasn’t just cracked cartilage.

  “My…class is paladin,” I forced out. “I was supposed to have a line to someone. Instead I get static. Which category handles…people like me?”

  Her eyes sharpened, curiosity slipping under the softness.

  “We will come to that,” she promised. “After you learn to walk in this house without tripping over your own feet.”

  “I’m very good at tripping over things.”

  “That, I have already observed.” Her lips twitched. “For now, remember this: some look after the shape of everything. Some look after the hearts inside it. Both are gods. You happen to live where the second kind pays the most attention.”

  “Because we’re loud?”

  “Because you’re small,” she answered. “And small things need many hands.”