Treasure.
Yes, yes.
I can see it on your faces.
You're thinking: But what about the duke's silver?
Is that what's keeping you awake at night?
After soldiers. After arrows. After ideological seduction and barn-adjacent humiliation.
You want to know about the silver.
Fine.
Fine.
Let's talk about the silver.
Duke's silver. The tidy little fortune Ogden so heroically "liberated" before we could take our perfectly reasonable share.
The one he swore he buried "somewhere poetic."
The one he sketched on that charmingly smug little map.
Yes.
We found the cliff.
The skull-shaped one.
You remember. The one that looks less like a skull and more like a badly carved potato unless you squint and are emotionally invested.
Dragon insisted it was unmistakable.
"It has eye sockets," he said.
"It has erosion," I said.
But we found it.
Two hollow pits in the rock face. A jagged mouth split by years of rain. Very theatrical. Very Ogden.
We climbed down under it at dusk.
Dragon dug.
When a dragon digs, it is not delicate.
It is not subtle.
It is excavation by existential grievance.
Earth flew. Roots snapped. Stones cracked.
Finally—
Thud.
Wood.
A chest.
Iron-banded. Mud-caked. Precisely where Ogden's little X said it would be.
I stood there, heart pounding.
"This," I said, "is destiny."
Dragon's eyes gleamed.
"This," he said, "is restitution."
We hauled it out.
It was heavy enough to promise something.
I knelt beside it.
Smiled.
Ran my fingers along the latch.
"Open it," Dragon said.
"I will savor it," I corrected.
I flipped the latch.
Lifted the lid.
Silence.
Just dirt-smell.
And air.
I stared into it.
Empty.
No silver bars. No coin sacks. No velvet-wrapped indulgence.
Just the echo of expectation.
And in the bottom—
A single piece of parchment.
Folded neatly.
I picked it up.
Unfolded it.
Two words.
Ha.
Ha.
I blinked.
Dragon leaned closer.
"…What does it say."
I showed him.
He read it.
Very slowly.
Then:
He did not roar.
He did not breathe fire.
He did something worse.
He went very, very still.
I laughed.
A small sound at first.
Then louder.
Then hysterical.
"Ha Ha," I repeated, holding up the parchment like it might explain itself. "Very good, Ogden. Excellent craftsmanship. Really captures the spirit of redistributive justice."
Dragon's tail twitched once.
The ground trembled slightly.
"Perhaps," he said in a voice that suggested mountains have died quieter deaths, "we miscalculated."
"Oh no," I said, wiping tears from my eyes. "We calculated perfectly. He just calculated better."
I looked back into the empty chest.
All that revolutionary fervor.
All that ideological combustion.
And the one thing that was supposed to remain solid?
Gone.
"Treasure," I said, breaking eye contact with the void and looking straight at you. "This is what you're worried about."
I gestured at the empty box.
"This."
After arrows.
After collars.
After wolves who run and wolves who chain themselves.
You want coin.
Well.
So did we.
And what did we find?
Ha.
Ha.