No More Quests
Chapter 1 – The Third Tavern Rule
The caravan smelled like burnt mana coils and yesterday's stew.
Kael noticed it first every morning, that sour metallic tang that said the auxiliary rune had overheated again during the night. He never fixed it right away. Fixing things properly felt too much like committing to the day, and he wasn't ready for that level of enthusiasm yet.
He pushed the canvas flap aside and stepped out into fog so thick it looked personally offended at the concept of sunrise.
Somewhere in the gray, the town of Harrowford was waking up. A steam whistle hooted twice—morning shift at the crystal refinery. Normal people going to normal jobs. Kael hated how jealous it made him feel.
Inside, Mira was already up, counting coppers on the fold-out table like they owed her money.
"Fourteen silvers and a bent nail," she muttered without looking up. "We're officially too broke to be this picky about quests."
"No quests," Kael said automatically. It was practically a greeting at this point.
She flicked the nail. It spun, landed heads. "Yeah, yeah. Rule one."
Torin groaned from his hammock slung between two support beams. "Can we add a rule about mornings? Like... no talking before coffee?"
"You already have coffee," Lira pointed out from the driver's bench. She had her lute across her lap and was tuning it with the enthusiasm of someone defusing a bomb.
"It's just cold and tastes like regret."
"That's the point."
Jax said nothing. He never did before noon. He just sat on the back step, massive shoulders filling the doorway, sharpening a knife that hadn't seen combat in three years. The scrape-scrape was the only steady rhythm in their mornings.
They'd been parked outside Harrowford for two days now. The plan had been simple: sell the surplus mana crystals they'd "found" (read: taken off a drunk element-weaver), buy supplies, leave before anyone noticed the weird burn marks on the caravan roof that looked suspiciously like a griffon had tried to land there once.
Plans, in their experience, attracted attention.
A shadow flickered past the window. Black wings. Raven.
Kael's stomach dropped the way it used to when he spotted a dark lord's banner on the horizon.
Mira saw it too. Her hand froze over the coins.
"Don't."
"I know."
"Don't even look at it."
The bird landed on the caravan's tongue with a self-important ruffle. It carried a scroll tied to its leg. The wax seal glowed faintly purple—oracle-grade, the expensive shit.
Torin sat up so fast he nearly flipped the hammock. "That's the third one this month."
"Fourth," Lira corrected quietly. "You were drunk for the second."
The raven cocked its head and croaked something that sounded suspiciously like "chosen."
Jax stood. Slowly. The bird took one look at him and decided aerial retreat was the better part of valor. It flapped off into the fog, scroll still attached.
Silence settled, thick as the mist.
Mira exhaled through her nose.
"We could just burn it next time."
"We could," Kael said.
Nobody moved to chase the bird.
After a while Torin climbed down, stretched, and started tinkering with the kettle. It hissed, sparked, then spat out lukewarm tea that smelled faintly of wet parchment.
"Still works," he said, like that was a victory.
Kael took the tin cup. The metal was dented from the time Mira had used it to fend off an enthusiastic bard. He drank anyway.
Outside, Harrowford kept existing. People walked to work. Lanterns flickered on. Somewhere a child laughed.
For once, nothing exploded. No prophecy tackled them. No ancient evil whispered their names in the wind.
It felt wrong.
But mostly it felt... quiet.
And quiet, they'd learned, was the hardest thing to run from.