The coastroad out of Greyhaven started honest—packed dirt, mile markers, the occasional Civic ward-stone humming faintly under moss. By noon it turned into something older and rougher, a long scar of rutted track that ran between wind-bent pines and low, stony hills.
Salt found Ronan even this far inland. It rode on the breeze like a promise, sharp and clean compared to the city's smoke.
The hired carriage creaked with every bump. Ronan sat inside with his bag between his boots, one hand resting on the strap like an old habit he couldn't shake. Tessa's charm hung under his shirt, warm against his chest whenever the carriage rocked.
Outside, escorts rode in a loose formation.
Not guild guards—adventurers, hired for the road because the March didn't care about paperwork. Four of them: two up front, one off to the left scouting, and one on the right watching the tree line like it owed her money.
The right-side rider was a woman with a short spear strapped to her back and an expression that said she'd already decided the world was trying to kill her and she'd take it personally. Her hair was tied up in a high knot, loose strands snapping in the wind.
She glanced at Ronan when the carriage curtain shifted.
"You," she called, voice carrying over the wheel rattle. "You're the client?"
Ronan leaned out slightly. "Depends who's asking."
She snorted. "Lysa. That means I'm your problem until Gullwatch. You got a name?"
"Ronan."
Lysa's eyes narrowed a fraction, taking him in. Too calm. Too still. A man who didn't fidget on a dangerous road. "Ronan what?"
"Kerr," he said after a beat.
Something flickered. Recognition? Maybe. Greyhaven liked its rumors.
Lysa didn't comment. "You carrying anything worth dying for?"
Ronan's mouth twitched. "Just clothes and bad decisions."
"That's honest," she said, and spurred her horse forward.
The lead pair were a man with a heavy crossbow slung across his saddle—broad, scarred, quiet—and another woman riding with twin short swords, her laugh too bright for someone with that many notches on her gear. The scout on the left disappeared and reappeared between trees like a shadow with a bow.
They moved well. Not elite, but seasoned. Enough to make most bandits rethink their career choices.
The first sign of danger came as a smell.
Rot.
Not dead-animal rot. Dungeon rot—wet stone and old blood and something sour like spoiled seaweed. Ronan's head lifted slightly, senses catching before his thoughts did.
Lysa noticed instantly. Her hand went up, two fingers flicking.
The formation tightened.
The scout reappeared, cantering in close. "Tracks," she said, voice low. "Not boots. Claw marks. Fresh."
"Where?" the crossbowman asked.
"Ahead," the scout replied, pointing to a dip in the road where brush grew thick and the ground turned darker. "Down by the culvert."
Lysa's gaze cut to Ronan through the carriage curtain. "Stay inside."
Ronan didn't argue. He just shifted his hand to his sword belt—still wearing it, still refusing to pretend he was harmless.
The dip in the road swallowed them into shadow for a heartbeat.
Then something moved in the brush.
A low, wet hiss.
The air changed—heavier, damp, wrong.
Three shapes burst out.
They weren't wolves. Not quite. Their bodies were too long, too low, skin slick like it had been dipped in brine, eyes reflecting lantern-light even in daylight. Reefhounds. March-spawned things that crawled up from coastal gates when the sea decided to spit out teeth.
The lead reefhound lunged straight for the horse pulling the carriage.
Lysa moved like she'd been waiting her whole life for this moment. She yanked her spear free and drove it forward in a hard thrust that caught the creature in the shoulder and redirected its momentum away from the horse's throat.
The beast hit the road, skidding, claws carving grooves in dirt.
The twin-sword woman laughed—high and sharp—and leapt from her saddle, blades flashing. She took a reefhound's foreleg clean off, then stepped in and opened its belly with a second slice. Dark fluid spilled, stinking of salt and bile.
The crossbowman fired without a word. The bolt punched through a reefhound's skull and pinned it to a tree trunk like a grotesque trophy.
The third reefhound—smarter or luckier—circled wide and went for the scout.
She ducked under its snapping jaws and rolled, came up with an arrow already nocked, and shot it point-blank into the creature's eye.
It went down twitching.
The whole attack lasted maybe ten seconds.
Breathing returned to the road in a rush, like the world remembered it was allowed.
Lysa planted her spear butt in the dirt and spat. "Reefhounds this far up the road. Great."
The twin-sword woman wiped a blade on the creature's hide like she was cleaning fish. "At least they're easy."
"Easy until one gets under a cart and takes your ankle," the scout muttered.
The crossbowman reloaded calmly, then glanced at the carriage. "You alive in there?"
Ronan leaned out. "Still breathing."
Lysa stepped closer, eyes narrowed. "You smelled it early."
Ronan shrugged. "Lucky guess."
"Uh-huh," Lysa said, not convinced for a second. "Stay inside anyway."
They dragged the carcasses off the road and moved on.
An hour later, the world turned bright again—open scrubland sloping toward distant cliffs where the sea glimmered like hammered steel. The wind picked up, tasting stronger of salt now. Seabirds wheeled overhead, their cries sharp and lonely.
The road narrowed.
And narrowed roads always meant one thing: someone had chosen a good spot to be cruel.
Ronan saw it in the terrain first—two boulders near the edge, a crooked pine leaning in, a bend that forced wagons to slow. He felt the tightness in the escort's posture too. Lysa's hand hovered closer to her spear. The crossbowman's gaze sharpened. The scout drifted ahead, silent as a threat.
The ambush sprung anyway.
A log rolled into the road with a dull thud, blocking the carriage path. Two men stepped out from behind the rocks with swords and mismatched armor—bandits, but not desperate farmers. Their gear had seen fights. Their eyes were hungry.
More movement in the brush. Four—no, five.
The twin-sword woman clicked her tongue. "Really? Five?"
A voice called from the rocks, smug. "Drop your coin and ride away. Leave the carriage."
Lysa's smile was thin and nasty. "You picked the wrong day."
The bandits surged forward.
The escorts met them like a wall.
The crossbowman fired first—bolt through a man's thigh, pinning him mid-run. The man screamed and fell.
The twin-sword woman danced in, blades flashing. She disarmed one attacker with a twist, then slammed her pommel into his jaw and sent him sprawling. Her laughter turned colder. "Bad form," she scolded, like this was a lesson.
Lysa took the leader head-on. She didn't kill him immediately. She hooked his sword arm with the shaft, yanked him off balance, then drove the spear's blunt end into his ribs hard enough to crack something. He wheezed, eyes wide.
The remaining bandits hesitated.
The scout—still ahead—appeared behind them like a whisper and put an arrow into one man's shoulder. He spun, panicked, and ran.
The last bandit tried to rush the carriage.
Ronan moved before the escorts could.
He didn't jump out. He didn't charge. He simply stepped down from the carriage with quiet, practiced economy, and his sword cleared its sheath with a soft sound.
The bandit saw him—saw a man who moved like a veteran—and faltered.
Ronan didn't give him time to rethink.
One step. A short, precise strike to the wrist—steel kissing bone. The bandit's sword dropped. Ronan's second motion was a shove with his shoulder that sent the man into the dirt, winded and terrified.
Ronan planted the tip of his sword beside the bandit's cheek. Not cutting. Just close enough to make the message clear.
"Walk away," Ronan said, voice calm. "Now."
The bandit's eyes flicked up—rage, fear, calculation. Then he swallowed and nodded quickly, scrambling back like a kicked dog.
Ronan lifted his blade and sheathed it. The whole thing was over before the road could even echo.
Lysa stared at him.
The twin-sword woman stared too, grin gone.
The crossbowman's mouth twitched slightly—respect, maybe.
Ronan climbed back into the carriage without a word, as if he'd only stepped out to stretch his legs.
The carriage rolled forward again once the log was hauled aside.
For a few minutes, nobody spoke.
Then the twin-sword woman rode alongside the window, eyes bright with curiosity. "So," she said lightly, "you're not a helpless merchant."
Ronan kept his gaze forward. "Never said I was."
"What are you, then?" she pressed. "You moved like a captain."
Lysa snorted from the other side. "He's going to pretend he's a nobody."
Ronan sighed. "Does it matter?"
"It matters if you're going to get us into bigger trouble," Lysa said. "Big trouble follows capable men like flies follow meat."
Ronan didn't deny it. He shifted the conversation instead—because that was easier than letting the past crawl up.
"You've been to Gullwatch?" he asked.
Lysa made a face. "Once."
"What's it like?"
"Frontier," she said bluntly. "Bare minimum. A few palisades, a watch post, fisher huts, and a dock that complains every time the sea breathes on it."
The twin-sword woman leaned closer, delighted to gossip now that blades weren't swinging. "It's not awful," she said. "Not prosperous, but not dead. People still laugh there. Just… quietly."
Ronan's eyes narrowed. "Facilities?"
The scout answered, voice drifting in from ahead without turning. "Healer's hut. One blacksmith if you can call a man who repairs hooks a blacksmith. Civic shrine with a priest who's always tired."
"And an inn?" Ronan asked.
The twin-sword woman snorted. "An inn," she repeated, like the concept was a myth. "There's only one worth calling a roof."
Lysa glanced back at the carriage window. "The locals call it the Winking Widow."
Ronan's pulse ticked. He kept his tone neutral. "Winking Widow?"
The twin-sword woman grinned. "Not the official name. The sign says something else—Soggy Gull, Grey Gull, whatever. Everyone calls it Winking Widow because of the owner."
Ronan didn't ask why. He already knew the outline: widow, debt, frontier, loneliness sharpened by survival. Tessa's words echoed.
"The owner's kind," the twin-sword woman said, and for a moment her tone softened. "She tries. Gives extra soup to kids, patches travelers' clothes if she has thread. But the food…" She winced. "Look. It's not poison. It's just… not much different from camping outside. Only better because there's a roof. And walls. And you don't wake up with salt in your teeth."
"So why stay?" Ronan asked.
"Because storms," Lysa said simply. "And because the road is meaner than a bad stew."
The carriage rattled on.
The land changed again as the afternoon faded. The road dipped toward the coast, and the sea finally appeared in full—wide and grey-blue under a sky smeared with clouds. Gullwatch came into view as a cluster of low buildings huddled against the wind, smoke rising in thin lines from chimneys that looked too small for the job.
A palisade ringed part of it—not tall, not strong, but enough to make raiders think twice. Boats bobbed at a rough dock. Nets hung like tired flags. Gulls screamed overhead, bold as thieves.
The carriage passed through the village gate—two bored guards straightening just enough to look official, then waving them through after seeing the escort sigils.
Ronan leaned forward, pushing the curtain aside.
Gullwatch wasn't quite poor in the way starving places were poor. It had movement. People. Work. But it wasn't prosperous either. Everything looked like it had been built fast, patched often, and never given the luxury of being pretty.
Fishermen hauled crates with cracked hands. A woman in a thick apron shouted at children to stop chasing gulls. A smith's hammer rang faintly from a shed that smelled of salt and hot iron. Somewhere, a bell chimed once—Civic shrine time, or maybe just someone warning the sea they were still here.
The air tasted different here. Cleaner, but harsher. Wind cut through cloth like it wanted to reach skin.
Ronan's chest tightened—not with fear. With recognition.
Frontier places always felt like this: half-built, half-held, always one bad week away from collapsing and one good season away from becoming something real.
The carriage slowed near the village center.
Lysa rode up alongside the window and jerked her chin toward the crooked main lane. "That way," she said. "Inn's near the docks."
Ronan nodded once, eyes scanning rooftops, alleys, the way people moved. He saw tiredness. He saw stubbornness. He saw a village braced against the sea like a man against a punch.
He also saw gaps—places monsters and bandits could slip through if no one watched.
His new blessing—Innkeeper—sat in his bones like a quiet drumbeat.
Hold, it seemed to whisper.
Hold.
Ronan breathed in salt air and let it fill his lungs.
Then he stepped out of the carriage into Gullwatch's wind, and the village looked back at him like it wasn't sure if he was help—or just another kind of trouble.