Novel Full Chapter 183: Four Months
Chapter 183: Four Months
An old man named Vask asked if Rohan could carry replacement lens brackets to the wall.
A healer named Iri asked if his ash sense could detect contamination in a batch of salve powder. It could not, but he tried, and she appreciated the honesty more than a fake answer.
Pell asked him to show how the spear worked.
Rohan said no.
Pell asked again the next day.
Rohan said no again.
On the fifth day, Rohan gave him a broom handle and taught him footwork in the ash-house yard, under the stern supervision of Pell’s mother, who watched as if Rohan might accidentally teach the child how to explode.
Liora watched too, leaning against a wall.
"You’re terrible with children," she said.
"I’m barely an adult myself, and an only child at that. It’s not like experience dealing with kids will magically appear from nothing!?."
"You told him his stance was embarrassing."
"So? It was."
"He is twelve."
"When I was twelve, I suffered far more embarrassing things."
Pell, sweating and determined, adjusted his feet.
"Was that better?"
Rohan studied him.
"Less embarrassing."
The boy grinned as if he had been praised.
Liora shook her head.
"You are going to create problems."
"Probably."
The problems were mild.
Mostly, more children wanted broom handles.
Maerin banned unsupervised spear lessons after Pell tried to demonstrate a thrust near a drying rack and skewered three fungus cakes.
No one mourned the cakes.
By the third month, Rohan had learned the shape of the passage problem in more detail.
The merchant ship was called the Gilded Heron, which Rohan found offensively pleasant for a vessel profiting from misery. It came every two years, orbiting for twelve days while shuttles descended to the flats east of Veyrhold. The merchants traded medicine, parts, refined metals, filtration membranes, salt cultures, fabric, tools, and rare luxuries like sugar, colour dye, and off-world fruit preserved in glass.
In return, they purchased everything Veyrhold risked lives to gather.
Ashglass, used in heat-resistant lenses.
Storm-silver, valuable in energy conduction.
Skarn cores, which apparently had applications in some kind of furnace array.
Furnace salts, deep blackstone, cinderback stomach stones, fever ash samples, and other things
Rohan was certain sounded less horrifying in merchant catalogues.
Veyrhold received trade marks.
The marks could only be redeemed with the Gilded Heron.
Rohan had laughed when he first understood that part.
Then he realised no one else found it funny.
The merchants did not pay in universal currency unless forced. They paid in ship-credit, debt tokens, and barter tallies, all controlled through their own ledgers. Passage off-world required full payment in recognised external value, not local trade marks, unless the captain agreed to convert them.
The captain rarely agreed.
When he did, the conversion rate was robbery wearing polished boots.
The official price for passage was already absurd.
The real price was worse.
A berth required a passage bond, medical clearance, release from local debt, captain approval, and what the merchants called "relocation viability." That last condition meant whatever they needed it to mean.
Too young? No.
Too old? No.
Too skilled? Veyrhold needs you.
Too injured? Liability.
Too poor? Obviously no.
Too many from one family? Social destabilisation.
Too many from Veyrhold in one voyage? Trade disruption concerns.
Rohan sat with Maerin, Liora, and Bryan in the watch hall one evening as Bryan explained this in a voice like old gravel. The man had survived, though his left arm would never fully straighten again.
He had once worked trade tallies during the last merchant visit and knew more than most about the Gilded Heron’s habits.
"They don’t say no outright if they can avoid it," Bryan said. "They delay. Request records. Question debts. Demand health checks. Ask for additional bond. By the time the twelve days pass, the shuttle doors close and they promise next cycle will be simpler."
"Two years later," Rohan said.
"Two years later."
Rohan looked at the table.
"How many have left?"
Bryan’s expression tightened.
"In my lifetime? Four."
Rohan looked up.
"Four people?"
"Four."
"Out of how many?"
"I’m bad at math, figure that one out for yourself if you’re really interested."
His frustration had not faded with time. It had hardened.
The more he learned about Veyrhold, the angrier the merchant arrangement made him. The people here were not helpless. They were skilled, disciplined, resilient, and absurdly competent at surviving a world that should have killed them generations ago. But they were trapped within a trade structure designed to keep them always desperate enough to work and never rich enough to leave.
It was elegant in the ugliest way.
Every necessity imported. Every export undervalued. Every escape route priced beyond reach. Every failed attempt turned into a warning.
Rohan had begun saving anyway.
At first, that had amused people.
Then it unsettled them.
He took hunt shares. He accepted task pay. He learned which resources earned external value and which only gained local credit. He traded his portions carefully, sometimes with Bryan’s guidance, sometimes with Liora’s warnings, and sometimes against Maerin’s advice when he judged the risk worthwhile.
After three months, his total was still laughable compared to a passage bond.
But it existed.
That mattered.
His Great System agreed.
[Quest Progress: Learn the Price of Passage]
[Information Acquired: Official Berth Cost]
[Information Acquired: Merchant Conversion Practices]
[Information Acquired: Captain Approval Requirement]
[Progress: 3/5]
Rohan did not know what the last two pieces were.
That annoyed him.
It also motivated him.
Which was probably the point.
Then came the four-month mark.
Rohan noticed it only because the ash-house ledger keeper mentioned that his first guest-right token needed renewing for the fourth time.
Four months since he had entered Veyrhold.
Four months since the gate closed behind him and the wind stopped touching his back.
Four months since he had learned this planet was not humanity’s home, but humanity’s accident.
’Can’t believe it... I’ve spent longer in this place than I have as an Awakened in the Origin Realm now...’
By then, Rohan had changed.
Not dramatically enough that he failed to recognise himself. He had not become some legendary ash warrior in a season. He had not conquered Veyrhold’s suspicion through charm, because he did not possess enough charm to overcome that much inherited caution. He had not solved the merchant problem, found a spaceship, or discovered why Hestia had sent him here.
But he had grown in many ways.