Chapter 134 — A Proper Room

Chapter 134: Chapter 134 — A Proper Room

The guild hall’s ground floor swallowed sound the way Greyhaven’s never had — voices scattered and thinned by sheer ceiling height, footsteps lost beneath the general hum of a building processing more business in an hour than his old branch managed in a week.

Arlen found the transfer counter only after asking twice, tucked along one wing behind a queue considerably longer than anything he’d stood in back home. He waited it out patiently, watching the hall’s business unfold around him — a party arguing cheerfully over quest-split percentages, a scarred veteran trading what looked like genuine gossip with a clerk half his age, a young mage practicing some small cantrip under her breath while she waited her own turn, sparks of blue light flickering harmlessly between her fingers.

"Next," called the woman behind the counter, when his turn finally came — sharp-eyed, efficient, a nameplate reading Talia Brenwick. pinned beside a stack of paperwork that looked considerably taller than Mina’s had ever managed.

"Transfer," Arlen said, sliding his credentials across the counter. "From Greyhaven."

She reviewed the documents with brisk, practiced speed, pausing once to glance up at him with mild interest. "Confirmed Awakened, Rank D, activated transfer credentials from a Rank A guild master personally. That’s not nothing, this far from home." She made a series of quick notations. "You’ll keep your rank and standing here — no need to prove yourself twice, the way some branches make transfers do. Your file’s clean, so this should be straightforward."

"How long does it usually take?"

"Today, if nothing complicates it." She worked through the paperwork with the efficiency of someone who’d done this hundreds of times. "One thing you should know before you go any further, though — you’re confirmed Awakened, but I don’t see a realm designation anywhere in your file. Early, Middle, Peak, nothing."

"I’m not sure what that means, exactly."

Talia glanced up properly at that, something faintly surprised crossing her professional composure. "Frontier branch, I take it."

"Greyhaven. The Ashen Frontier."

"That explains it." She didn’t elaborate further, returning her attention to the paperwork instead. "You’ll want to speak with one of our Realm Theory instructors properly, sooner rather than later. I’m not equipped to explain it myself — registration handles transfers, not education. But it’s not something you can simply skip past here, the way frontier branches sometimes let it slide."

Arlen filed the phrase away — realm designation, Early, Middle, Peak — with the same careful attention he gave anything new, the vague unease of not understanding something that apparently mattered considerably more here than it had back home settling into him alongside the paperwork’s steady progress.

"There," Talia said finally, stamping the last page and sliding a fresh badge across the counter — the same D-rank color he’d carried since Greyhaven, though the design itself carried the capital’s own crest rather than the frontier’s. "Transfer complete. Welcome to the Aurenholt branch."

"Thank you."

"One more thing." She reached beneath the counter and produced a folded pamphlet, considerably thicker than anything Mina had ever handed him. "Orientation requirements for anyone intending to access the Sundered Depths. Mandatory for all new arrivals, regardless of prior rank — roughly a month’s worth of briefings before you’re cleared to actually descend. I’d read it before you get too settled."

Arlen accepted it, thanked her again, and stepped away from the counter with the strange, settled satisfaction of a small but significant threshold crossed — no longer simply a traveler who’d arrived, but properly, officially, an adventurer of this branch.

He spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering the guild hall’s ground floor at an unhurried pace, the pamphlet tucked into his pack for later reading, and found himself, more than once, simply watching — a healer’s apprentice practicing controlled bursts of golden Divine light on a padded training dummy under an instructor’s watchful correction, a dwarf demonstrating some kind of stone-Aura technique that made the practice yard’s floor ripple briefly like water before hardening again, a mage in the corner working through what looked like a genuinely difficult lightning incantation, the crackling failing twice before finally holding steady on the third attempt.

By evening, hungry and pleasantly overwhelmed, he made his way back toward the guild district’s outer edge, where the innkeeper that morning had mentioned a cluster of inns catering specifically to adventurers working near the dungeon entrance. He found the Foxglove without much trouble — a warm, welcoming building with flower boxes along its windows, considerably more inviting than the gate-district inn he’d slept in the night before.

The woman behind the counter looked up as he entered, and Arlen found himself, for just a moment, genuinely caught off guard — fox ears set high in dark hair, a tail flicking once behind her with lazy, unhurried awareness, and an expression that carried the easy, confident authority of someone who owned every inch of the room she stood in.

"You’ve got the look of someone who’s been sleeping somewhere considerably less comfortable than my beds," she said, before he’d even reached the counter. "Rough road?"

"Fifty-nine days of one," Arlen admitted.

"That’ll do it." She studied him a moment, something sharp and assessing beneath the warmth. "Yveth Amberlyn. I run this place, for whatever that’s worth to you. Room, or just a meal?"

"Room," Arlen said, and found the word arriving without any of the old, careful hesitation that would once have accompanied it. "A private one, if you have it."

Something in Yveth’s expression shifted — mild, genuine surprise, quickly smoothed back into professional ease. "Most new transfers ask after the cheapest bunk in the house first thing. You’ll want to hear the price before you commit to that particular confidence."

"Eighteen copper a night," she said. "Bunk’s four, if coin’s tight."

It was three times what a private room had cost him back in Greyhaven, and considerably more than even Ferris’s inn on the road here — but Arlen counted it out anyway, without the old reflexive wince, and found the choice settling into him with a quiet, deliberate satisfaction rather than any guilt.

"You’ve earned it," he said, mostly to himself, though Yveth caught the words regardless, one eyebrow lifting with open curiosity she didn’t bother hiding.

"Confident thing to say to yourself out loud," she said, sliding a key across the counter. "I like it. Room’s up the stairs, third door. Kitchen serves proper meals till late, if you’re hungry — my cook doesn’t much care for reheated scraps, so come while it’s fresh."

He took her up on it within the hour, settling at a corner table in the Foxglove’s warm, low-ceilinged common room, and found the food considerably finer than anything he’d managed for himself on the road — a rich, herb-crusted roast that a quick-moving catkin waitress set down with a wink and a "welcome to the neighborhood, new face."

"Pella," she introduced herself, balancing three other plates along one arm without apparent effort. "That’s Rilla, over there, if she ever stops staring long enough to introduce herself properly."

A second catkin, quieter and considerably more observant, glanced up from where she was wiping down a nearby table, offering Arlen a small, measuring nod rather than Pella’s easy chatter. "New arrivals usually look more lost than you do," Rilla said. "You’ve traveled a while, haven’t you. Properly, I mean. Not just the trip here."

"A year and more, before this road even started," Arlen admitted, surprised by the accuracy of the read.

"Thought so. You eat like someone who’s learned to actually taste things, instead of just filling up." She returned to her cloth without further comment, though Arlen caught the ghost of a genuine smile before she turned away.

He ate slowly, savoring the meal with the same deliberate attention he’d brought to every unfamiliar dish since the very first ember-tailed lizard — five copper for the roast alone, nearly double what a bowl of guild-hall stew had ever cost him back home, and worth every piece of it.

Yveth passed his table once more before the evening properly wound down, refilling his water without being asked, studying him with the same open, assessing curiosity she’d shown at the counter.

"You’ll do fine here," she said, not quite a question, already moving toward her next table before he could properly answer.

Arlen watched her go, filed the moment away alongside everything else the day had given him, and finished his meal in the warm, unhurried comfort of a room that already, somehow, felt more like the beginning of something than merely another stop along the way.