The guild hall still smelled faintly of varnish and freshly cut wood when James stepped inside for the second time that day—this time as a member. Olivia had shown him to the second floor, past a row of doors that all opened into empty rooms waiting for future recruits.
"This one's yours," she said, pushing the last door open. The room was simple: a narrow bed with a straw mattress, a desk tucked under the window, and a small chest at the foot of the bed. Dust motes danced lazily in the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the glass.
"It's… more than I expected," James said.
"Good. You'll make it yours," Olivia replied, then gave him a curt nod and went downstairs, leaving him alone with the faint creak of the wooden floorboards.
James sat on the bed, running his fingers over the rough blanket. For a moment, he simply stared at the wall, his thoughts drifting far away from Iguro Town.
He couldn't remember his parents' faces. In truth, he wasn't even certain if he'd ever really known them. His earliest memories were of alleyways and gutter water in a neighboring city whose name he'd long stopped caring about. Nights were cold, mornings colder. He'd learned quickly that people rarely looked down to notice a child unless they were stealing something.
One night—just another night of wandering and searching for scraps—he'd seen a carriage standing idle in a backstreet, its driver asleep against the wheel. Without thinking, he had climbed inside, curling up between crates of flour. When he woke, the cart was rolling along a coastal road, the smell of salt in the air.
That's how he arrived in Iguro Town.
The town wasn't much to look at then—shabby streets, uneven cobblestones, and a port that creaked louder than the waves—but James had seen something here that caught his heart: the library.
It wasn't grand, but its walls were lined with shelves of books that smelled of ink and dust and possibility. He had made the street across from it his home, sleeping against the outer wall and watching the warm glow of lanterns inside until dawn.
When he grew older, the librarian—a stern but kind Dwarf named Merid—had taken him in as a cleaning boy. The job paid little, but the true payment was the hours James could spend inside, reading freely. Books on history, geography, magic—he devoured them all.
That's where he learned Magic Missiles, Mana Shield, even the little utility spell Light Orb to read by when the lamps were dim. Piece by piece, spell by spell, he shaped himself into something more than a street rat.
And now… here he was.
The Silver Phantom Guild. A bed. A desk. Four walls to call his own.
James leaned back on the mattress, staring at the wooden beams above. He wasn't naïve—he knew life didn't suddenly change because you had a roof over your head. But for the first time in years, he felt like the pages of his story might start turning somewhere new.
Outside, he heard Olivia's voice downstairs, crisp and commanding, speaking to someone who had just entered.
The guild was already moving.