Roland arrived at a near-march, dropped onto the bench across from Aldric, and fixed Nameless with the look men save for fires they can't yet see.
"Do you want the good news or the bad news?" Nameless asked, dry.
"Since you came," Roland said, equally dry, "we've had a sudden run of only bad. I don't expect the good to be very good."
Aldric folded his hands. "Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."
Nameless didn't blink. "Roland's right. The village's trouble won't be the cultists directly. It'll be the barbarians who arrive on a fair wind and call it fate. Some may turn to cults; most won't need to to be a problem. If you want this place to prosper, you'll live tighter than you like." He tipped his hand. "Power lives in shadow; concealment is where it breathes. Learn that lesson—from the cultists, and from Mathis."
Roland's jaw twitched, impatient with the theater. Aldric's eyes narrowed—his new neophyte was starting to sound like a heretic who had done his homework.
Nameless closed the loop. "I'm proposing a contingency. A plan B that survives plan A's failure. Get out of the sightlines of invaders and foragers. A village in daylight is more tempting than a dark alley—conquerors prefer prey they can inventory."
Roland gave a humorless huff. "You're telling us to live like the midgets of Altum Petram, then?"
"At least partially," Nameless said. "As contingency. Provisional things have a habit of looking permanent—crises outlast the so-called normal. Everything tends toward entropy," he added, as if testing the word in their ears, then translated it into a tongue the wall could understand. "Decay is the only natural drift of men; virtue is effort, not drift—a sharp turn from death to life."
He laid out the map. "There's a burrow near the village. I used it to catch Mathis because it was already his. That trick suggests the plan: start cutting from the burrow toward the village. Give yourselves a subterranean refuge for an invasion, and give strangers the impression this place is empty when you need it to be. The sightline from that crown is excellent. Unless you know it, it reads like a harmless wrinkle in a hill. It's a better watchtower than your tower because the watcher isn't a target. No one watches the watcher. Surprise stays with whoever owns the high ground—which is the low ground, in this case. Underground."
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. "Begin today. Put a pair of guards on rotation at the burrow until the tunnel reaches the wall on the underground. Draft evacuation paths that expand as the earth gives way. If the crowd comes thin, you never need it. If it comes thick, you won't have time to wish you'd started.
He weighed the day the way a miser thumbs coin. The hill-base paid, but the walk taxed him—there and back, light bled away in errands. Good for caution, bad for levels. If a beast didn't write the script he wanted, he needed hands close enough to close the book.
"Don't be a magician with one trick," he told himself. "Clever buys a night; systems buy winters."
So—last flourish, the joke he owed himself.
He found Roland and Aldric where decisions kept dry. "One more proposal," he said. "Call it my final card."
Roland's brow edged up. Aldric waited, priest to puzzle.
"I want the empty room moved," Nameless went on. "Not the boards—its promise. Transfer my berth to the hill. I'll live there, inside the mound, and pull watch with a handful of your men. A watcher for the watchers. If something small and stupid tries the fence—say, a Razorback—" he let the irony stand without a smile, "—I'm closer than a bell."
Roland didn't see the trap; nothing in it seemed to benefit Nameless directly. Aldric, surprised by the mad plan, judged the worst-case harmless—at most a new watchtower on a hill, no great loss by any measure.
"We seed a guard here and now," Nameless continued, "just a core, while the tunnel grows back toward the village. When the dig meets the wall, we've earned more than a bolt-hole—we've built a second spine. And as we cut, we furnish. Not velvet—sense. Benches, hooks, dry shelves. Make it livable. Palatable even to the vanity of the women when necessity tightens. Make no one hate the dark."
Silence did the math. Roland stared past him to the northwest, seeing the mound with new edges. Aldric weighed expense against extinction and found the cheaper of the two.
Roland nodded first, abrupt. Aldric followed with a single grave dip of the head.
"Done," Roland said. "You take the room that isn't there, and we'll give you men who are. We'll start the dig at dusk."
"Good," Nameless answered. "Then we stop bleeding time and start buying tomorrows."
They stepped out. Roland was already turning orders into motion; Aldric traced a brief sign in the air over the men and the plan alike. Wind at their backs, they moved.
Nameless didn't waste the lift. He scooped what he could carry alone—chair, blanket, the small things that make a corner livable—and walked for the mound. Not a move; a nudge. Clear the space so the guards could work faster when they came with tools and backs.
The day kept thinning his advantage. Every minute filed the edge down another hair. Use it or lose it.
The pit welcomed him the way an answer welcomes a question. The plan hadn't changed. Beasts here were nearly his weight now; the XP would taper. No more leaps—just clean, moderate climbs. That was the point of dragging the base to the hill: cut travel, cut noise, cut temptations to be clever when patience would do. Most problems are early problems.
Time to farm thinking wounds.
First, the den. He slid the chair down into the pit, tucked the blanket into a scraped shelf of earth, looped a length of cord through a root to make a hook, and set the space in order until it looked like a place a man could vanish and breathe. No clatter, no scrape. A room because he decided it was one.
Then back up to the crown.
He found a direwolf easing the shade of a stand of trees not far downslope. Perfect Sight rose.
Direwolf — Level 8.
He took the hill, belly to grass, and slid into the brush above it. Slow hands. Slower breath. Left palm hovered a finger above the rear tendon.
"Doubt," he breathed.
IP: 80 → 56
[Doubt — 50 Damage (Critical)]
Rear left leg: crippled.
He was moving before the sound finished—down the face toward the treeline, hard enough to make the wolf believe. Even maimed, three legs can argue with one man. Fury did the rest. He gave it the invitation he'd written a dozen times.
The fall wasn't a fall. It was a step into the mouth that knew him.
Breath: 35 → 28
The wolf came with all the courage in the world and none of the footing. Chalk, angle, gravity—court adjourned.
The hill gave him the only music he liked.
[XP Gained: Kill — Direwolf (L8)]
[XP +25]
[Intellectual attack +3]
[Intellectual attack 10/10,000]
"I need to clear the ground," he told himself. "Welcome the new roommates properly."
He took a thumb of boar meat from his satchel and set it where the wind would say yes—down the slope, near the little "spawn" patch that kept teaching wolves to be brave. Then he slid back into the same brush as before and waited for hunger to do its dumb, honest work.
[Removed: Raw Boar Meat ×1]
Perfect Sight rose.
Direwolf — Level 7.
It came in wary, then forgot to be. Nose down, teeth working, eyes half-lidded with the small happiness of free food.
He lifted his left hand a breath above the rear tendon and let refusal tighten to a point.
[Doubt — 50 Damage (Critical)]
[Target: Rear Leg — Crippled]
IP: 56 → 32
Shock took the thought out of it. The leg failed cleanly; panic misweighted the others. It lurched, overcommitted, and the hill finished the sentence—down through brush and chalk, a slick tumble that ended the way gravity likes.
[XP Gained: Kill — Direwolf (L7)]
[XP +20]
[Intellectual Attack +2]
[Intellectual Attack 12/10,000]
He wiped his palm on the habit and listened to the slope go still again.
Boots scuffed behind him minutes later—two guards, red-faced under the work, a bed frame between them, blankets and a chest roped on top. They nearly lost the lot when he spoke.
"If you're hungry," he said, dry, "take the slope and fetch the two new kills. Morning's been kind."
They stared past him at the down-slope, then back at him—the bed wobbling in their hands, mouths half open. Not yet noon, and the stranger had dropped two wolves he hadn't even bothered to brag about.
Rumor had been polite. Reality was the louder thing.
They were halfway up the slope with the first carcass when he turned, voice even and quick—using their surprise like leverage.
"Outside the wall, I owe the village nothing," he said. "But for our little consortium: take every resource down there and all the meat goes to the village. Bring me the rest."
A beat of silence; then two nods. Fear makes fast clerks.
"Now I have my legion," he thought, maliciously.
While they worked, knives whispering through hide, he let the trap ripen—and the brush delivered. Not a Razorback. A boar, thick-shouldered, nose testing the blood-scent.
Boar — Level 9.
It hesitated at the scattered flesh like it knew the story's author. He palmed a stone and flicked it into the trees on the far side. Branches clacked; the boar's head snapped that way.
Counter-productive—perfect.
He was already lowering his left hand.
[Doubt — 50 Damage (Critical)]
[Target: Rear Leg — Crippled]
IP: 32 → 8
The grunt that followed had direction in it. It found him. Fury beat balance, and the thing lurched uphill after him on three legs, fast enough to be stupid. He ran the line he'd written a dozen times and shouted down the slope:
"Off the center! Lunch is coming your way!"
They scattered—bed frame clattering—just as the boar lost the argument with gravity. It hit the chalk, skidded, and finished dying in a rush of dust at their boots.
[Intellectual Attack +4]
[Intellectual Attack 16/10,000]
[XP +30]
The guards stood there a second, blinking at the gift they'd nearly been crushed by, then set to work because hands that hesitate get cut. No one paused to wonder whether it died before or after the fall; his shout had made it feel like he'd thrown the beast at them.
"Divide it as said," he called, already turning. "Meat to the larders. Bring me tusk, hide, bristle."
They swallowed and obeyed.
Nameless, seeing them skinning the wolves, asked them to cut off the heads of both wolves as well. He had a plan in mind.
A few minutes later, as they hauled and skinned, he got what he'd asked for from the wolves as well—thirds cleanly split by his offhand contract:
[Stored: Direwolf Head (Trophy) ×2]
[Stored: Wolf Pelts ×2]
[Stored: Wolf Fangs ×4]
[Stored: Wolf Claws ×4]
[Transferred → Village Larders: Wolf Meat ×4]
And when they'd finished with the boar:
[Stored: Boar Tusks ×2]
[Stored: Boar Hide (Medium) ×2]
[Stored: Boar Bristle Bundle ×1]
[Transferred → Village Larders: Boar Meat ×4]
He let the slope grow quiet again and the men keep moving. Fear had done its work. Now function would keep it honest.
They ate what passed for barbecue—charred strips on sticks, smoke, the flat talk of men who've decided not to think for a while. He let the heat work through him and watched his gauge creep back.
IP: 8 → 80 (out of combat, fed, unbothered)
The day found its rhythm: guards trudging up and down with bedframes and shovels, Aldric's blessing still drying on the plan, Roland barking the kind of orders men obey because they like the sound of work. Every so often a shape strayed too close to the ridge and he sent it down the hill to interrupt someone else's afternoon. Inaugurating a watch-post while your patron demon keeps kicking problems into your lap.
Before dusk, he walked the pattern three more times—same brush, same angle, same eraser.
[Doubt — 24 IP → 56]
[Kill — Direwolf (L7)]
[Doubt — 24 IP → 32]
[Kill — Direwolf (L8)]
[Doubt — 24 IP → 8]
Kill — Direwolf (L7)]
[XP +65]
[Intellectual Attack +7]
[Intellectual Attack 23/10,000]
IP: 80 → 8
The guards skinned while the light thinned. He let them keep the meat that made sense and kept a little that didn't.
[Stored: Wolf Pelts ×3]
[Stored: Wolf Fangs ×6]
[Stored: Wolf Claws ×6]
[Transferred → Village Larders: Wolf Meat ×4]
He wiped his hands, leaned on the satchel, and took inventory like a miser counting sins.
[Hunter's Medium Satchel — Leather — 30 Slots]→ Used: 12 / 30 (stacked items counted per stack)
[Stored: Direwolf Head (Trophy) ×2]
[Stored: Wolf Pelts ×5]
[Stored: Wolf Fangs ×10]
[Stored: Wolf Claws ×10]
[Stored: Wolf Meat ×4]
[Stored: Raw Boar Meat ×7]
[Stored: Boar Tusks ×2]
[Stored: Boar Hide (Medium) ×2]
[Stored: Boar Bristle Bundle ×1]
[Stored: Initiate's Dagger — Steel — L1 ×1]
[Stored: Initiate's Brooch of the Penumbra ×1]
[Stored: Bronze Coins ×16]
"Good enough," he told the hill. "Beds coming in the morning. Better to greet the roommates with fewer teeth in the grass."