"On my count," Evan said. "We make the pocket speak."
He raised one finger. The Shield's hum touched his knuckles like a metronome that only kept time for people who listened.
"One."
The left shield dipped a thumb's width and held. The first silhouette flicked low for the soft patch as if the world had told it a secret.
"Two."
Center found the seam, not the show. The blade drew a short honest line across arrogance.
"Three."
Right denial stepped exactly into the hunger the second silhouette had been saving. Its plan became paperwork.
Two shapes tried to leave arguments behind and found that arguments don't run without legs.
[LOOT ACQUIRED][CHITIN (BLACK IRON - LOWER) × 2][BLACK IRON INGOT × 2][MONSTER CORE (BLACK IRON - LOWER) × 1]
Evan listened to the chime as ledger, not applause. "Reset," he said. "Edges, then eyes up."
The left soldier's knee thought about sinking where loam had been polite a minute ago. The strap did its job; the second soldier pulled knee, not man, and the line exhaled together.
"Two inches back on the soft," Evan said. "We sell the same door, at a better price."
Small taps moved under the dirt like someone learning a language by listening at a wall. Tap tap. Pause. Tap tap tap. A head the length of a forearm poked up, teeth counting the air. It checked for hands to bite and found steel waiting to be boring.
"Do not give it hands," Evan said. "Make it pick a door."
It picked wrong. The pocket explained consequences.
[LOOT ACQUIRED][CHITIN (BLACK IRON - LOWER) × 1]
"Drag one of the far bodies left," Evan said. "Let the little ones take it. Not our door."
They pulled a corpse from the crescent with the drag-sling and set it where flies and thieves could feel important without learning his schedule. A pale small shape sprang, bit, and wrestled meat toward a hole that had pretensions. The hole caved a little and then held the way stubbornness sometimes does.
"Good," Evan said. "Let that be a story someplace else."
Inside the Hut, he touched the Workbench by muscle memory and denied himself the easy joy of new soldiers.
[WORKBENCH: ONLINE][CRAFTING: SWORD-AND-SHIELD SOLDIER SUMMON TOKEN][REQUIRED: BLACK IRON INGOT × 3 / MONSTER CORE (BLACK IRON - LOWER) × 1 / LEATHER × 2][STATUS: AVAILABLE]
He paid the cost and caught the disc while it was still deciding to be heavy.
[SUMMONING GATE: TOKEN STANDBY]
"Not yet," he told the Gate. "You are a bell I'll ring when the room is ready to hear it."
A ripple went right to left under the fog, shallow and wide. Five mouth-lips opened almost together like a lazy starfish learning addition.
"Cluster," Evan said. "We do the book. One, two, three. No chase. Strap ready."
The first head jumped early. The left shield gave it the feeling that gravity was still running on time. The sword took the hinge. The second tunneled under the soft patch and tried to be clever about emerging behind the right shield. The right shield had moved one inch already and waited like a closed door that didn't need to brag about being locked. The third thought speed would do what planning had failed to do. It met the center seam and revised its opinion.
[LOOT ACQUIRED][CHITIN (BLACK IRON - LOWER) × 3][BLACK IRON INGOT × 2]
A fourth head cut it too close to the Shield and smacked the hum like a child touching a stove twice to see if pain is policy. It vanished, not dead, just discouraged by physics. The fifth decided it was a philosopher and stayed underground, bumping the loam like questions asked in the wrong room.
"Down," Evan said softly. Three shields kissed dirt. The bump hit wood and forgot philosophy.
He touched the left sword and felt a burr the eye couldn't see.
[WORKBENCH: REPAIR - SHORT SWORD EDGE][REQUIRED: BLACK IRON INGOT × 1][STATUS: COMPLETE]
He returned the blade to the hand that used it well. "Pocket holds," he said. "World adjusts. We adjust cheaper."
The fog pretended to be wind again and failed. Evan knelt long enough to set a triangle of stones an inch tighter to the soft patch. The triangle wasn't magic. It was a promise his feet could keep later when he couldn't spare eyes to think about inches.
World Channel breathed against the hull of his attention like tide under a pier.
[HUMAN - EARTH / ID: 9,118,003]: Build wall at night, not while fog listens.][UNKNOWN RACE / ID: 12,880]: The human sells doors.]
He left both lines to dry in the air. Advice didn't need an author to work.
"Inventory," he said without looking away from north.
[INVENTORY - SUMMARY][BLACK IRON INGOT × 20][DESERT MIST LIZARD LEATHER × 34][MONSTER CORE (BLACK IRON - LOWER) × 6][RANK STONE: BLACK IRON - LOWER × 4][BLUEPRINT: PALISADE WALL (FRAGMENT) × 1][CHITIN (BLACK IRON - LOWER) × 6][SUMMON TOKEN (SWORD-AND-SHIELD SOLDIER) × 1]
Enough to be interesting. Not enough to behave like it.
"Rim check," he said. "One more."
[WORKBENCH: REPAIR - SHIELD RIM][REQUIRED: BLACK IRON INGOT × 1][STATUS: COMPLETE]
The line breathed in three. The Shield hummed the same note it always did. Good systems make good men look wise.
He looked at the soft patch and at the way the loam was trying to remember its old shape. He dragged his boot once, just enough to remind dirt who had the job.
Then the north changed its question. The fog rose and held - not like a wave, like a curtain checked by a careful hand. Something stood behind it, not on belly or bent knee. Upright. A length of pale bone swung from one hand the way line swings when you have thrown it often. The hook at its end wasn't a fisherman's pride. It was a piece of being hungry that someone had sharpened.
"Hold," Evan said, and his voice didn't change. "No chase. We buy first moves only."
The hook flashed out of the gray and bit into the rind of a far corpse with a sound like someone biting an apple they hadn't paid for. The thing jerked. The corpse slid an inch. The hook held.
"Good," Evan said, quietly pleased with his own earlier decision. "Let it steal wrong meat."
The thing pulled again, and the body skidded another inch, leaving a snail trail of black iron stink that would teach every nose in the fog the route to not-his-door. Three more short pulls and the corpse cleared a lip and started to obey the line that owned it.
"Do not correct it," Evan said. "We only sell what we want bought."
The hook jerked a fourth time, greedy now. The line went taut. The thing on the other end braced with a stance that said it had learned to tug war from someone who had lost a finger to rope burns and kept pulling.
"Ready the strap," Evan said. "If it tries hands, we give it a lesson about wrists."
He lifted two fingers.
"One," he said as the hook scraped free of meat and whipped back toward the pocket like guilt that doesn't know where to land.
The left shield tilted and made guilt regret angles. The hook clanged, bounced, and lay there telling a small story about leverage and who owned it.
"Evan?" the right soldier asked, eyes on the fog's edge.
"Not yet," Evan said. "We don't pick up gifts from strangers at the door. We make them step in to ask for them back."
The fog obliged a little. The upright silhouette leaned, then shifted, then took one step that put a knee beyond comfortable and a shoulder into light that wasn't ready to love it. A second step followed because most mistakes are social and hate to be alone.
"Two inches," Evan said. "Whole pocket, together."
They moved as one. The soft patch graduated from lie to policy.
The figure at the fog's lip paused. Either it could see the inch that had happened or it could smell that something newly wrong was invisible. It lifted the hook again.
"Let it throw," Evan said. "We want the line inside. We want its weight inside. We want its wrists where gravity knows our names."
The hook came with a clean sideways whip that learned nothing from the last bounce. It arced for the left shield above the rim.
"Down," Evan said.
Three shields didn't slam. They settled like closing books. The hook hit wood and offered a test about splinters and holding. The left soldier took the test and passed it by not caring. The rope attached to the hook went taut and then hummed an opinion.
"On my call," Evan said. "We do not pull. We invite."
The silhouette pulled. The rope insisted. The shield said no without moving.
"One," Evan said.
The left man shifted weight an inch back, not a step, and drew the hook's barb to a place where leverage would do something impolite to pride.
"Two."
Center raised his blade a thumb's width and waited with the patience that panics people who think speed is courage.
"Three."
Right denial stepped a half-foot to close the place where hands might enter to solve rope problems with fingers. There was no place. The rope voiced a small complaint. The hook clicked against wood as if clearing its throat for a speech that would not be heard.
The silhouette decided to charge the last two steps that made a mistake into a memory. It came low to be clever, then high to be dramatic, then tried to go through a gap that hadn't been there since Evan had said together.
"Down," Evan said.
The hook left the shield. The wrist behind it learned what happens when a handle meets a hinge that belongs to someone else. The shape gave a noise that wasn't speech, not because it lacked words but because the right words for this are short and rude and mostly air. The center blade wrote a sentence on what presented itself as neck and hoped to be torso. The right blade corrected whichever grammar problem remained.
[LOOT ACQUIRED][BLACK IRON INGOT × 2][MONSTER CORE (BLACK IRON - LOWER) × 1][BONE HOOK × 1]
"Do not touch the hook with skin," Evan said. "Leather only. If it wants to be poison, it can be poison somewhere else."
The left soldier slid the hook into the drag-sling and set it aside like a bad idea you keep to teach with later.
Evan waited. The fog hates to be alone with the idea that a plan failed. It sent a second upright shape that tried to walk better. It stopped when it saw the first shape's lesson lying on the ground like punctuation.
"Let it think," Evan said. "Thinking costs it more than it costs us."
The second shape threw its hook farther, clever enough to aim at the Gate's shadow rather than the body crescent. The line hissed over dirt and looked for something to buy.
"Not our door," Evan said, and his voice stayed calm because calm is how you teach gravity to be on your side. "We do not pay for clever."
He raised one finger again.
"One," he said, when the hook bit nothing and the rope went heavy with doubt.
"Two," when the silhouette turned to look at where the first one had stopped pretending to be a problem.
"Three," when he saw the small shift of weight that meant the next step was going to be pride rather than plan.
The shape stepped. The pocket answered.
[LOOT ACQUIRED][BLACK IRON INGOT × 2]
Quiet arrived, not offered, taken. The fog's edge tried to sew itself back together and left a seam.
"Token status," Evan said without turning.
[SUMMONING GATE: TOKEN STANDBY]
He set the coin-weight of the token in his palm and felt the bell it would ring in the air. He didn't hate bells. He hated ringing them where echoes were for enemies.
"Not now," he said. "We work inches."
He moved the triangle of stones a hair and drew a second soft patch with his heel, a shadow patch that did nothing for now and yet would matter when a different problem believed the first patch was the only story this ground knew.
"Night build only," he said, soft enough that only men and wood would remember.
[BLUEPRINT: PALISADE WALL - FRAGMENT][STATUS: PARTIAL]
He closed the pane by not needing to look at it to remember what it had already said.
From deep north, taps began again. Not one creature's signal. A measure. Two-two-one. Pause. Two-two-one. A low chorus under dirt. Not pride. Not panic. Organization trying to decide whether it had time to be brave.
"Hold," Evan said. "We let their counting walk to our price."
He checked the left strap by touch and the right rim by sound. He breathed with the Shield once.
"On my call," he said, and let the quiet run until it tripped.