The plaza fills with shouting and orders. Familias stack supplies and the city sends teams down to the fissure. I sign up because staying on the sidelines feels worse than jumping in.
[SYSTEM]: Mission join accepted. Reward on completion: grace token ×1, salvage ×3.
My guide floats at my shoulder and hums like a nervous lantern. It keeps saying, "We should bind, master. Binding will stabilize my form and my abilities."
Oren offers to fashion a crude charm that will keep the guide semi-stable for short bursts. The charm itself needs activation. "I can hammer it today, but to charge it properly you need a grace token," Oren says. "It will hold for three activations once charged." I agree to his terms and promise the salvage as collateral.
At registration, the plaza recruiter eyes me again. He offers a quiet word. "If you charge and keep that guide, the right Familia will pay for access. Or keep it secret and you will be watched."
I laugh at the idea of secrecy in a city where rumors move faster than coins. "What if I want to do both?" I ask.
He smiles in a way that means someone else will choose for me. "That is possible," he says. "But at a cost."
We head toward the fissure, the charm tucked in my pocket. The air grows cooler as we descend. The guide glows, steadier now. It helps me see the jagged tunnels and the faint metal singing that I keep feeling in my bones.
We find the breach and it is worse than the rumors. The fissure is a wound in the earth, metal and stone fused, and within it something moves that does not belong to the city. It tests the edge of our torches with a tongue of cold.
We fight. The party works like a machine. The archer pins shadows, the swordsman shields, the healer keeps breaths steady. My guide hums and points to a seam in the wall. I jam my dagger and pry. The metal sings and unthreads like a web. Something inside stirs and a small shard falls into my hand, warm and humming.
When we return, the city treats us like we earned breaths. The system gifts a grace token for participation. I hand the token to Oren and he ties the charm around the guide with practiced fingers and charges it. The charm brightens, and for the first time it moves with purpose, like a small living compass. The charm will hold for three activations at full strength, and the token-funded ritual buys a window for permanent binding later if we secure a full binding.
The recruiter watches me from the crowd with narrowed eyes. He folds and tucks a small paper into his cloak. Opportunity was not a single coin. Opportunity is a line, and someone else has already marked a corner of it.