Roland left home earlier than usual. After yesterday,the shop talk, the emptied shelves,he had the uneasy sense the city was waking faster, as if people could feel something hanging in the air even if they couldn't name it yet, couldn't pin it down into words.
He took his usual route through the outer district, passing the same workshops, warehouses, and tenements, when raised voices suddenly cut through the morning. Not the normal haggling, not neighbors snapping at each other over nothing,these were loud, practiced calls. The kind that meant an official announcement. The kind you didn't whisper.
At the intersection stood three house envoys,easy to recognize even for someone who knew nothing about heraldry. Their clothes were too orderly, too clean to be ordinary messengers, yet they lacked the gaudy display of true nobility.
They wore long, dark cloaks of thick, high-quality cloth,weather-resistant, stain-resistant,fastened at the chest with metal clasps engraved with a house mark. Beneath the cloaks were uniform tunics in Halven colors, unadorned but clearly tailored. Belts held short rolls of parchment and simple ceremonial staffs,symbols of authority more than any real means of defense.
One stepped forward and raised his voice. Conversations along the street began to die away. People had learned over the years that announcements like this rarely concerned pleasant things,but they always concerned them.
"By order of House Halven," the envoy began, enunciating each word, "we inform the city's residents that a new Beast-rank dungeon has been discovered near the southern trade road."
A visible ripple ran through the crowd. Roland saw several people exhale as if they'd been holding their breath, waiting for the one word that decided whether they needed to be truly afraid.
"House Halven has assumed responsibility for the dungeon," the envoy continued, "and will begin cleansing operations in cooperation with the local Adventurers' Guild. Residents are instructed to remain calm and to avoid the designated area."
There were no promises of safety,only a dry statement of fact, exactly what you expected from a house that didn't explain its decisions. It announced them.
When the envoys moved on, repeating the message down the next streets, conversations returned,but in a different tone. Softer. Tighter. As if everyone was trying to force this new information into their personal map of the world as quickly as possible.
"Beast…" a woman beside Roland whispered. "That's not so bad."
"Better Beast than Dragon," someone else replied with a nervous laugh. "Or,gods forbid,an Archdragon."
"The guild can handle a Beast," another voice added. "Especially if the house is involved. It'll be rough, but it's not the end."
Roland listened as he walked on. The crowd slowly dispersed. People returned to their routines with a visible relief that wasn't happiness,just the worst-case scenario pushed back, for now.
Beast meant casualties.
It meant fear.
But it didn't mean the end. The Adventurers' Guild could manage it, with some trouble,especially with their guild leader as the spearhead. And if Halven mages joined the effort, there shouldn't be too many deaths… unless the dungeon's conditions were brutal.
At least, that was what people wanted to believe.
By the time Roland reached Mr. Klein's shop, the voices were still circling in his head, mixing with yesterday's images: fire-core shelves stripped bare, customers buying like their lives depended on it,because they probably did. They'd known about the dungeon before the official announcement, or they'd smelled it coming the way animals smelled a storm.
He stared at the shop door, took a short breath, and thought: if they'd announced a Beast today, the crowd at the counter would be even worse than yesterday.
And the workday would begin not with counting stock, but with explaining to people why not everything could be bought,no matter how badly they needed it.
***
For hours, the shop door barely closed. And when the noise dipped for a heartbeat, it was only to be crushed by the next wave of voices,questions, complaints, accusations,layered so densely that Roland felt the sound itself growing heavy in the air.
Edgar had been behind the counter since morning, repeating the same sentence over and over in a calm, trained tone meant to soothe. But it was becoming obvious the customers' patience was running out faster than the shop's supplies ever had.
"We don't have fire cores anymore," Edgar kept saying. "Sold. Yesterday. All of them."
"Not even inserts?" someone demanded, disbelief sharp in his voice. "No amulets? Not even the simplest ones?"
"Nothing that offers real protection against fire or heat," Mr. Klein cut in whenever the argument started looping. "And no, we can't 'arrange something.' If it isn't on the shelf, it isn't here."
Some accepted that in silence, faces set like stone,the faces of people who knew they'd come too late.
Others reacted loudly, letting emotions spill out, because when fear mixed with helplessness, reason didn't hold its shape for long.
"What do you mean you don't have any?!" one customer raised his voice, planting both hands on the counter. "It's Beast-rank. The guild will send us in a few days! You expect us to go in bare-handed?"
"That's your decisions," Edgar replied evenly. "And the decisions of the people sending you. We sell what we have."
Someone else snorted nervously and turned to the people behind him.
"You hear that?" he barked. "First they say everything's under control, then there isn't even gear."
"Gear is one thing," another voice cut in,quieter, but strained. "Have you heard what the scouts are saying?"
Roland, recording yet another refusal in the ledger, lifted his head slightly. That was always what mattered most: the half-spoken information people dropped when they stopped pretending.
"Beast-rank, yeah," the man continued. "But it's a fire-lava atmosphere. Heavy, hot air,hard to breathe. It's not just the monsters. Just being in there wears you down."
"I saw the report," someone else confirmed. "Heated rock, steam fissures, fire in the air. If you don't have resistance, you'll drop before you even draw your weapon."
Those words made the shop go quieter, because even the ones who'd come only out of curiosity began to understand why the fire stock had vanished to zero yesterday.
"Beast or not," someone muttered from the back, "those conditions make it fighting inside an oven."
Mr. Klein listened without changing expression, refusing customers with the same polite firmness. In his hands, it was more effective than shouting,because it made one thing unmistakably clear:
No amount of words was going to move the line.
Roland wrote. Noted. Crossed out. And with every conversation, he saw it more clearly,what was happening at the counter wasn't ordinary trade anymore.
It was the reflection of panic spreading through the city.
***
The report arrived without haste,exactly the way everything was done in House Halven's estate, where no one ran even when matters began to involve death. Hurry was a sign of weakness, and weakness was something the house could not afford,at least not in the eyes of its own people.
A servant stopped at the study door, knocked once, waited for permission, and only then entered, carrying a thin folder of parchment reinforced with a simple protective spell. Nothing to do with prestige. Everything to do with practicality. Guild documents passed through many hands,and even more tables.
"My lord," the servant said quietly. "A report from the Adventurers' Guild. "
Lord Arven Halven lifted his gaze from the desk, showing neither surprise nor particular interest. He'd known the report would come. And he knew there would be nothing in it that could truly reassure him.
"Leave it," he ordered.
The servant placed the folder on the desk, stepped back, and left, closing the door without a sound.
Only then did Arven reach for the documents. He opened them slowly, as if giving himself a moment to shift from city administration to something that smelled of lava, blood, and risk.
The first pages were about the environment.
A fire-lava atmosphere. High heat even at the entrance. Heavy air saturated with scalding fumes and ash particles that irritated the lungs even of seasoned adventurers, forcing them to reduce their safe time inside far below the accepted standards for a Beast-rank dungeon.
Unstable ground,cracked in places, with exposed fissures leaking heat and light. In some corridors, open flows of lava forced detours and narrowed maneuvering space. In practice, that meant close-quarters fighting was nearly inevitable, no matter what tactics you preferred.
Arven's eyes moved on.
The monsters were described as typical for fire environments, with no signs of higher intelligence. They reacted mainly to stimuli like noise, motion, and the presence of warm-blooded creatures,guild language that always meant the same thing: mindless, aggressive beasts that charged head-on with little self-preservation.
Their bodies were partially covered in hardened, charred skin or natural plates resembling cooled magma,resistant to high heat and ordinary fire, but vulnerable to cold, sudden temperature shifts, and kinetic strikes to key points marked on the attached schematics.
Weaknesses existed.
The problem was that exploiting them required time, equipment, and conditions this dungeon didn't offer.
Arven reached the section on deeper reconnaissance, and there his fingers paused on the edge of the parchment.
The scouts had not found the boss chamber.
Not because it was well hidden. Not because the dungeon shifted its structure.
Because safe time inside was too short to conduct a full survey,even with rotating entries and magical protective measures.
The report ended with a dry conclusion: further reconnaissance would be possible only with better preparation, or after the main expedition began.
In the guild's language, that meant one thing.
We go in for real,or we don't go in at all.
Lord Arven closed the folder and sat in silence for a moment, staring at the smooth surface of his desk. He analyzed it all not in terms of courage or glory, but cost. Losses. How dangerous this dungeon would be for the mages of his house.
At last, he lifted his head and looked toward the door.
"Send for my son," he said calmly. "Immediately."
The tone left no room for questions or delay.
Arven knew this was not a dungeon that could be handled by routine,and anything that touched the future of the house always required the presence of those meant to inherit it.