The Adventurer’s Guild was supposed to be loud.

  In Soliana’s mind, it was a place full of clanking armor and shouted boasts, cards slapped on wooden tables, laughter spilling out the doors like light. Anastasia had once described it that way—full of strange people, stranger stories, and the kind of rowdy noise that meant you were alive.

  This was… not that.

  The moment Flora pushed the door open, the sound changed.

  The market’s murmur dulled to a distant hum. Inside, the air felt still, like someone had pressed a palm over the room and told it to hush.

  The guild hall was larger than she expected—high rafters, thick beams, stone pillars holding up a ceiling smoked faintly dark with age. A long notice board sagged against one wall, plastered with parchment that had curled at the edges. An unmanned counter sat beneath a rack of ledgers and dust-heavy bottles. A few tables stood scattered around the room, but only two were occupied.

  At one, a pair of grizzled men in leather armor played a slow, silent game of cards. No banter. No accusations of cheating. Just the flip of cardboard and the occasional clink of a coin.

  At the other, a woman with a scar on her jaw sat alone, sharpening a spear in careful, repetitive strokes. Every scrape of metal on stone sounded too loud.

  Soliana stepped in behind Flora and felt… wrong-footed, somehow. Like she had walked into the pause before something bad happened, not the beginning of something grand.

  This doesn’t feel like Reina’s stories at all…

  Flora’s steps softened on the wooden floor. She didn’t seem surprised. Her gaze swept the room once, quick and assessing, then relaxed at the edges.

  “Stay close,” she murmured, barely above a breath.

  Soliana nodded and did.

  They moved a little further inside. No one stopped them. No one called a greeting. A man half-dozing near the counter lifted his eyes, saw Flora’s Inferna uniform, and immediately decided to be more asleep than he was a moment ago.

  Soliana’s hands curled at her sides.

  Where was the noise? The energy? The clamor Anastasia always talked about?

  Even the air felt tired.

  “Not what you were expecting?” a calm voice said behind them.

  Soliana startled.

  Flora half-turned, posture straight but relaxed.

  A young woman stood just inside the doorway they’d just come through, as if she had been there the whole time and the guild had simply chosen not to mention it.

  She was older than Soliana, younger than Flora. Maybe eighteen. She wore a white robe trimmed with fine silver thread, the patterns too precise to be decorative. A staff rested lightly in one hand—polished dark wood, capped with a pale stone veined in faint, sleeping light. Her white hair was cut neatly that hang right before her shoulder, and a small bell hung at her hip.

  She looked… composed. Like a page in a carefully written book.

  Soliana realized she’d been staring and quickly dropped her gaze.

  The woman smiled—not broadly, not like Anastasia would, but with a slight, courteous curve of the mouth.

  “My apologies,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Her voice was clear and even, each word measured. The kind of voice that belonged in lecture halls, not taverns.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  Flora inclined her head slightly. “We’re fine.”

  The woman’s gaze flicked between them—Flora’s uniform, Soliana’s cloak, the way Soliana stayed just half a step behind her mother. Her eyes were sharp, but not unkind.

  “You seem surprised,” she observed, looking toward the empty tables. “Were you expecting something… livelier?”

  Soliana hesitated, then nodded once.

  The woman followed her gaze to the notice board, then to the quiet card game.

  “The rumors about Adventurer Guilds travel faster than the truth,” she said. “Especially in countries that only see the bards’ version.”

  Soliana blinked. “…Bards’ version?”

  The woman tilted her head. “Stories tend to skip the parts where people wait. Or quit. Or fail to come back.”

  Her words weren’t cruel. Just… factual.

  Soliana’s fingers tightened in the fabric of her sleeve.

  Flora’s expression didn’t change, but Soliana felt the slight shift in the air around her. A small, almost invisible tension—like a string pulled half a note too tight.

  The woman stepped forward with quiet, unhurried steps and gave a small bow.

  “Elaine Aurum,” she said. “From Aurelion.”

  Aurelion.

  Soliana had heard the name. A kingdom of scholars; a place where sigils was identified, studied, refined. Where people wrote things down instead of just surviving them.

  Flora returned the nod. “Flora,” she said. “And this is my daughter, Soliana.”

  Elaine’s gaze settled fully on Soliana then.

  It didn’t feel like scrutiny.

  It felt… like being read.

  “Nice to meet you.” Elaine’s smile softened by a fraction. “You have a very attentive way of looking at things.”

  Soliana looked down, heat touching her ears. “…Sorry.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Elaine said calmly. “Curiosity is good. It just has to know where it’s standing.”

  Her eyes drifted to the guild hall again.

  “And this,” she added softly, “is a threshold. Not a festival.”

  “A threshold?” Soliana repeated before she could stop herself.

  Elaine nodded.

  “Most of the guilds you hear about in songs are based in cities far from real danger. They can afford noise.” Her gaze swept the empty chairs. “This one exists for a different purpose.”

  She gestured lightly toward the door on the far wall—the one Soliana hadn’t noticed yet, reinforced with black iron and etched with sigil marks.

  “This branch is closest to the Forbidden Lands. Adventurers don’t gather here to celebrate. They pass through before they leave… or after they return.”

  Soliana swallowed.

  “Most who leave,” Elaine said, tone still soft, still informative, “don’t come back. And those who do rarely feel like singing.”

  Silence settled again. Heavy, but different from the guild’s earlier emptiness. This one had… shape.

  Soliana’s gaze drifted toward the tables.

  One of the card players stared at his hand without really seeing it. The woman with the spear had stopped sharpening for a moment; her knuckles were white around the shaft.

  Something is happening beneath the surface…

  Soliana’s stomach twisted—not with fear, but with a sharp ache of wanting to understand.

  She looked up at Flora.

  Her mother’s face was composed, but her eyes had gone distant. Not lost—calculating. As if fitting Elaine’s words into knowledge she already had.

  Flora notices the undead too. The border. The danger. Everything.

  Soliana suddenly wanted to ask a thousand questions.

  Why was this guild so close to the Forbidden Lands? Why did people still go if they knew they might not return? Why did adults accept this kind of danger like it was weather?

  And why… did her mother choose to work in a place like this?

  Her mouth opened a little.

  No sound came out.

  Elaine turned her staff idly in one hand. The stone at its tip flickered faintly—no flame, no full glow, just the suggestion of light waiting for permission.

  “There’s another reason it’s quiet,” Elaine added after a moment. “Inferna doesn’t use this place the way other nations might.”

  Soliana blinked, snared again. “…How?”

  Elaine glanced at Flora, a hint of respect passing between them.

  “The kingdom has its own systems,” she said. “Internal patrols. Elite units. Strict deployments near the Forbidden Lands. The guild here functions less as a workplace and more as… a formality. A checkpoint for foreign adventurers, or a resting place for those passing through.”

  She folded her hands over the staff, posture straight.

  “In simple terms: citizens of Inferna don’t often come here to pick up quests. They’re assigned duties long before they reach this door.”

  Soliana thought of the soldiers they’d passed. The disciplined lines. The respectful salutes to Flora.

  Inferna doesn’t need this place.

  That realization made the empty tables make more sense.

  But her curiosity didn’t shrink.

  If anything, it grew.

  “What about you?” the question slipped out before she could catch it. “Why are you here?”

  Elaine blinked once, then smiled—not the distant polite version this time, but something that held a sliver of self-awareness.

  “I’m… between duties,” she said. “I came to Inferna for a short respite. Now that it’s over, I’m heading to the Forbidden Lands.”

  Soliana’s heart skipped.

  “Alone?” she whispered.

  Elaine’s gaze flicked to the iron-marked door again.

  “For now,” she said simply. “There are some things I need to see for myself.”

  Her fingers brushed the carved lightning pattern near the top of her staff, almost unconsciously—like a habit, or a quiet promise.

  The air around her prickled for a heartbeat, fine as spider-silk static.

  Soliana felt the hair on her arms stir.

  She didn’t know what kind of Sigil Elaine carried.

  But she suddenly knew one thing for certain:

  This calm, composed girl from Aurelion was not ordinary.

  And neither was whatever waited beyond that iron door.