The morning air tasted clean after the rain.

  Puddles sat in every rut and hollow along the path, reflecting a pale sky that hadn't decided yet whether to commit to blue or stay cautious behind a thin wash of cloud. Droplets clung to the thatch eaves of the cottages Leo passed, falling at zy intervals, catching the early light in brief silver fshes before vanishing into the mud.

  Leo's pack was heavier than he liked. The Stonemorel pouch sat at the top, but underneath it the weight stacked - three giant beetle armor ptes, dense and mineral-crusted; two Veilcap bundles, cloth-wrapped to prevent bruising. High-value loot he'd held back from Kerrin, betting on better prices from Rockhaven's specialized merchants.

  Marsh and Dar's cottage was slightly rger than Leo's but sharing the same bones - packed earth, thatch, rough-hewn everything. The door was open, letting the post-rain air move through the interior. Leo stopped at the threshold and knocked on the frame.

  Dar appeared from inside, and for the first time since waking up in this world, Leo was alone with her up close.

  The pregnancy had reshaped her: the belly was even more prominent now, straining against the linen of her dress, her posture shifted to a slight backward lean to accommodate the weight. Her cheeks fuller, something cherubic in the roundness that pregnancy had given her. Hair a shade lighter than wheat, pulled into a braided bun at the nape of her neck, though damp strands had escaped and clung to her temples. Sharp brown eyes that seemed like they missed nothing. Freckled skin, pink across the nose.

  Her hands were rough, knuckles reddened, nails clipped short. One rested on the swell of her belly as she walked around. She smelled of soap and hearth ash and something bready.

  "Leo," her voice carried the particur weariness of someone operating on insufficient sleep. "If you're looking for Marsh, he's still dead to the world."

  "Was he at the tavern again?"

  "Where else," Dar leaned against the doorframe. "Came in past midnight, knocked over the water bucket, woke me up, then passed out with his boots still on. I left them on. He can deal with the mud himself."

  She delivered this with the ft resignation of someone who'd calibrated her expectations and learned to work around her husband.

  Leo gnced past her shoulder into the cottage. A cradle sat against the far wall, half-finished, the wood still pale and unjoined. A basket of tiny garments rested on a chair beside it, some hand-sewn, some clearly borrowed from neighbors. The smell of the bread she'd been baking drifted from the direction of the hearth.

  "I was hoping he'd come with me to Rockhaven," Leo said. "Help carry some of the loot to sell."

  "You'll be waiting until noon if you wait for him," Dar's mouth twitched. "And even then, he'll spend the first hour compining about his head."

  "Right," Leo adjusted his pack. "I'll go alone. He can help next time."

  He'd pnned for Marsh to come along, to bring some more beetle carapaces. But Marsh was unconscious, so Leo would sell what he could carry in Rockhaven and leave the rest for Kerrin at vilge rates.

  "And I will continue waiting for him to get up," Dar nodded and said, more to herself than to Leo. "The water barrel's almost empty and I can't carry the bucket myself anymore."

  "I can do that," Leo said.

  "No, it's fine. He'll be up soon enough."

  Leo set his pack down on the muddy ground beside the door and started walking toward the well.

  "Leo...!"

  He was already ten paces away. When he gnced back, Dar stood in the doorway with her mouth still shaped around a protest that had arrived too te. She watched him go, then shook her head, before going back into the house.

  The well was close. Leo lowered the bucket, hauled it up hand over hand, and carried it back. The water sloshed over the rim with each step, cold against his knuckles. Dar pointed him to the storage barrel just inside the door, and he poured. A second trip filled the cooking pot by the hearth. A third topped the barrel to the brim.

  When he set the bucket down, his forearms ached pleasantly, and Dar was looking at him with a much softer expression than before.

  "Thank you," she said - simple and genuine.

  Leo stood there for a moment. His hands, still wet from the bucket, found each other and fidgeted. This was his first real conversation with her since coming to this world, and the unfamiliarity sat awkwardly in his chest.

  And also because of Marsh.

  "Dar," he paused. "I'm sorry. For dragging Marsh into the dungeon."

  Dar's expression changed. The tiredness stayed, but something darker moved behind it, pulling her brows together and tightened the corners of her mouth. Then the shadow passed.

  She let out a long and slow breath.

  "I don't bme you, Leo," a tired smile found her face. "I know you didn't mean to put him in danger."

  She paused. Her hand shifted on her belly.

  "And if I'm being honest, it's because of you that Marsh actually did something good for once. Instead of wasting his days with ales and games and borrowing money he can't pay back," the smile gained an edge, the wry humor of a woman who was worried about her husband, and at the same time, had no illusions about him. "He's bringing money home. That's more than I could say for the st two years."

  Leo didn't push further. The apology was made, and her response was more than he'd expected. The dungeon earnings were the first time Marsh had contributed something that mattered for their family's future, and Dar knew the cost of that contribution. She'd chosen to accept it.

  "We'll keep him safe," he said.

  "You'd better." Dar's eyes held his for a second. Then the everyday weariness reassembled itself, and she tipped her chin toward his pack on the ground. "Go on. You've got a long walk ahead, and I've got bread to finish before that oaf wakes up and eats it raw."

  Leo shouldered his pack and said goodbye. He turned down the path toward the vilge gate with the morning light warming the back of his neck and the weight of the loot settling across his shoulders.

  ---

  At the gate, two ancient stone posts fnking the path where the dirt narrowed, Leo spotted a familiar figure walking ahead of him.

  Hanna was already through the gate, her leather satchel slung over one shoulder, her braid swinging against her back with each step.

  "Hanna!" Leo called out.

  She turned. A smile found her freckled face when she recognized him. Her wire-rimmed spectacles sat slightly crooked on the bridge of her nose, as they always did.

  "Leo. Rockhaven?"

  "Rockhaven."

  "Bad luck, then. Hemlock lent his cart to a retive. And the only other donkey in the vilge is Colm's."

  They looked at each other. Neither needed to say it. Colm Brewer wouldn't lend his donkey if the vilge was on fire, unless the fire was heading for his own cottage.

  "Walking it is," Leo shrugged.

  They fell into step together. The road to Rockhaven stretched ahead, a dirt track winding through fields and low hills, the ruts softened by st night's rain into channels of standing water that caught the sky's reflection.

  I should buy a cart, Leo thought as they navigated around a puddle that stretched the full width of the road. Maybe a horse and a simple cart. The dungeon money is adding up, and we might have enough after a few more runs.

  A cart would be helpful with more than just travelling, especially with the harvest season coming soon.

  Something to discuss with Sera.

  The morning air was cool against his face, carrying the smell of wet fields and wildflowers growing in tangled clusters along the roadside. Birdsong filled the hedgerows. Their boots crunched on the damp earth, falling into a rhythm that matched without trying.

  Hanna was a different creature outside the healer's smock. On the road, the professional briskness loosened into a warmer and slower pace. She talked easily, questions tumbling out in quick succession, her curiosity pulling the conversation forward like a current.

  The topic gravitated to the dungeon. Leo shared what he was comfortable sharing - creatures, terrain, the quality of the air and the way sound behaved underground. Hanna fired back questions that revealed how much she'd already learned from Sera and Healer Marta's books.

  "There's a moss that grows on tunnel walls near running water," Hanna said, her fingers tapping against the strap of her satchel as she walked. "Dark green, almost bck. Feels slimy. You've probably seen it and ignored it."

  "Probably."

  "It's called clotter's veil. Marta uses it as a coagunt. Applied to an open wound, it stops bleeding faster than any compress. A fist-sized clump, dried and ground, is worth about thirty coppers to any healer who knows what it is."

  Leo looked at her.

  "And there's a lichen," she continued, warming to the subject, "pale yellow, grows on stone where there's a Strangler. That's the base for fever reducers. Marta's been rationing hers since spring. If you could bring back a pouch of it, I'd buy it from you myself."

  "You're telling me I've been walking past medicine and leaving it on the walls."

  "Dungeon-sourced ingredients are more potent than surface-grown," Hanna adjusted her spectacles. "Just keep an eye out, and I'll take whatever you bring back."

  Leo filed it all away. Another income stream that cost nothing but attention.

  They walked on. The fields gave way to scrubnd, and the road climbed a gentle rise. At the top, the hills ahead rolled toward Rockhaven in long green waves, the distant town a smudge of rooftops and chimney smoke on the horizon.

  "Leo," Hanna said. Her tone had changed. Still casual, but with the careful lightness of someone about to ask a question they've been holding. "Could I come with you sometime? Into the dungeon."

  Leo's stride broke - half a step's hesitation. He looked at her. The mousy brown braid, the freckled face, the satchel full of bandages and salves. He'd been thinking of Hanna's curiosity as just...that, for academic's sake. He didn't expect her to be someone who'd want to go into the Pit.

  "That's probably not a good idea," he said, not unkindly. "We're still figuring things out ourselves. We can't protect a fourth person down there. If you want to see the dungeon, you should hire mercenaries. That's what they're there for."

  Hanna ughed. A short, easy sound that said she'd expected this answer and had come prepared.

  "I'm quite good with a bow."

  Leo gave her a skiptical look and Hanna held it for a second. Two. Then her grin cracked.

  "Fine. Not 'quite good', but good enough," She held up her hands in surrender. "I can protect myself. I'm not asking to be carried."

  "Hanna..."

  "Marsh's wife is giving birth soon. When that happens, he's not going into the dungeon. He'll be home with Dar and the baby, which is exactly where he should be," she let the implication settle. "That leaves you and Sera."

  Leo could see that she'd thought about this, turned it over from multiple angles before bringing it to him.

  "I can't decide that alone," he said. "I need to talk to Sera and Marsh."

  "That's fair," Hanna nodded once. No lingering push, no trailing 'just think about it.' She dropped the topic and moved on as if it had been a conversation about the weather.

  They walked in comfortable silence for a stretch. The road dipped into a shallow valley, and the scrubnd thickened with hawthorn and wild bramble. The smell of wet earth shifted to something greener and sharper.

  "There's something else," Hanna said.

  Leo raised an eyebrow.

  "I want to hire you. An escort job, to the mountain near Ashwick. I need to gather herbs for Marta, and I can't go alone."

  "Why not hire mercenaries?"

  The question was reflexive, and he regretted the phrasing the moment it left his mouth, because Hanna's expression shifted. A tightening around the eyes, the jaw setting for half a second before she answered.

  "No mercenary worth anything would take a herb-gathering job when the dungeon pays ten times as much for the same hours. It's beneath their dignity," she paused, looking at the road ahead. "And the ones who would take it... I tried that once. Had to chase the man off at arrow point."

  "You're Sera's husband," Hanna continued. "Sera's my friend. And...forgive me for being blunt. You've changed since...the beating. More reliable, if the stories Sera told me are true," a sideways gnce, her amber eyes sharp behind the crooked spectacles. "I don't know what happened to you. But the person you are now is someone I think I can trust on a mountainside."

  Leo walked on for a few paces, turning it over. The mountain. He'd seen it from the fields, a dark mass rising north of Ashwick, its lower slopes thick with forest, and the top was bare stone. The old Leo had gone there occasionally for firewood or hunting trips. The new Leo had never set foot on it.

  It would be a lie to say that he wasn't curious.

  "When?" He asked.

  "The day before Aelra's Grace. I'll pay you a fair rate, and you keep anything interesting you find up there."

  "Alright."

  Hanna's relief surfaced as a small nod and a 'good'. She started talking about the mountain immediately: which slopes had the best growth, how long the trip would take, and what she needed to gather. Her voice picked up speed, the way it always did when she was interested in something, and Leo let the information wash over him, filing the useful parts and letting the rest settle into the background.

  The road curved east, toward the ancient stone bridge. The fields on either side gave way to orchards, then to the first outlying farms of Rockhaven's hinternd. Smoke from cooking fires thickened the air. A cart passed them heading the other direction, the driver nodding without slowing.

  Then Rockhaven appeared, the same cramped jumble of stone and timber that had greeted him the first time. The smells were also the same - river water and fish guts, and woodsmoke from a hundred hearths.

  The jumble of noises sounded as busy and frantic as Leo remembered. He and Hanna paused at the edge of the market square.

  "I need the apothecary and the herb merchant on Miller's Lane," Hanna said, shifting her satchel to the other shoulder. "You?"

  "I need to sell all these. Then the butcher, and whatever Sera will forgive me for spending money on."

  "Meet back here when we're done?"

  "Works for me."

  Hanna adjusted her spectacles one final time, gave him a nod, and turned into the crowd. Leo watched her for a moment before turning toward the merchant quarter. The weight of the luggage pressed against his back, and the armor ptes shifted with each step, dense and heavy.

  He adjusted the pack on his shoulders and walked into the noise.