The Mercenary Association squatted on its square of stone like a patient predator. Sandstone walls rose blind and thick; banners hung like old scars. The doors were tall enough to walk a giant through, and engraved with lions, suns, and scales that had decided to share the same room whether they liked each other or not.
Inside, the hall breathed heat and noise. Ink-stained clerks moved like blood through arteries, shuffling ledgers, ringing seals onto wax. The air was a mosaic: leather and iron, sweat and cinnamon, the sharp smell of oil, the dull residue of aura. Crews slouched on benches or stood, coiled, at the edges—colors, scars, battered insignia. The walls were a shout of parchment—missions pinned up like trophies, some new, some old, some that smelled like old grief.
They moved together through it, drawing looks. Not because they were famous; because they were made of the kind of quiet that gets famous later.
At the registration counter, a woman whose wrinkles had names looked up, pen hovering. "Unit designation?"
"J–Crew," Blake said, sweetly.
The pen paused. The corner of her mouth tilted a degree. "Leadership?"
"John," John said. He slid a token across—Merchant Association seal gleaming. Eyes flicked; doors opened.
"Rank?" she asked.
"E–Rank," John said. "Steps: Third." He gestured to the others, and the clerk's pen scribbled as he spoke. "Tamara, E–Rank, Step Two. Blake, E–Rank, Step Two. Mara, E–Rank, Step Three. Sera, E–Rank, Step Three. Lysa, E–Rank, Step Two."
"Spirit beast?" the clerk asked, finally noticing Ember because Ember allowed it.
"E–Rank, Step Three," John said. Ember looked smug. Sera hid a smile with her hand.
The clerk stamped each line with a rhythm that belonged to a different war. "Charter registered. J–Crew provisional. You'll want something clean to cut your teeth on. Don't start with a sand-wyrm for pride's sake. Board's yours."
They drifted to the mission wall. The paper forest breathed. Some notices were written like boasts; some like begging letters; some like curses. John let the noise blur until only the shape of words mattered.
Lysa stopped first, fingers just not touching a sheet that hummed in the air as if it had swallowed a storm and was trying to burp it up.
"Infestation," she read. "Eastern canyon spurs. Aerial predators. Disrupting supply lines and travel. Multiple sightings—lightning affinity. Cores requested."
"Good," John said. Lightning burned clean. Lightning taught discipline. Lightning made the right kind of mess.
Blake craned over her shoulder. "Arrowhawks. I hate arrowhawks."
"You hate anything that can stab you from above," Mara said.
"Unfair," Blake said. "I also hate anything that can stab me from underneath."
Sera's cheeks lifted. "So… ground and sky. Very brave."
"Balanced," Blake corrected, then scowled at the parchment. "We're going to need nets. Or rocks."
"Or cold," Tamara said, mildly.
They looked at John. He didn't hesitate. He pulled the notice down, took it to the clerk, and stamped his name in wax under the Association seal.
"Field test," he said, half to his crew and half to the voice in his mind. "We get in, we collect cleanly, we get out."
Bring me a problem, Alaric said, pleased. Let's see how you do outside of the lab. It's been a while since you've had a good battle.
John handed the notice to Lysa. " I'll need you to take Blake and gather the necessary supplies we will need."
"Two rocks it is," Blake said solemnly.
Tamara caught his sleeve as they moved toward the doors. "You're sure?" Her voice was pitched for him alone. It wasn't doubt. It was the habit of reading weather.
" we had to move forward" John said "
She nodded and didn't let go for one heartbeat longer than necessary.
They returned home as the city leaned into afternoon. Vulgrat had done violence to the cellar in the way only a certain kind of devotion can—shelves squared, inventory chalked on slate, tools laid out like bones ready for a ritual. The lab had stopped being a room and started being an argument that would keep time busy for months.
"I labeled the unlabeled labels," Vulgrat reported, somehow proud and wounded at once. "And I borrowed—temporarily—the Association's extra condenser coils through an understanding with a man who hates me."
"Good," John said. "Try not to explode anything while we're gone."
Vulgrat looked offended. " Last time was an accident."
"explosions are how you become a better alchemist that's what my master told me" John said.
Outside, the courtyard had become a motor. Gear checked, straps pulled, blades kissed with oil. Mara tested the bite of her shield against the edge of a stair. It answered. Lysa rolled her shoulders, the faint shimmer of a stored technique slithering down her forearms and then going quiet. Sera counted bandages out loud because numbers are spells. Blake did that thing where he juggled knives when he was nervous, then pretended he wasn't. Ember sat squarely in the middle of everything and looked pleased with how important he was.
John tightened the last buckle on his vambrace and let silence fall.
"We go clean," he said. "We don't get clever until clever is safe. I want cores, not stories. If we get both, fine."
He looked to Tamara. Her eyes were calm water under ice. "Freeze their wings," he said. "I'll break their fall."
She nodded once.
"And if the sky grows teeth," Mara added dryly, slipping her arm under her shield's straps, "I will stand in the mouth."
Blake snorted. "Leave some for the rest of us."
"Take what you can catch," she said.
They filed out through the gate in a line that looked like it had always been a line. The city poured around them—market shouts and the ring of hammers, the flash of coins in sun, the cough of incense, the low talk of men who watched doors for a living. They took the eastern road, the one that fell off the ridge into a throat of sand that became the world.
Wind combed the dunes. The light tasted like iron.
By the time they left the last arc of stone behind, the sound of the city had folded back into itself. The only noise was their steps, the rasp of leather, the whisper of breath, and the faint, growing hiss that came from nowhere and everywhere at once—the kind of sound a storm made before it remembered how to be a storm.
Static prickled along John's arms. Fine hairs lifted. He could feel the shape of the canyon in the way the wind changed its mind—slower, then sudden. Ember glanced up, ears forward, eyes bright.
Feel it? Alaric asked, more a smile than a question. Good. Let it feel you back.
John looked ahead. The land broke open in the distance where rock shouldered up through dunes and the world grew ribs.
He didn't look behind him, because he didn't need to.
"J–Crew," Blake said from somewhere near his shoulder, mostly to hear how it sounded in the open. "Gods, that name."
"Shut up and walk," Mara said.
They did.
The wind rose. The sky hummed.
Somewhere above the bones of the land, something screamed like metal being taught how to fly.
And the sand kept its secrets, for now.