The village should've exhaled.
Darric was dead. The kennel was raided. Word traveled faster than gulls—quick, sharp, and hungry for details. Even the dockhands who pretended not to notice had started standing straighter, as if the air itself had changed.
So the Winking Widow should've breathed.
But the next morning, Ronan's slate didn't lie.
The flour came in. The salt came in. Lamp oil too—grudging, expensive, but present.
Meat didn't.
He stood at the counter with a list of vendors and a line of empty space where the butcher's name should've been.
Rowena watched him from behind the mugs, trying to keep her face calm. Miri pretended not to listen while her ears did exactly that.
Ronan tapped the slate once. "We killed a gang boss," he said quietly. "And our supply problem didn't move."
Rowena's throat worked. "Maybe they're just… recovering."
Ronan shook his head. "Fear doesn't 'recover.' It relocates."
He left the inn early—again—because waiting for answers was how you got strangled. He walked the market lane with coin ready, voice polite, posture unhurried.
A few vendors nodded to him now. Some even smiled, cautious and hopeful, as if the inn's success might become their success by proximity.
But when he asked about meat, eyes slid away.
Old Jory still sold fish, still grunted and offered extra per order like he'd promised—but even Jory looked tired, jaw set in a way that said don't ask me to do more than I can.
Marla Quill handed over dry spices with crisp efficiency, but her gaze flicked around too often, like she'd started counting who watched her hands.
Ronan found Kell the butcher again.
This time the shop's window was half-shuttered. The cutting block was there, the hooks still hung, but the stall felt… quieter. Smaller. Like someone had pulled their throat inward to avoid being heard.
Kell didn't look up when Ronan entered.
He didn't even pretend to.
"No," Kell said immediately, voice hoarse.
Ronan didn't waste effort on cash now. He just watched Kell's hands.
They shook worse today.
Not trembling from cold.
From pressure.
Ronan nodded once. "Paper man still visiting."
Kell's jaw clenched. He didn't confirm. He didn't deny. But his eyes flicked to the back—where a ledger likely sat, where a contract likely lay like a knife on a table.
Ronan leaned in slightly, voice low. "Is it about me," he asked, "or about her?"
Kell's hands paused.
That pause was an answer.
Ronan stepped back. "Alright."
Kell swallowed hard. "Don't—" he began, then stopped, like he didn't know how to finish a warning without betraying himself.
Ronan didn't force it. He turned and left, the decision forming with every step: if the village's arteries were being pinched, he'd stop depending on them.
He returned to the Winking Widow with fish and basics and a mind already sprinting.
Brann's team had the dining room in their usual controlled sprawl—maps out, notes written, boots lined. Sabine sat sharpening a spearhead with a whetstone, expression unreadable. Kael wasn't there; rumor said he'd been seen in three alleys before sunrise, and that the loudest street boys had suddenly decided to become quiet.
Ronan didn't care where Kael was.
He cared about meat.
He stepped to the staging table and dropped his slate down with a soft thud. "We're doing a meat run."
Brann looked up, eyes brightening like someone had said a beloved word. "Hunt?"
"Procurement," Ronan corrected.
Brann grinned anyway. "Hunt."
Sabine's gaze flicked up. "When?"
"Today," Ronan said. "Short run. In and out. No heroics."
Brann's grin widened. "You and your 'no heroics.'"
Ronan's eyes narrowed. "If we come back with broken bones, the inn starves. That's not a win."
Rowena hovered near the counter, hands twisting in her apron. "You're going… out there?"
Ronan looked at her. "Not alone."
Rowena's eyes tightened with worry. "But—"
Ronan cut the anxiety off cleanly, not unkind. "This is how we take control back."
He turned to Brann. "You know the nearby forest edges. Where game moves."
Brann nodded. "Boar. Deer. Some nasty things too."
Ronan nodded. "We take what we can quickly. We don't chase deep. We don't get dragged into a fight we don't need."
Sabine stood, spear in hand. "I'll go."
Brann barked a laugh. "Of course you will."
Sabine's mouth twitched. "It's action. And it's useful."
Ronan pointed at the slate. "Option two: we negotiate with a secondary butcher outside town. A coastal hamlet. A cart route. Someone who doesn't live under Gullwatch's paper."
Brann scratched his jaw. "We can reach Saltbend by mid-afternoon if we ride hard."
Ronan nodded. "Good. If hunting goes light, we go Saltbend."
Rowena blinked. "That's… far."
Ronan's voice stayed steady. "Far is safer than starved."
Then he added the third piece, the part that made his mind feel like it was clicking into place.
"We're also starting a trade board."
Miri froze mid-step. "A what?"
Ronan gestured toward the blank wall beside the policy board. "A board. Clear terms. Adventurers bring meat or monster parts, they get credit."
Brann raised a brow. "You want them paying in carcasses."
"I want predictable supply," Ronan replied. "And I want them invested in this place."
Sabine's eyes narrowed, impressed despite herself.
Ronan continued, "We set standards: no rotten meat, no venom sacs in the kitchen, no blood dragged through the common room. If it passes inspection, it gets weighed and credited."
Rowena's voice went small. "That sounds… complicated."
Ronan looked at her, firm. "It's simple when written clean. And it turns the inn into a hub."
He didn't say the other part aloud: it also made the inn harder to isolate. If vendors refused, adventurers could still feed it. If fear squeezed one artery, another would keep pumping.
Rowena swallowed and nodded, trying to stand steady under the weight of a plan that was bigger than her inn had ever been.
They didn't leave immediately.
Ronan went to the kitchen first and shifted it into "run mode."
He pulled out salted fish packs and wrote a menu adjustment on the slate:
Fish chowder (steady)
Bean stew (bulk)
Bread + pickled onion (cheap, reliable)
Meat dish only if secured
He set preservation tools out: salt, clean cloth, twine, a wide pan for rendering fat if they brought boar, and spare barrels lined with ash to keep pests out.
He showed Miri how to portion without panic—one ladle, one slice, consistent.
"No improvising because someone looks sad," Ronan said.
Miri nodded hard. "Yes."
Rowena lingered at the pantry door, looking at Ronan's hands, the way he moved, the way he made the kitchen feel like it was obeying instead of collapsing.
Relief softened her face.
Then, like always, the relief mixed with something else—an ache she didn't know where to put. She looked away quickly as if the kitchen might notice her thoughts.
Ronan caught it anyway.
He didn't comment. He just said, "Keep the front steady while we're gone."
Rowena nodded. "I will."
He paused at the backdoor, then added, quieter, "And if anyone asks about meat, you tell them we're adapting."
Rowena's eyes flicked up. "Adapt… like you do?"
Ronan's mouth twitched faintly. "Like we have to."
Before they could leave, Brann returned from his final survey sweep with mud on his boots and a look that meant news.
He gathered Ronan by the counter, voice low enough that it stayed inside the inn's ribs.
"It's confirmed," Brann said.
Ronan's posture tightened. "B?"
Brann nodded once. "C to B. Official shift. The dungeon's… changed."
Ronan felt it settle in his chest like a stone. "More teams."
Brann's grin was sharp, not happy. "More teams. More guild staff. Maybe a clerk. Maybe a supply officer. People who'll try to turn this place into a staging point because it's closest with a roof that doesn't leak."
Ronan exhaled. "And if we're still short on supplies—"
"We become the weak link," Brann finished.
He leaned closer. "And there's more."
Ronan's eyes narrowed. "Say it."
Brann's voice dropped. "We found trace veins inside. Rare mineral. Old stone-kin stuff." He made a small gesture with his fingers like pinching a shard. "Golem ore."
Ronan went still.
Golem ore meant money.
It also meant bigger trouble than street gangs. Real crews. Backers. Contracts. Disputes that didn't get settled with fists because people brought paper and armies instead.
Brann's gaze held Ronan's. "When word hits Greyhaven, the dungeon becomes a beacon."
Ronan nodded slowly. "And beacons attract ships."
"Ships and pirates," Brann said.
Ronan glanced toward the inn's policy board, the trade ideas forming, the rooms they were fighting to make rentable. He could almost feel the timeline compressing.
"How long until they arrive?" Ronan asked.
Brann shrugged. "Fast. People move faster when ore is involved."
Ronan nodded once. "Then we move first."
Brann's grin returned, this time with old camaraderie under it. "That's the Ronan I remember."
Ronan didn't smile. "I never left."
By late morning, Brann's team prepared to depart.
They packed with disciplined speed, straps tightened, cloaks rolled. Sabine adjusted her spear harness and checked her kit, eyes already on the meat run like it was a promise.
Brann paused at the door and looked back into the common room, letting the warmth of the inn hit him one last time.
"You've built something here," he said, almost grudging.
Ronan met his gaze. "I'm trying."
Brann grinned. "Keep trying. Greyhaven will hear about this place soon. Whether you want it or not."
Ronan nodded. "Safe road."
Brann stepped out with his people, boots splashing in the wet lane, and the inn felt briefly… emptier.
Not weaker.
Just quieter.
A traveler checked out as Brann left—a man who'd stayed one night, paid clean, spoke little. He nodded to Rowena, nodded to Ronan, and walked away without fuss, disappearing into mist like he'd never existed.
Rowena watched him go, then exhaled and turned back toward the counter.
Ronan's mind was already back on supply routes, on the forest edge, on trade boards and barrels and salt—
when something below the inn pulsed.
Not sound.
A sensation.
A single, low thrum like a heartbeat in stone.
Rowena froze mid-step.
Her hand went to her chest instinctively, as if something had tugged her from the inside.
Down below the kitchen—beneath boards she avoided, beneath the sealed space she never spoke about—her ring, hidden away with whatever secret it guarded, resonated once.
A thin ribbon of dark aura leaked from it—barely visible, more a wrongness in the air than a shadow—then snapped back inward as if the ring had tasted the world and decided to wait.
The inn's warmth steadied again.
The moment passed.
Rowena swallowed hard, face pale, and forced her hands to keep moving.
Ronan didn't see the ring.
But he saw Rowena's expression.
And the way her eyes flicked—just once—toward the floor, like she'd heard something calling from underneath.