### Chapter 4: The Kettholme Contract

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**PART ONE**

The request board outside Haven's main hall had six postings pinned to it by the time Ethan found it, three weeks after the Thistlebound that hadn't attacked him.

Three weeks of small jobs. Escort work, mostly — walking a trade cart between outposts, standing watch while someone repaired a section of the eastern fence line. Nothing that tested him the way that first supply run had. Nothing that answered the question sitting under everything he did now, the one he still hadn't found a way to even begin chasing.

*Is there a way home. Is anyone even looking.*

He was still turning that over when Mura, riding contentedly on his shoulder these days despite every early protest, made a small interested sound and batted at a posting near the bottom of the board.

**KETTHOLME — CONTRACT — Glasswing Choir swarm, mine entrance #3. Disrupting production. Payment in trade credit + Frostmere preserves. Two capable linkers minimum.**

Ethan read it twice.

Not a Haven patrol assignment. A paid job, posted by a village that wasn't even his own, for a problem Haven's official structure hadn't prioritized enough to send its own people after. Exactly the kind of thing a freelancer would take.

*Mercenary work,* he thought, and something in his chest sat with the word differently than it had three weeks ago, standing at the gate telling Sato he wasn't ready for a fixed patrol route. Less like a rejection now. More like a decision he was only just getting around to actually making.

"Two capable linkers minimum," said a voice behind him, amused. "Guess that means you're bringing a plus-one, new guy."

Ethan turned. The man leaning against the hall's doorway was maybe two or three years older, solidly built in a way that read as earned rather than natural, dark hair with a visible copper-red tint at the roots that Ethan's two months here had taught him to read instantly. Fire-Bleed. Strong bond, judging by how deep the color ran.

"You've been talking to Reyes," Ethan said. It wasn't a question. Something in the man's easy, assessing look told him exactly who this was before anyone said a name out loud.

"Everyone's been talking about you a little." The man pushed off the doorframe and offered a hand. "Dallin Cross. You're the one who talked a Thistlebound out of a fight instead of starting one. Reyes brings it up more than you'd think."

"Does she." Ethan shook his hand, filing the name away the way he filed everything now. Dallin's grip was firm, confident, the handshake of someone used to being the most capable person in most rooms he walked into — not arrogant about it, exactly, but comfortable with it in a way Ethan wasn't sure he'd ever manage himself.

"She does." Dallin nodded at the posting. "I was about to take that one solo. Kettholme's good people, bad payer, but the preserves alone are worth the trip. Glasswing Choir's a numbers problem, though — not something I love doing alone." His eyes flicked to Mura, assessing without being rude about it. "Poison-type. Crowd control, if I had to guess."

"You'd have to guess right."

"Good." Dallin grinned, easy and genuine. "Then let's find out if the rumors about you are true."

---

The mine entrance sat at the base of Kettholme's terraced hillside, half-swallowed in late-afternoon shadow, and Ethan heard the swarm before he saw it — a high, layered hum that climbed and dipped in something almost like harmony, exactly as his notebook had described it weeks before he'd ever expected to face one.

*The choir before the strike,* he thought, and felt the old instinct from his first thirty days rise up cleanly, without the panic that used to come with it. *Listen for the pattern. Don't just survive it.*

"There," Dallin said quietly, nodding toward the dark mouth of the tunnel, where a shifting, glinting cloud pulsed faint light in near-perfect unison. Dozens of them, easily — individually weak, Ethan's notes reminded him, dangerous entirely because of the number.

"Class II," Ethan murmured, mostly to himself. "In a swarm this size, that math changes fast."

"Smart boy." Dallin's own creature dropped from his shoulder and took shape beside him — something built low and broad, scaled hide banded in deep ember-orange, heat shimmering faintly off its back even in the cooling air. "This is Cinder. Fire clears a path. You handle whatever gets through."

Ethan felt Mura go tense against his neck, that now-familiar readiness settling over both of them at once — not fear, not anymore, something closer to focus.

"Ready?" Ethan asked, quiet, and felt more than heard the small creature's answer.

*Ready.*

They went in together.