Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
The sound of Mich’s enchanted quill was the only thing keeping her tethered to sanity. As long as she focused on the scratching of the nib against the rough parchnt, as long as she focused on the ink forming neat, orderly columns of numbers and nas, she didn't have to look up.
If she looked up, she would have to face the end of the world.
"Miss? Excuse , Miss?"
Mich paused, the quill hovering a fraction of an inch above a ledger titled Ergency Rations: Warehouse C. She closed her eyes for a brief, agonising second, drew a long breath through her nose, and smoothed her expression into the calm, professional mask expected of a Guild Representative.
She looked up.
The man standing across her desk was shaking violently. He was missing his left boot, his linen tunic was torn and stained black with dried blood, and he clutched a filthy blanket tightly around his shoulders. He looked like he had run for days without stopping. Behind him, the main hall of the Ashenfall Adventurer's Guild was a scene of absolute, ear-splitting bedlam.
It wasn't a guildhall anymore. It was a refugee camp.
Every square inch of floor space was occupied. People were huddled on bedrolls, slouched against pillars, or simply lying on the cold stone, too exhausted to move. The air was thick with the sll of sweat and fear. The constant murmur of a hundred hushed voices, punctuated by the sharp wails of crying children and the low groans of the injured, created a suffocating wall of noise.
"Yes, sir. How can I assist you?" Mich asked, her voice steady and modulated.
"My wife," the man stamred, his eyes darting frantically around the room. "I... I lost her when the portal broke. In Oakhaven. The sky... it just shattered, miss. Like glass. Purple glass. Have you seen her? Elain. Her na is Elain."
Mich felt a sharp pang of sympathy beneath her administrative armour. She reached out, opening a different ledger. "I am so sorry, sir. Let check the arrivals registry. Elain, you said? What is her family na?"
"Miller. Elain Miller. She had a blue shawl." The man leaned heavily against the desk, his knuckles white. "The beasts... they ca out of the woods. The adventurers and guards... they were ant to hold them. We were told if we got out of town and got here we’d be safe and they’d shut the portal down. But they must have failed. Please, tell she made it."
Mich ran her slender finger down the pages of nas she had taken over the last forty-eight hours. Miller, Arthur. Miller, Thomas. No Elain.
"I'm sorry, Mr Miller," Mich said softly, looking back up. "She hasn't registered with us yet. But people are still arriving every hour. I will flag her na. If she checks in at the gates, I'll have a runner find you. Have you been assigned a cot?"
The man seed to deflate, his shoulders slumping. He looked suddenly older, hollowed out. "No. I just got through the gates."
"Take this chit." Mich handed him a small, stamped piece of wood. "Go to the courtyard out back. Follow the blue lanterns. They are setting up enchanted tents. There will be hot soup and bread."
He took the chit with trembling fingers, murmured a vacant "thank you", and shuffled away into the sea of bodies.
Mich watched him go, then imdiately picked up her quill. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. "I know," she whispered to the empty air. "I know. Things are bad."
The sky had broken three days ago, and refugees had started arriving initially in dribs and drabs two days ago, but now it was nearly a constant flood.
"Mich."
She looked up again, a sharp reprimand ready on her lips for whoever was skipping the line, but she paused when she saw who it was. Brother Silas, the head cleric of Ashenfall’s local temple, stood by her desk. He looked dreadful. His usually pristine white robes were stained with mud and blood, and his face was a sickly, ashen grey.
"Silas," Mich said, standing up quickly. "You shouldn't be walking. You have mana sickness."
Silas offered a weak, humourless smile, gripping the edge of her desk to steady himself. "If I stop walking, Mich, I think I might forget how. How are the numbers?"
Mich sighed, dropping her administrative façade for just a mont in front of the cleric. She rubbed her temples, tracing the delicate points of her ears. "Bad. Worse than bad. We took in six hundred refugees from the eastern portal towns by noon. Wagons are backed up for two miles down the southern road. We've run out of beds, we are running out of floor space, and the towns had to put the food stores on strict rationing. Half a loaf of bread and a bowl of broth per person, per day."
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"The injured?" Silas asked, his voice rough.
"That's why I need you to sit down, Silas. We are out of healing potions. The alchemists can't brew them fast enough; they're out of silver-leaf and mana crystals. I've had to instruct the guards at the triage tents to stop requesting magical healing for non-fatal wounds."
Silas closed his eyes, a look of profound guilt washing over his face. "I can heal a few more. I have to."
"Absolutely not," Mich snapped, her voice cracking like a whip. "If our head cleric burns himself out and dies, panic will riot through this camp faster than a plague. You are going to go to the back room, drink a cup of tea, and sleep for exactly four hours. That is an administrative order from the Guild, Brother Silas. Do not make call a bouncer to throw you into a bed."
Silas stared at her for a long mont, then slowly nodded. "You carry a heavy burden, Mich. You and your guild are holding this town together with paper and ink."
"Soone has to, with Hopeless and the others being gone. Anyway," she replied quietly, "go. Sleep."
As Silas shuffled away, a sudden commotion erupted near the heavy oak doors of the guildhall. Voices raised in anger.
Mich was on her feet instantly. She grabbed a small, brass gaphone artefact from her desk and strode toward the disturbance, weaving expertly through the crowded floor.
Near the doors, two burly town guards were blocking the path of a group of furious, heavily ard adventurers. The adventurers looked like they had been through a at grinder—armour dented, weapons notched, eyes wild with panic.
"I don't care about your damn list!" the lead adventurer, a massive warrior with a scarred face, bellowed at the guards. “My mage is bleeding out!” He pointed angrily towards his companion, a mage who stood next to him, a bloodied bandage held against his scalp. “He needs help, and we need rest. We always stay at the guild, and we are mbers."
"The guild is at capacity, sir," the guard said, his voice straining to remain calm while keeping his hand on the hilt of his sword. "You have to register and wait in the outer courtyard with the rest of—"
The warrior shoved the guard hard against the doorfra. "I'm a Level 24 Swordsman, you local glorified coathook! I don't wait in lines! Move, or I'll move you!"
The tension in the air spiked. Weapons were half-drawn. The refugees sitting nearby scread and scrambled backward, trying to get away from the imminent violence.
"Enough!"
Mich’s voice, magically amplified by the brass artefact, bood through the hall like a thunderclap.
The warrior whipped around, glaring down at the elven administrator. "Who the hell are you?"
"I am one of the Guild Representatives of Ashenfall, and you are currently standing in my building," Mich said, her voice ice-cold. She didn't flinch, didn't back down, despite being a foot shorter and twenty levels lower than the angry warrior.
She tapped a rune on the brass artefact, shifting its function. Instead of amplifying her voice, it projected a glowing, holographic screen in the air between them—a terrifyingly complex grid of logistics, red warning lights, and depleted inventory bars.
"You see this?" Mich demanded, pointing at the glowing numbers. "This is the reality of Ashenfall right now. We have no beds. We have no potions. We have two thousand terrified people who have lost their hos, their families, and their minds. You are not special because you have a high level. Your level ans nothing against starvation. It ans nothing against a riot."
The warrior sneered, but he hesitated, looking at the glowing red numbers. "My mage needs a healer."
"And so do the three hundred people in the triage tent out back, half of whom are children who got trampled when the portals collapsed," Mich shot back. "You will sheathe your weapon. You will step outside. You will wait in the line, and I will send out bandages and mundane dical supplies to your mage as soon as possible, and I will make sure he’s seen to as soon as possible, but you have to wait.” Mich took a breath, anger flaring in her eyes. “And, if you draw steel in my guildhall again, I will have the guards throw you back outside the gates, and you can take your chances with another town. Do we understand each other?"
The warrior stared at her. For a mont, Mich thought he was going to swing his blade. Her heart hamred against her ribs like a trapped bird.
But then, slowly, the warrior lowered his hands. He spat on the floor, turned, and shoved his way back out the heavy oak doors, his party limping behind him. The mage stopped to mouth an apology as he followed the swordsman away.
The silence that followed was heavy.
Mich took a deep breath, let the magical screen dissipate, and lowered the gaphone. "Alright, everyone," she called out to the nervous crowd, her voice returning to its normal, professional cadence. "The situation is handled. Please return to your rest."
She turned and walked away, her steps perfectly asured, until she reached the small, enclosed office behind her desk. She stepped inside, shut the door, locked it, and leaned her back against the wood.
Her legs gave out.
Mich slid down to the floor, pulling her knees to her chest. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably. She pressed her palms against her eyes, taking jagged, uneven breaths, allowing herself exactly sixty seconds of absolute, terrifying panic.
Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. Sixty.
She wiped her eyes, forced her hands to stop shaking, and stood up. She walked over to the small, reinforced window at the back of her office and looked out.
Beyond the sprawling, chaotic ss of the refugee tents in the courtyard, beyond the town walls, she could see it.
What had beco known as The Ward.
It was breathtaking, really. Hopeless—the strange, terrifying druid who had always just been a quiet administrator within Ashenfall’s town hall—had erected a masterpiece of primal magic. A massive, shimring do of translucent, erald-green and gold energy stretched high over the town, its surface rippling like water. Thick, glowing roots of hard-light magic anchored it to the earth, humming with a power so deep Mich could feel it in her teeth.
Outside the do, the world was a nightmare. The sky was wrong—streaked with unnatural purples and blacks.
Ashenfall was safe. For now.
The ward kept the monsters out. But it also kept the people in. No rchants were coming. No supply caravans were arriving. No one was leaving to farm or hunt.
Ashenfall wasn't just a sanctuary. It was an island in a sea of monsters. And if the world outside was truly gone, if the portals never stopped spewing out monsters and the skies never cleared... then they weren't surviving.
They were just taking a very long ti to starve.
Mich turned away from the window, smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt, and unlocked her door. She had ledgers to balance.
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