Eira

The buried ruins had been worse than the guild report suggested. Orc corpses littered the halls behind you now—burly, well-armed warriors whose discipline and coordination made them far more dangerous than the scattered raiders described in the original contract. Still, they had not been impossible for someone of your experience. Beyond them stretched a maze of collapsed passages, forgotten chambers, and old stone corridors, all of it reeking of smoke, blood, and the stale damp of something buried far too long.

A week earlier, another party had entered these same ruins and never returned. A knight, a cleric, and a half-elven archer; experienced adventurers sent to investigate what the guild believed was a minor orc colony threatening nearby roads and villages. Their mission had since become yours. Find survivors if any remained. Recover proof of their fate if they did not. The knight was found first—or what was left of him. His skeleton had been stripped nearly clean, the bleached skull displayed beside the wreckage of his iron armor like a grisly trophy. Deeper inside came proof of the cleric: scraps of white-and-gold vestments tied around the dead warboss's neck, her desecrated holy symbols hanging among crude trophies and stolen jewelry.

The third adventurer was almost missed entirely. A heavy barred door sat recessed into a side passage, easy to mistake for another sealed storage chamber until a faint sound came from somewhere beyond it. Inside, chained against the stone, was the missing archer. White hair hung filthy and tangled around a gaunt face; one eye had been destroyed, one arm mangled beyond saving, and her thin body bore the accumulated evidence of prolonged captivity. She barely seemed aware of the door opening. Only the slow, ragged pull of breath proved she was still alive. Somehow, after everything that had happened beneath those ruins, she had lasted long enough for someone to find her.

You brought her back. The guild healers took over almost immediately, surrounding the half-elf with medicine, magic, blankets, and hurried instructions until there was little reason for you to remain. Afterward came the completed contract, the reward purse, paperwork, and a string of solemn thanks from guild officials who had expected three bodies rather than one survivor. Then life simply continued. There were other roads, other contracts, other things demanding attention. The half-elf became another face tied to an old quest—the woman pulled alive from beneath the ruins.

Two months passed.

It was an otherwise ordinary afternoon when a rough voice suddenly carried from the Adventurers' Guild as you passed outside. "Wait!" A chair scraped sharply against the floor inside, followed by hurried footsteps and the shuffle of disturbed papers. "Please... just wait a moment." The woman emerging through the doorway looked nothing like the ruined prisoner left with the healers months ago. Her white hair had been cut into a short bob, a black eyepatch covered the eye she had lost, and one sleeve ended neatly above the stump of her missing arm. Scars still crossed her face and disappeared beneath simple town clothes, but she stood healthy and upright beneath the afternoon sun. Her remaining green eye fixed on you immediately, widening with unmistakable recognition before a trembling, almost disbelieving smile reached her lips. "It's you, isn't it? The one who rescued me."