The heavy, iron-bound doors of the Golden Anvil remained shut, but the air inside the Nev?ehir Adventurer’s Guild was already boiling. It wasn't just the desert heat leaking in from the Turkish sun; it was the collective friction of three hundred nervous mercenaries. Every table was packed. Men and women in mismatched leather and plate armor sharpened blades with a rhythmic, grating skritch-skritch that set everyone’s teeth on edge.

  At the center of the room, the Wolffire Group occupied the "Champion’s Table." They didn't sharpen their blades; their equipment was already perfect. Their leader, a man with a scarred neck and eyes like flint, stared at the closed doors of the Guild Master’s office. They were the only ones who looked ready to handle whatever was behind that wood, while everyone else just looked ready to bolt.

  In the very back, tucked into a corner where the shadows were deepest, seven-year-old Danikeli Kusuri sat on a bench that was far too high for him. His boots dangled six inches off the floor. To anyone passing by, he looked like a lost child waiting for a parent, but his small hands were wrapped tightly around the hilt of a sword that looked like it had seen better centuries.

  Danikeli wiped a bead of sweat from his nose. He felt like a furnace was stashed in his chest, a pulsing heat that made the back of his neck prickle. He just wanted to go home and play, but he’d heard the whispers in the streets of Nev?ehir. The "Bottomless Cave" was waking up. People were scared of a "Dungeon Break," and if the adults were scared, Danikeli figured someone had to help.

  Suddenly, the secondary doors leading to the inner sanctum slammed open. The Guild Master stepped out, a massive scroll clutched in his fist, and the entire room went dead silent. The skritch of whetstones stopped mid-stroke.

  "Listen up!" the Master roared, his voice thick with a dread he couldn't quite hide. "The barrier is holding, but it’s a cage, not a shield. No one is coming from the High Court. Hero Malaccus is a legend, not a savior. We are the only ones left in this region."

  He unrolled the scroll with a violent snap. "Derinkuyu is surging. S-Rank quest: Total clearance. If the Bottomless Cave isn't emptied by sunrise, there won't be a city left to stand in."

  Gemini said

  The Guild Master slammed the heavy parchment onto the registration desk, and the silence in the hall turned into a frantic scramble. The scraping of chairs against stone sounded like a battlefield as every major party surged forward, but the Wolffire Group didn't need to scramble. They moved with a synchronized, predatory grace that parted the crowd like a blade through silk.

  The leader, a man known only by the alias White Wolf, reached the desk first. His white-enameled plate armor caught the torchlight, and he didn't even look at the other adventurers as he reached for the quill. To his left and right stood his constant shadows, Red Wolf and Green Wolf. They loomed over the desk, their hands resting on the pommels of their weapons, ensuring no one dared to interrupt their commander’s signature.

  "This is a Wolffire operation," White Wolf stated, his voice cool and devoid of any doubt. "The rest of you can pick through the scraps on the upper levels once we’ve secured the descent."

  Red Wolf let out a sharp, mocking bark of laughter. "If there’s anything left of the monsters to scrap, that is."

  "Just stay out of the way," Green Wolf added, his eyes scanning the room with a bored flick. "We don't have time to bail out amateurs when the dungeon breaks."

  Amidst the wall of steel and muscle, a small, tugging sensation at the edge of the desk went unnoticed. Danikeli had managed to squeeze through a gap between a mercenary’s greaves and the wooden counter. He stood on his tiptoes, his chin barely clearing the edge of the registration log. He looked at the massive scroll, then up at White Wolf’s stern, masked face.

  "Excuse me," Danikeli piped up, his voice small but remarkably clear in the tension of the room. "Is this where we sign up to help the city?"

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  White Wolf paused, the quill hovering an inch above the parchment. He looked down, his eyes narrowing behind his visor as he finally noticed the seven-year-old boy. The heat radiating from the child was subtle, like a distant hearth, but it was enough to make the air around the desk shimmer with a faint, unnatural haze.

  Red Wolf snickered, leaning over. "Go home, kid. The Bottomless Cave isn't a playground, and we aren't babysitters."

  Danikeli didn't flinch. He gripped his old sword a little tighter, the leather wrap on the hilt beginning to smoke almost imperceptibly as his Great Sage magic reacted to his resolve. "I have a sword," he said simply. "And I'm not scared of the dark."

  Green Wolf reached out, intending to ruffle the boy’s hair and shove him toward the exit, but he pulled his hand back with a hiss of pain before he even touched a strand. "What the—kid, you’re boiling!"

  White Wolf looked down, his gaze shifting from the boy’s determined face to the floor. The wooden planks beneath Danikeli’s small boots were no longer just dusty; they were turning a deep, charcoal black. A faint wisp of white smoke curled up from the floorboards, and the smell of toasted cedar began to drift through the stagnant air of the guild hall.

  "The floor," Red Wolf muttered, his hand dropping to the hilt of his axe. "Look at the floor."

  The crowd of adventurers, who had been ready to laugh at the sight of a child at the registration desk, suddenly surged backward. The air in a five-foot radius around Danikeli was vibrating, distorted by a localized heat shimmer that made the boy look like a mirage. To Danikeli, it just felt like he was having a particularly warm afternoon, but to the veteran wolves of the Wolffire Group, it felt like standing in front of a blast furnace.

  White Wolf didn't shove him. He didn't even mock him. He stared at the kid’s sword—a battered, plain-looking thing—and noticed that the air around the blade was glowing with a soft, predatory blue light that flickered like a candle in a gale. It was a signature of magic that bypassed "Advanced" and went straight into the realm of the "Great Sage," the kind of power that could theoretically burn through the protective barrier isolating Nev?ehir if the boy actually knew what he was doing.

  "Who are your parents, boy?" White Wolf asked, his voice losing its icy edge and replacing it with a sharp, professional caution.

  "They're at home," Danikeli said, squinting up at the man in white armor. "They told me to stay inside because of the 'Dungeon Break,' but they didn't say I couldn't help clear it first. Can I sign now? I brought my own quill."

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a feather that was already smoldering at the tip.

  "You're a liability," Green Wolf snapped, though he stayed two steps back. "You'll set the whole dungeon on fire and collapse the tunnels on our heads!"

  "I'll be careful," Danikeli promised, finally spotting a blank line on the parchment. Before White Wolf could stop him, the boy reached out. As his finger brushed the paper to steady it, the edges of the Great Scroll of Nev?ehir began to brown and curl.

  "Enough!" The Guild Master’s voice boomed like a crack of thunder, and he snatched the scroll away just as the corner began to turn to ash. He held the parchment close to his chest, staring at the singed edges with a look of pure horror. "This is a legal mandate from the oversight committee! I don't care how hot your 'fever' is, kid, I'm not explaining to the city council why the S-Rank quest is a pile of soot!"

  He looked at the charred circle where Danikeli stood and then at White Wolf, who was still standing with his hand poised over the table, frozen in a rare moment of indecision.

  "Master," White Wolf said, his voice regaining its authority, "the boy is clearly a fire elementalist of some unknown grade. But he’s seven. Putting his name on this scroll is a death sentence for him and a logistical nightmare for us. The Wolffire Group cannot be held responsible for a child who spontaneously combusts in the middle of a tactical descent."

  Red Wolf stepped around the charred wood, keeping a wide berth. "He’s a walking bomb. One 'oops' in the lower tunnels of Derinkuyu and we're all buried under five miles of Turkish bedrock."

  "I won't say 'oops,'" Danikeli said, his lower lip trembling just slightly. The heat in the room spiked. A nearby mug of ale began to simmer, tiny bubbles rising to the surface. "I just want to help. My fire is good! It makes the monsters go away."

  The Guild Master looked from the smoldering floor to the boy’s wide, blue eyes. He knew the High Court was absent. He knew that the barrier had trapped them with whatever was currently clawing its way up from the bottomless depths. Desperation did strange things to a man’s judgment.

  "Fine," the Guild Master exhaled, his face pale. "You want to sign? You sign as a Solo Independent. But you stay five hundred yards behind the Wolffire Group. If you even breathe on their capes, I'm revoking your license before you can say 'Hero Malaccus.'"

  White Wolf let out a sharp, disgusted huff. "He won't make it past the first staircase. Let him sign. It’ll be a short lesson in reality."

  He tossed the quill onto the desk. It landed near Danikeli’s hand and immediately began to smoke.