Chapter 173: Not so Welcome
Chapter 173: Not so Welcome
The gate came down with a final, heavy thud.
Rohan felt it through the soles of his boots.
For a moment, that sound meant safety. Not complete safety, obviously. He was still wounded, surrounded by armed strangers, and standing in a settlement on a planet that appeared to have been designed by someone with a personal grudge against lungs. But the wind was gone from his back. The endless ash field was no longer open on every side. There were walls behind him now.
Walls meant people had survived long enough to build them.
That thought had barely settled before something else appeared in front of him.
A translucent panel opened in the air.
Rohan stopped walking.
[You have entered Veyrhold.]
[Quest Received: Report to the Ash-House]
[Objective: Follow Captain Maerin to the Ash-House.]
[Reward: Local Knowledge]
[Penalty: None]
Rohan stared at the panel.
Then he stared harder.
Captain Maerin, who had taken three steps ahead before noticing he was no longer moving, turned back with narrowed eyes.
"What is it?"
Rohan did not answer immediately.
He lifted one hand slowly and waved it through the panel. His fingers passed through the glowing text without resistance, scattering the image for half a second before it reassembled.
A quest.
His Origin Realm system had never done this.
It recorded kills. It dropped Origin Crystals. It reflected genes and progress in a way that felt mechanical, almost transactional. It did not tell him what to do. It did not hand out objectives. It did not reward him for following along with things he had already planned to do.
This Great System did.
And that difference was immediately fascinating.
’I already knew this universe’s system was much more active, but this is unexpected.’
That was the first thought.
The second was less comforting.
’And more intrusive.’
The Origin Realm’s system felt like a structure built around rules. The Great System felt like something watching him and deciding what counted as meaningful. But then again, he had met the creator of said system, and this description might not be far off from the truth.
He glanced at the words again.
[Reward: Local Knowledge]
The reward was exactly what he wanted most right now. He had no current need for any physical items or the like — after all, how would he even use them? He still had no idea how to grow stronger with this new system.
That alone made him uneasy.
"Rohan," Maerin said.
Her voice was sharper this time.
He blinked, then lowered his hand.
"Nothing dangerous," he said. "Just... new."
Maerin’s eyes moved across the empty space in front of him, then back to his face. She clearly could not see the panel.
That was useful to know.
Also worrying.
"You will explain that inside," she said.
"I had a feeling."
The panel remained for another breath, then folded away into nothing.
Rohan followed her deeper into Veyrhold.
The settlement felt smaller from within than it had looked from the outside, though not because there were few buildings. If anything, there were more structures packed behind the walls than he had expected. They were simply built low, close, and heavy, as if every house had been bracing itself against the sky for centuries.
Narrow paths wound between them, paved with black stone plates worn smooth by countless footsteps. Ash had gathered in every corner where the wind still managed to creep through gaps in the walls, but the streets were not buried in it. People swept constantly. Rohan saw two children with wrapped faces dragging stiff-bristled brushes along the edge of a wall while an older woman followed with a metal pan, collecting the ash as carefully as if it were grain.
No one wasted movement.
No one wasted anything.
Most of the buildings were made from salvaged metal, black slabs, and something that resembled fired clay but had a faint glassy sheen. Windows were narrow and shuttered. Roofs sloped steeply so ash could not settle too heavily on them. Pipes ran between several houses, disappearing underground or into squat stone vents. Here and there, silver lenses were mounted on poles at intersections, smaller versions of the devices on the wall.
Rohan noticed all of it because noticing things had become one of the few ways he stayed alive.
He also noticed the people.
There were more than he expected.
Dozens had gathered near the gate despite the danger outside. Men and women in layered ash-cloth. Children peering from behind doorways. Elderly faces wrapped in scarves, eyes pale or dark or smoke-grey above cracked skin. Most were thin. Not starving, exactly, but lean in the way people became when food was measured carefully and every day required work.
They looked human.
Not almost human. Not alien with a convenient shape. Human.
That should have reassured him.
Instead, it made his chest tighten.
Because if humans lived here, truly lived here, then they had either come here willingly or been trapped here.
And nothing about Veyrhold looked willing.
The patrol carried Bryan ahead toward a separate building with a red-black cloth hanging over its door. Liora was taken in the same direction, still glaring at the shield-bearer who refused to put her down. Rohan half expected to be taken there too, but Maerin led him along a different street, away from the immediate medical rush.
"Shouldn’t someone look at my arm?" he asked.
"They will."
"That sounded like ’eventually.’"
"It was."
"Comforting."
"You are standing and speaking. Bryan is not."
Rohan glanced toward the building where the injured had vanished.
"Fair."
Maerin did not soften, but some of the edge left her eyes.
"You will be treated at the ash-house. First, you will be cleaned. No one enters deeper into Veyrhold carrying wild ash."
Rohan looked down at himself.
The ash coating his arms had dulled now, less like living material and more like cracked paint over skin. Blood had dried in streaks where the skarn had bitten him. His sleeves were torn, his back ached from the cinder blast, and the spear in his hand still smelled faintly of burnt stone.
"Wild ash," he repeated.
Maerin’s gaze sharpened.
"You do not know what that means."
"No."
"Yet you used it."
"And?."
Maerin just shook her head, as if his questioning it was that far fetched.
She studied him as they walked.
Rohan had the distinct impression she was trying to decide whether he was lying, dangerous, ignorant, or some miserable combination of all three.