Chapter 112 — The Slums

Chapter 112: Chapter 112 — The Slums

The slums looked smaller than he remembered.

Arlen stood at the edge of the district he’d grown up in, the familiar tangle of narrow streets and sagging tenements spreading out before him, and found himself struck, more than anything else, by how modest it all appeared now compared to the vast, sprawling shape it had once occupied in his memory — a whole world once, the boundary of everything he’d understood, now simply a cluster of streets he could walk end to end in under an hour.

He’d chosen to come alone, understanding that whatever this visit meant to him, it belonged to a part of his life he’d never properly shared with anyone in Greyhaven, not even Cobb or Sil or Reya, who knew him only as the careful, disciplined adventurer he’d become rather than the hungry, watchful boy he’d once been.

The tenement where he’d spent his childhood still stood, though considerably more weathered than his memory suggested, and Arlen found Old Maren’s stoop exactly where it had always been, three doors down from the building’s entrance.

He didn’t recognize the woman sitting there now.

"Looking for someone?" she asked, studying him with the wary caution of someone unaccustomed to well-dressed strangers wandering this particular street.

"I used to live near here," Arlen said. "There was a woman, Old Maren, who lived in this building. Kind. Fed half the street’s children when she could manage it."

The woman’s expression softened slightly. "Maren Ashcombe. She passed this past winter. Fever took her, same as it takes most people who live too long in buildings this drafty."

Arlen felt something settle heavily into his chest, a grief he hadn’t properly anticipated given how recently he’d last seen her — the memory of her cupping his face in both hands the morning he’d left for the guild, still sharp and close. "I’m sorry to hear that."

"You knew her?"

"She was kind to me, when I needed it most." Arlen studied the familiar stoop a moment longer. "Thank you, for telling me."

He continued through the district with a slower, more deliberate pace, the accumulated weight of memory settling over him with each familiar corner and alley he passed. He found the reading room where he’d once taught himself to read still standing, though the elderly clerk who’d once quietly set aside pamphlets for him had long since retired, replaced by a younger, considerably less patient attendant who eyed Arlen’s guild badge with open curiosity but little recognition.

He asked after Denna at the leatherworker’s stall she’d once apprenticed at, and learned, with a complicated mixture of relief and quiet melancholy, that she’d married a merchant’s son from Ashford’s Crossing three years prior and moved away entirely, apparently building a comfortable, ordinary life considerably removed from the slum streets they’d both grown up sharing.

Good for her, he thought, turning the news over with genuine, uncomplicated happiness for her sake, even as it closed one more door on the particular version of his past he’d hoped to properly revisit.

He made his way back toward the guild district as the afternoon wore on, and felt a small, guilty pang settle into him as he approached the tavern’s familiar entrance. He hadn’t properly sought Bram out in longer than he cared to admit — months, easily, swallowed up by training and quests and the accumulating urgency of everything since Millbrook. He’d told himself, more than once, that he’d stop by properly once things settled. Things had never quite settled.

He found Bram exactly where he always found him — seated on his usual bench outside the guild hall’s tavern entrance, cane resting beside him, his weathered face carrying the particular, settled quality of a man who’d made peace with his own accumulating years.

"Bram."

The old man looked up, and recognition dawned slowly across his features before breaking into something genuinely, warmly delighted. "Well. Look what the years dragged in."

Arlen settled onto the bench beside him, the same spot he’d once occupied countless times as a boy, listening to Bram’s stories about ports and kingdoms he’d never imagined actually visiting himself.

"I heard rumors," Bram said. "About some crisis out past the boundary. Guild Master’s true rank finally revealed, they say, though half the stories sound too wild to credit properly."

"Most of them are probably true," Arlen said. "I was there."

Bram studied him a long moment, something proud and quietly moved passing behind his weathered eyes. "Look at you. The boy who used to sit on this exact wall, watching adventurers pass through the gate like they were something out of legend. Now you’re the one people tell wild stories about."

"I couldn’t have gotten here without you," Arlen admitted. "All those afternoons, listening to your stories, learning to actually think about the world instead of just surviving it. I don’t think I properly understood, back then, how much that mattered."

"Old men like telling stories," Bram said, waving off the sentiment with characteristic gruffness, though his voice carried genuine emotion beneath the deflection. "Doesn’t take much credit to listen well. You did the rest yourself."

Arlen told him, then, about everything that had happened since — Millbrook, the training with Garrett, the boundary crisis and Garrick’s true rank and the strange, unsettling ruins they’d uncovered beneath the crystallized earth. Bram listened with the same rapt, genuine attention he’d once offered his own stories, occasionally interjecting a sharp, practical question that reminded Arlen exactly why he’d valued the old man’s counsel so highly, all those years ago.

"You’re leaving," Bram said finally, once Arlen’s account had wound to its natural conclusion. "I can hear it, in how you’re telling all this. Like a man closing out a ledger before starting a new one."

"I am," Arlen admitted. "Soon. Properly this time."

Bram nodded slowly, no surprise in his weathered expression. "Good. About time, if I’m honest. I always thought this frontier would hold you only as long as it needed to, no longer."

"I’ll come back to visit, if I can."

"Don’t make promises like that just to spare an old man’s feelings," Bram said, though his tone carried more warmth than the words alone suggested. "The road doesn’t always allow for looking back, once you’re properly on it. I’d rather you go with a clear conscience than a promise you might not keep."

Arlen considered that, and found genuine wisdom in it, the same practical honesty that had always characterized Bram’s counsel. "Then I’ll simply say thank you. For everything. For the stories, the advice, the traveling cloak you gave me when I was sixteen."

"Still wearing that thing?" Bram’s face broke into a genuine, delighted grin.

"Patched more times than I can count, but yes."

"Good." Bram’s weathered hand found Arlen’s shoulder, gripping it with surprising strength for a man his age. "Go see everything, boy. Every port, every kingdom, every strange corner of this world you used to dream about from this exact bench. And when you’re old and tired, same as I am now, find some young thing sitting on their own bench somewhere, watching the world pass by, and tell them your own stories. Pass it forward, same as I passed it to you."

"I will," Arlen said, his voice carrying more emotion than he’d expected it to.

They sat together a while longer, the afternoon light slanting warm and golden across the guild district’s familiar stones, and Arlen found himself, for the length of that quiet, unhurried conversation, simply present in the particular, hard-won gratitude of having returned properly to the places that had first shaped him, before carrying everything he’d built onward toward whatever waited next.

He rose eventually, understanding without needing to be told that this particular goodbye, unlike so many others still waiting for him, deserved to end simply, without excessive ceremony.

"Take care of yourself, Bram."

"You too, boy." Bram’s weathered smile carried a warmth that would stay with Arlen long after he’d left. "You’ve made an old man very proud, you know. Whatever else happens, out there in the wider world — remember that."

Arlen walked toward the western gate as evening began settling over Greyhaven, the accumulated weight of the day’s visits — Old Maren’s passing, Denna’s distant, happy life, Bram’s proud, generous farewell — settling into him with a complicated, bittersweet clarity he suspected would take considerably longer than a single evening to properly process.

He paused there a moment, remembering the boy who’d once stood on this exact ground, watching adventurers pass through with a hunger for everything the world might someday offer him.

I did it, he thought, the realization settling into him with quiet, hard-won satisfaction.

Everything I dreamed of, standing right here. I actually did it.

He continued on toward the guild hall, the evening settling comfortably around him, already turning his thoughts toward the practical work still waiting — the transfer paperwork, the remaining goodbyes, the careful, deliberate preparation for a departure that felt, finally, genuinely close enough to properly begin planning around.