Part Fifty — Rumors Worth Chasing

　The guild clerk who'd registered us — I'd learned her name was Marta, somewhere in the small talk of turning in our completed contract — actually looked impressed when we handed over Tobias's signed confirmation.

"Clean escort, no casualties, bandits handed over to the local watch instead of just left for dead," she said, scanning the report. "That's a better outcome than most Bronze-rank groups manage on their first job. You three sure you're new to this?"

"Beginner's luck," I said.

"Sure," she said, clearly not believing it for a second, but letting it go anyway. "Well, this earns you a rank advancement regardless — Bronze to Iron, effective immediately. Keep this up and you won't be Bronze-adjacent for long."

Iron already. Guess that's progress, even if I wasn't in a hurry to get there.

　Eris looked pleased in a way she tried and mostly failed to hide. Ace, curled at my feet in his smaller form, made a soft, satisfied sound that needed no translation.

　We found a room to rent in a modest inn not far from the guild — nothing fancy, but clean, private, and blessedly quiet compared to the guild hall's constant noise.

　Eris took to city life faster than I expected, navigating markets and conversations with an ease that made me wonder, more than once, how much natural talent she'd simply never gotten the chance to use before now.

She's not just surviving anymore. She's actually living. That's different, and it's good to watch happen.

　That evening, over a meal that didn't taste like the last two years' worth of improvised forest cooking, I brought up the thing that had been sitting with me since the guild hall conversation I'd overheard on our first day.

"I want to look into that rumor properly," I said. "The Church, recruiting hard, paying for information on anomalies. That's not nothing. That's a real thread, if we can actually follow it somewhere."

"How would we even start?" Eris asked. "We don't exactly have contacts in a city we've been in for a week."

"Guild halls hear things," I said. "So do taverns, information brokers, the kind of people who make a living knowing things other people would rather keep quiet. Roshan's big enough that someone here probably knows something worth hearing, if we ask the right way."

Ace? Thoughts?

I am better suited to intimidation than diplomacy, Ace said, dry as ever. I defer to whichever of you two is better at extracting information without violence.

Duly noted. We'll keep you in reserve for if diplomacy fails.

I look forward to it.

　It took two days of careful, patient asking around before we found someone worth actually listening to — a wiry, sharp-eyed man named Fennick who ran a modest information stall near the guild district, the kind of operation that dealt in rumors, gossip, and the occasional genuinely valuable secret, all priced according to how much trouble the information was worth causing.

"Church business," he said, once I'd made clear what I was actually after, coin already changing hands between us. "That's not cheap information, friend. Not the kind people ask about casually."

"I'm not asking casually," I said, letting just enough weight settle into the words that he understood I meant it.

　He studied me a moment longer, weighing something, before apparently deciding the coin was worth whatever risk came with talking.

"Word is the Eastern Holy Church's been expanding its reach for about a year and a half now," he said, voice low. "More knights posted through this region than used to be normal. Word from further east says they're specifically hunting something they call anomalies — beings that don't fit the world's usual categories. Mixed bloodlines. Impossible power growth. That sort of thing."

That sort of thing. That's me. That might be Eris, now too.

"Any idea why now?" I asked. "Why the sudden push?"

"Above my information," Fennick admitted. "But there's a name that keeps coming up, whenever this topic gets mentioned in the circles I run in. High Priestess Selwyn. Runs a significant chunk of the Church's actual operations in this region — not the public face of things, but the one who actually decides where knights get sent and why."

A name. An actual name, finally, instead of just "the Church" as a faceless shape.

"Where would I find someone like that?" I asked.

　Fennick actually laughed at that, short and genuinely startled.

"You don't find someone like High Priestess Selwyn, friend. She's based out of the regional cathedral in Aldenreach, two weeks east of here, heavily guarded, rarely seen by anyone outside Church business. That's not a woman you casually walk up to and ask questions."

Fair enough. Wasn't planning on it today, anyway. Just wanted the shape of the thing.

"Appreciate the information," I said, sliding a bit more coin across the table. "This has been genuinely useful."

"Careful who else you ask about her," Fennick said, quieter now, something almost like real concern in it. "Word travels fast in this city, when it comes to Church business. Wouldn't want whoever you're actually working for to end up on their radar because of loose talk."

He thinks I'm working for someone else. Good. Let him keep thinking that.

"Noted," I said. "Thanks for the caution."

　We walked back toward the inn in thoughtful silence, the weight of an actual name — Selwyn, Aldenreach — settling into something concrete for the first time since the scout's cryptic "confirmation of what shouldn't exist," years back on that road with Doran and Fenrik.

"That's a real target now," Eris said, quiet. "Not just 'the Church.' An actual person, an actual place."

"Yeah," I said. "Doesn't mean I'm ready to go marching into a heavily guarded cathedral two weeks from here. Just means the shape of things is getting clearer."

One step at a time. Same as everything else has been, since the day I woke up in this body as an infant who couldn't even talk properly.

Ace? You've been quiet.

I am processing, Ace said. This High Priestess Selwyn sounds like precisely the kind of individual who would benefit from meeting me in my full form, unannounced.

Noted for later. Maybe much later. Let's not rush toward the biggest, most heavily guarded target on the map immediately after learning her name exists.

You are no fun.

I contain multitudes. Patience is apparently one of them, these days.

　Eris laughed at that, tired but genuine, and I found myself, walking back through Roshan's crowded evening streets with the two of them beside me, feeling something I hadn't quite let myself feel in the two years since the clearing.

Momentum. Actual momentum, toward something real, instead of just surviving one day into the next.

Whatever Selwyn actually is, whatever the Church actually wants with anomalies like me — I've got a name now. A place. A thread to actually pull on, whenever we're ready to pull it.

That's more than I had a week ago. I'll take it.

　We spent the rest of that evening simply existing together, plans for Selwyn and Aldenreach set carefully aside for another day — because some things, I was learning, deserved patience even when every instinct wanted to rush straight toward them.