By the time Anya turned back toward Stagwood, the light was already thinning.
The remaining two beasts had come out not long after she entered the cave, drawn by the roar of the one before. Anya used the cave's narrowness against them.
She dragged the bodies out into the fading sunlight and started the walk back to Stagwood.
---
The off feeling returned halfway there.
Her left boot caught on something. She stumbled forward two steps before her balance corrected.
Anya stopped. Looked back.
The trail was clear, nothing that cause of done that.
She flexed her fingers. Both hands responded normally. No tremor. No numbness. No hesitation.
Just tired from the Big fight. Anya told herself.
She kept walking.
The forest thinned as the settlement came into view.
Her steps felt heavier than they should.
She ignored it.
---
Stagwood's trade hall sat near the center of the settlement.
Warm air met Anya as she stepped inside.
A clerk stood behind the main desk sorting ledgers. She looked up, eyes flicking over Anya's pack and the dried stains on her clothes.
"Contract?" the clerk asked.
"Beasts near the north edge," Anya said. "Three of them. Done."
The clerk pulled a ledger closer. "Proof?"
Anya didn't answer. She just turned and pushed back through the door.
The clerk muttered something under her breath and followed—pen still in hand.
Outside, in the lamplight, three bodies lay in the dirt where Anya had dragged them. Dark hides. Slack limbs. Jaws hanging wrong. She'd left them in the side yard where deliveries got counted, not inside where ink and paper lived.
The clerk stopped short.
"…Gods," she breathed, then caught herself.
The clerk swallowed and forced herself closer anyway. She crouched, nudged a tooth with the tip of her pen like it would bite her, then stood up again.
"That's them," she said. Her voice sounded thinner than before.
Back inside, the clerk set coins on the desk. "Payment's Fifteen silver."
Anya didn't take them.
The clerk frowned. "Problem?"
"This wasn't a normal contract." Anya said.
The clerk's eyes narrowed. "It didn't say anything about that."
"It wouldn't," Anya said. "No one knew."
"So you want me to pay more just because you say so?"
"You'll pay more either way," Anya said, voice low. "Now, or later."
The clerk started to speak—then stopped as Anya leaned in just a little.
"It stopped my arrow mid air," Anya said quietly.
The clerk went still.
Her eyes cut toward the room—toward other people—then snapped back sharp.
"Don't say things like that in here," she warned under her breath.
"I'm not trying to start a story," Anya said. "Write whatever keeps people from asking questions. But don't pay this like it was easy."
The clerk hesitated. You could see her wanting to end it, wanting it to stay simple.
The clerk's mouth tightened. She stared at Anya for a long moment.
Then, with a sharp sigh, she reached under the desk and brought up a few more coins. Not neatly stacked like the first ones. She set them beside the fifteen.
"Three extra," she said. "That's what I can do without anyone breathing down my neck."
Anya didn't move.
"Five," she said.
"Three."
Anya held her stare.
The clerk clicked her tongue, irritated, and added one more coin. "Four. That's it."
Anya nodded once, still not reaching.
"Let's talk about what happened so I can write it down." the clerk said.
---
Few minutes later.
From the back of the room, a voice said, calm as a ruler laid on a table—
"The sun's already set."
Anya turned.
A woman sat at a smaller desk near the back wall, half in shadow. Dark hair pulled back. Plain travel clothes. A separate ledger open in front of her, filled with tight writing.
The clerk looked annoyed and relieved at the same time. "Mira."
Mira closed her ledger softly and stood. "You're saying that you finished at evening." she said as she came closer.
Anya didn't answer. The clerk had already written it.
The clerk frowned. "I didn't—" The clerk stopped and her frown deepened, but she didn't argue.
Mira tapped a line in her notebook. "Sightings for the north edge have been logged for three days. Same hours. Dawn to mid-morning." She slid her finger down the page. "You found them by noon—fine. That tracks."
Then she looked up. "But finishing evening doesn't."
She gestured toward the shuttered window. "If you finished then, there'd still be light. There isn't."
The hall had gone quiet.
"I checked before hand," Anya said. "I planned around it."
"Then the fight took longer than you think," Mira said.
"It did, but not by that long."
"Or," Mira said, "you lost time between the cave and here."
Something cold settled behind Anya's ribs.
She remembered it.
Didn't she?
The clerk cleared her throat, trying to push it back into procedure. "Does it matter? The job's done. Proof is in the yard."
"It matters for the record," Mira said, simple and flat. She looked at Anya. "Which is it?"
Anya's jaw tightened. She forced it to loosen.
The safest answer was the one that didn't sound like madness.
"The walk back," Anya said. "It took longer than I thought."
Mira watched her for a beat, then made a small note in her ledger.
"Noted," she said, and closed the book.
Only then did the clerk slide the coins forward—fifteen, and the extra four beside it. "Fine. Take it. Contract's marked as done.."
Anya took the payment and shoved it into her pouch without counting. She just wanted out.