Morning did not arrive in the city all at once.
It crept in through habits.
Jason woke before the bells, before the vendors dragged their carts into place, before the guards changed shifts along the inner wall. The room he rented above Aldric's inn was quiet except for the small, persistent sounds of age—wood adjusting to temperature, stone remembering weight, the faint rattle of a shutter that never quite sat right in its frame.
He lay still for a while, staring at the ceiling.
It wasn't a bad ceiling. Low, uneven, patched in places where cracks had spread too far to ignore. Jason had slept under worse. Under open beams that let rain through. Under roofs that didn't bother pretending they would last the night. This one held. That alone made it acceptable.
Eventually, his body reminded him that rest was finished.
He sat up slowly, rolling his shoulders once. The left one resisted before loosening, a dull stiffness pulling along muscle and memory. He breathed through it, patient. Pain that announced itself early was manageable. Pain that arrived suddenly was not.
The room smelled faintly of woodsmoke and old cloth. His pack rested against the wall where he'd left it, straps folded inward the way his mother used to insist on—don't leave them loose, they fray faster. He hadn't thought about that habit in years. The memory surfaced anyway, unwanted and brief.
Jason pushed it aside and stood.
He washed his face in the basin with water left from the night before, cold enough to sharpen his thoughts. The reflection staring back at him looked like it always did—lean, dark-haired, eyes a little too alert for someone who hadn't done anything worth worrying about recently. He tied his hair back with a strip of leather and adjusted his shirt until the worn seam sat flat against his shoulder.
Downstairs, the inn was waking properly now.
Aldric's voice carried through the floorboards, low and grumbling about something misplaced. Mira answered him without heat, already halfway through whatever task she'd decided needed doing first. Their routine was older than Jason's stay here and would continue long after he left. That was the nature of places like this. They didn't care who passed through, only that someone did.
He went down quietly.
Mira glanced up from the counter as he entered, her eyes flicking to him out of habit rather than concern. "You're early."
"Couldn't sleep," Jason said.
She nodded, already turning away. "Bread's there. Eat before Aldric notices you breathing."
Jason took the bread and tore off a piece. It was coarse, dense, and faintly sour. He ate standing, leaning against the counter, watching the room fill in fragments. Two men from the outer ring came in with mud on their boots. Someone coughed too hard near the door. A woman argued with no one in particular about the price of ale.
No one looked at Jason twice.
That suited him.
When he finished eating, he wiped his hands on his trousers and stepped outside.
The street was grey with early light, the kind that flattened color and made everything look unfinished. Buildings leaned toward one another as if sharing a private agreement to stay upright just a little longer. Stone underfoot was worn smooth by generations who'd walked the same paths without expecting them to change.
Jason moved with the crowd without joining it.
He let his awareness spread not searching, just open. This was a habit he'd picked up after Maldova, after learning the cost of assuming safety. Back then, he'd walked with his head down, thinking monsters were something that lived far away, in stories or deep woods. He knew better now.
The market square was beginning to form itself. Vendors argued quietly over space. A boy ran past with a bundle of cloth under his arm, chased by a woman who sounded more amused than angry. Somewhere, metal rang as someone tested a blade.
Jason paused near the edge of the square and breathed.
The city felt stable this morning. Not safe nothing in the Wasteland ever was but balanced. The kind of balance that came from routine rather than strength. He liked mornings like this. They didn't demand anything from him yet.
He headed toward the labor board near the southern wall. Work postings changed daily. Most were dull. Some were dangerous. A few were worse than they looked.
As he walked, his thoughts drifted despite himself.
Maldova had been quieter than this.
Not peaceful just smaller. Fewer people, fewer corners to hide things in. The fields outside the village used to stretch wide and empty, broken only by fences and the occasional line of trees. Monsters came rarely. When they did, everyone knew before they arrived. There was time to run. Time to gather children and shut doors and hope.
The aboriginal hadn't followed that pattern.
Jason pushed the memory down before it finished forming. He didn't need it now. He'd learned that letting memories surface in pieces only gave them more power.
The labor board was already crowded.
Jason scanned the postings quickly. Hauling work. Wall repairs. Escort duty for a caravan that looked underfunded and overconfident. He skipped past anything involving ruins. Not today. He'd learned the cost of saying yes too often.
He took down a posting for warehouse work and folded it into his pocket.
As he turned away, something caught his attention,not a sound, not movement, just a faint pressure at the back of his awareness. The sensation was subtle, like the moment before you realized you'd been holding your breath.
Jason slowed.
He didn't stop. Stopping drew attention. Instead, he adjusted his pace, letting his senses widen again. This wasn't fear. Fear was loud. This was something quieter, like imbalance.
It passed after a moment.
Jason frowned slightly but kept moving. Whatever it had been, it hadn't solidified into danger. In the Wasteland, that was as close to reassurance as anyone got.
He spent the next few hours working at the warehouse, hauling crates and stacking goods under the supervision of a man who cared more about efficiency than conversation. Jason didn't mind. Physical work settled his thoughts. It gave his body something honest to respond to.
By the time he finished, his arms ached and sweat darkened the back of his shirt. The ache was clean, earned. He drank water slowly, letting his breathing steady before heading back toward the inn.
The city was louder now. Fully awake.
Jason navigated the streets on instinct, avoiding bottlenecks, stepping aside before collisions formed. Once, he caught himself shifting his weight in anticipation of a stumble that never happened. He paused after that, confused.
You're tired, he told himself. That's all.
Still, the sense lingered.
When he reached the inn, Aldric was in the middle of an argument with a supplier. Jason slipped past without comment and climbed the stairs to his room. He shut the door behind him and leaned against it for a moment, eyes closed.
Something felt… off.
Not wrong. Not dangerous. Just unfamiliar.
Jason pushed away from the door and sat on the edge of the bed. He rolled his shoulders again, testing them. The stiffness from the morning was gone, replaced by a deeper fatigue that settled into bone and muscle alike.
He lay back and stared at the ceiling.
You're overthinking, he told himself. That was another habit, one he'd picked up after Maldova. Assume the simplest explanation first. Hunger. Fatigue. Too much noise.
He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing.
In.
Out.
In!!
Something shifted.
Jason's eyes snapped open.
For a split second, the room looked unchanged. Then a faint overlay settled into his awareness, as if someone had etched information onto the back of his thoughts rather than the air itself.
He froze.
The sensation wasn't intrusive. It didn't press or demand. It simply was....cool, detached, waiting.
Instinctively, Jason tried to pull away.
The overlay remained.
He swallowed.
Without understanding why, he focused on it.
The information clarified, sharpening into something he could comprehend.
Name: Jason
Level: 1
Condition: Stable
Vitality: 12
Strength: 9
Agility: 10
Perception: 11
Recovery: 8
Jason stared.
No voice accompanied it. No explanation. No sense of approval or warning. Just the numbers, suspended quietly in his awareness like a ledger someone had forgotten to close.
His heartbeat thudded once, hard.
"What…?" he whispered.
The display didn't respond.
Jason sat up slowly, every muscle tense. He waved a hand through the air as if that might disperse it. Nothing changed. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again.
Still there.
Then, as abruptly as it had appeared, the overlay faded....not vanishing so much as retreating, sinking back into some internal distance where he could sense it without seeing it.
Jason sat there for a long time, breathing carefully.
Outside, the city continued as it always did. Voices rose and fell. Someone laughed. A cart rattled over stone.
Inside the small rented room, Jason stared at the wall and tried to convince himself that exhaustion could not, in fact, create numbers where none had existed before.
He wasn't afraid yet.
But for the first time since Maldova, he felt something he hadn't expected to feel again.
Uncertainty.
And the quiet, unsettling sense that something had been watching long before he noticed it.