Lia was nowhere to be seen when I finally emerged from the Medical Hut, still massaging the side of my jaw.

Most of the villagers looked very interested in absolutely anything that wasn't me. Sky. Dirt. That suspiciously fascinating bit of fencepost near the herb garden. I sensed this was a fairly clear sign that my mid-afternoon nap, courtesy of one Dark Wren's right hook, had already passed into local legend. No one spoke. But I reckoned I'd be hearing plenty of jokes in the coming future.

I took the long route through Anchorfall, and it was pretty nice that there was a long route now. We'd been busy. I nodded at a few workers who absolutely did not nod back, then decided to veer off toward the Well of Ascension.

Unsurprisingly, considering the dark vibes this place was giving off, it was much quieter there.

I sat down on the stone lip of the well and tried to shake off the ache in my bones and the faint sting of humiliation still ringing through my molars. A faint trickle of steam curled up from the water below, which was weird. Was there some sort of volcanic activity going on down there?

Pulling up my stat sheet, I flicked through the details, trying to focus on the practical upside of my recent levelling rather than the involuntary dental realignment. Health regen was up. My Endurance was more than respectable, and Crash Tackle had become downright rude. As the most recent scraps had proved, Sidestep was coming in clutch. And Aggro Magnetism was now operating on such a reliable cycle that it practically had its own time slot.

But it wasn't just the stats that were changing. I was changing, too.

Not just getting stronger, or tougher, or increasingly resistant to being bisected. Something more fundamental. Like I was being peeled back and rebuilt from the inside out.

The Warden thing had started out as something Aunt M had thrown at me from beyond the grave as a job I hadn't applied for. But now it was starting to feel lived in.

I stared down at the water in the Well. At my reflection, twisted slightly by the ripple of rising steam. It looked like me. Mostly.

But something in the eyes was different, I thought. Which caused a memory to ping.

"You scare them," Griff had said.

"I what?" I said, just before ducking as he threw a rolled-up wodge of fifties at my face.

"You scare them. They don't like being around you."

I shrugged, unsure what to make of that. I'd noticed some of the newer operatives had been keeping their distance lately, but none of us were exactly the hugging sort, so I'd not paid it much mind. This wasn't a unit for warm banter and shoulder claps. We didn't exactly gather around the kettle to swap stories when the stories in question could get you killed just for remembering them.

Griff, though? He saw things. Whether he liked to or not.

"You interested in any words of advice from an old rogue?"

I hadn't been. But we'd all learned, sometimes violently, that the Boss didn't take kindly to being told 'no.' "Sure," I said, without inflexion.

He stared at me for a moment, like he'd heard the thought behind my words, then pressed on. "Someone once said it was better to be feared than loved. And there's merit in that, I suppose. Can't say it ever did much for me."

That struck me as pretty rich, considering he ran an operation where mind-numbing fear was practically a recruitment requirement. I don't think he'd ever raised his voice with me, but then again, he never needed to. But I'd seen grown men break into a sweat if he even looked like he was about to frown.

"But that's not a way of living that'll make you happy in your old age," he continued. "Turn around. What do you see?"

I swivelled in the cracked leather chair and looked out through the grimy, reinforced window that served as his office's only source of light. Beyond it, the rest of the team was busy. A couple sat reading paper files - actual paper, like it was still the eighties - while others watched flickering monitors or calibrated weapons on padded benches. They looked focused, isolated and detached from each other.

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And from me.

"Busy little worker bees," I said, not unkindly.

"You know any of their names?"

I frowned and opened my mouth to answer, then stopped. I actually didn't. Not one. Not even the guy who'd been my spotter for the last four assignments. That was… odd.

Griff saw the hesitation, the flicker of confusion, and shook his head. "You know that's not healthy, right?"

I shrugged again. "I'm not here to make friends."

"That's fair," he said. "So what are you here for?"

I didn't answer. Because I wasn't entirely sure. I'd always told myself it was about the work. But the truth was, the work had long since stopped making sense. We weren't fighting anyone coherent any more. We were moving pieces on someone else's board, with no clue where the edge was.

Griff, undeterred, kept going. "I'll tell you this for nothing: there'll come a time when not having anyone willing to back you up is going to bite you on the arse."

"I'm doing just fine."

"You're doing more than fine," he said. "You're doing phenomenally. For now. There's not a single body out there that isn't scared to death of you. You know what they call you?"

I didn't answer, but I knew he was going to tell me anyway.

"The Ghost. And that's lovely and all," he went on, "and I've parlayed that little bit of PR into double your fee on more than one occasion. But you need to understand something. No one cares when a legend goes down. They'll remember you, sure. But they won't come for you."

He leaned back, and I remember thinking that his eyes were suddenly tired. "If one of them out there catches a stray? Gets clipped by friendly fire or caught in a bad op? Everyone rallies. They shout, they cry, they might even start a collection. But if you go down? They'll say it was inevitable. That you were always going to burn out. That's what you deserved, for flying too close to the sun."

I said nothing.

Griff sat forward, resting his elbows on the cluttered desk. "I'm not telling you to soften up. I'm not asking you to go out for beers with the lads or start handing out Christmas cards. But I am telling you this: if you keep going like this, the day you fall, you'll fall alone. And no one will pick up the pieces. Sometimes," he said, "everyone needs someone to have their back. Even the Ghost."

It was the first time I'd ever heard him sound… regretful.

Maybe he'd burned the same bridge he was warning me about. Maybe he saw something in me he wished he'd walked away from years earlier. I never did ask him. But the next time I walked into a mission briefing, I nodded at the guy sitting beside me. He didn't smile.

I thought about my new unit. Lia, Scar, Dema, and me.

It only worked because each of us played our part, sure, but that wasn't the part that caught in my chest. The part that stuck was how dependent we'd become on each other. Not just for survival. For rhythm. For the weird, fragile sense of momentum.

On our own, maybe we could handle a Shadow creature or two. I'd done so before. So had Lia. But now? We moved like a system, not individuals. A single miss, a wrong tempo, a flinch instead of a step, and we all felt it. I'd never had that before. I'd worked alone, for the most part. Trusted myself. Got the job done. It was all easier when you didn't have to wait on someone else's heartbeat.

But this wasn't a job. Not anymore.

What rattled me, a little, was how natural it had become. Not just to fight alongside them, but to trust them. When had that crept in? Not trust as a strategy, but trust in the actual, uncomfortable sense. The kind where someone sees you flinch and steps closer, not away.

To be honest, I didn't really know what to make of it.

Both the major influences in my life - Griff and Aunt M - had, in their own scathing and uncomfortable ways, told me I needed people. I'd disagreed. Loudly. For years.

Griff had thought I was going to die cold and alone in a warehouse basement. Aunt M had thought I was wasting potential by shutting doors before I even knew who was knocking. And they'd both told me, in their own ways, that keeping people at arm's length might win you a few clean exits, but it made the long haul bitter and thin.

I'd never had a long haul to worry about before.

Now I had a village. A team. And a whole future of Wardening I hadn't planned for. And in between the levelling, the brewing stations, and the cosmic threats, I was… what? Coping? I guess thriving might be too strong a word. But at least I wasn't just existing anymore.

If either of them could see me now, I wondered what they'd think.

Griff would probably sneer and call it sentiment, then quietly double my rate for leadership services. Aunt M would raise a single eyebrow and say something like "It's about bloody time."

I didn't know if they'd be proud. But I hoped they would be.

Because the thing I was starting to learn - slowly, messily, and very painfully - was that being strong alone is a good way to stay weak in the moments that matter. I'd spent my whole life bracing for the moment the ground gave way. What I hadn't prepared for was the idea that someone might catch me when it did.

Maybe that was what teams were for. Maybe that's what this was becoming.

Which was obviously the exact perfect moment for me to lean back in a contemplative way, completely forgetting where I was sitting, and fall down into the Well.

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