The job was simple: retrieve a stolen ledger, collect the coin, walk away. You've built your life on simple jobs. No attachments, no questions, no looking back at the ash and chains you crawled out of. But the nobleman calling himself Aldric isn't kneeling over a ledger. He's kneeling like a man who has run out of roads, his fine coat dusty, his voice cracked at the edges — and the name he just whispered is one you haven't let yourself say in years. The name of your country. Your hand finds your blade before your mind catches up. Whatever this man is, whatever he knows, the answers he carries could ruin you — or finally give your grief somewhere to land.