The room they were given wasn't just big—it was ridiculously lavish.
Velvet curtains flowed from windows three times taller than Marcus. Gold-lined furniture rested on marble floors. There were individual beds, a fireplace that roared without wood, and a chandelier overhead that looked like it belonged in a royal ballroom.
Bob flopped onto a bed. "I could live here."
Bam opened a drawer and pulled out a silver spoon. "Even their cutlery looks like treasure."
Marcus was too busy admiring the in-wall bookshelf to comment.
The doll, perched on a cushioned armchair, finally sighed. "Thank the flame gods I don't have joints—I'd have bowed stiff pretending to be inanimate that long."
Bam blinked. "Wait… you were faking that whole time?"
"Obviously," the doll muttered, crossing his stitched arms. "If that Duke had seen me move, I'd be dead as fuck!"
Kain smirked.
Derek sat quietly by the window, eyes still clouded from the earlier confrontation.
Bam, casual as ever, stretched his arms. "Not gonna lie, Derek. Your dad's kind of a hard-ass. Not exactly winning any Father of the Year awards."
The doll turned his head sharply. "Youngsters these days. So casual with their elders. You're just calling a knight by his first name?"
Bam raised an eyebrow. "Yeah? What else am I supposed to call him? Sir Grumpy?"
Derek gave a single, dry chuckle.
The doll launched into a miniature rant. "In my day, you didn't even breathe near an elder without permission. We bowed before our alchemists! We wrote letters to our swordmasters just to ask questions! We called our seniors 'grand-magister-battle-lord' even if they were only twenty-six!"
Marcus deadpanned, "That explains your personality."
The doll ignored him. "Speaking of which—how old are you all anyway?"
Bam shrugged. "I'm nineteen."
Marcus raised a hand. "Same here. We're about the same age."
Kain tilted his head. "I'm twenty-five."
Derek quietly added, "Thirty-two."
"Thirty-four," Bob said with a grin, still buried in the luxury mattress. "And proud of it."
The doll looked around at the wildly mismatched lineup of mercenaries.
"…How in all the blessed realms did this become a team?"
Bob stretched and answered casually, "Well… when me and Derek ran from all the noble nonsense, we showed up in Border Town with empty pockets and a vague sense of direction. We started doing merc jobs to survive. Just the two of us."
He rolled over, arms behind his head.
"And that's where it all began."
The room went quiet again to listen the story—except for Dusty, curled up on a fur rug, snoring softly like none of this had ever mattered.