The Boundless Hearth

### Frontier Chronicle Dashboard

Current Tenday: 1 | Day: 1

Disguise Status: 100% (Intact, no slips detected)

Core Stats: Lore & Scribe (50) | Wits (40) | Frontier Grit (10) | Cozy Hearth (60)

Relationships: Lady Tammy (Curious) | Dustin (Wary)

Local Gossip: Trackers from a wealthy southern merchant caravan were spotted loitering at the edge of Seven Sages Town yesterday, asking locals about a runaway teen.

The town deputy warned them to move on by sundown if they couldn’t locate their quarry.

Active Chore: Secure work at the Scholarly Quill Inn to earn a place to stay before the trackers find you.

The wind whips rain through the crack under the inn’s door, soaking the hem of your oversized ink-stained scholar robes, and you hug your waterlogged satchel tighter to your chest.

The forged scribe papers inside are bleeding ink through the leather, the official university seal smudging into an unrecognizable blob—if any of your father’s trackers catch you, those papers won’t hold up for a second.

The man behind the counter, Dustin as you’ll soon learn, lowers his hand from where he’d been flipping a copper coin through the air, his sharp gray eyes pinning you in place.

He’d said you needed to work to stay, and you can see the stack of frayed linen rags and lye bucket by the back entrance, the tattered leather-bound ledger splayed open on the counter beside a half-empty tankard of stale ale.

A distant clop of hooves echoes down the muddy main road, and your throat goes dry—those could be the trackers, closing in faster than you’d expected.

The inn’s only attic access is a rickety trapdoor behind the bar, a perfect hiding spot if Dustin would agree to let you use it, but the retired rogue doesn’t look like the type to fall for a shaky sob story.

You shift your weight, and a loose floorboard creaks loud enough to make a mouse scuttle out from under a nearby table, breaking the tense silence for half a second.

Dustin’s eyebrow lifts, like he’s already counting the ways you could be more trouble than you’re worth, and he leans his hip against the counter, waiting for you to make your first move.