The tavern was exactly as loud as Aryan had expected, and exactly as full of Kael's voice as he'd feared.
"...and I told him, there's no honor in retreat," Kael was saying, standing on a bench with a mug raised high, his side bandaged but his grin wide and easy. A crowd of rookie hunters sat around him, hanging on every word, mugs lifted in anticipation of whatever toast was coming. "But our porter — Aryan, his name was — he wouldn't hear it. Threw himself between us and the Alpha so the rest of the squad could fall back and regroup. Bravest thing I've ever seen from someone that low-ranked."
"To Aryan!" the crowd echoed, mugs clashing together.
Aryan stood in the tavern doorway and let the moment finish. There was something almost educational about watching it — the careful construction of the lie, the way Kael's voice cracked with rehearsed grief exactly when it needed to, the practiced humility of a man accepting condolences for a death he'd caused and walked away from clean.
"That's quite a story," Aryan said, loud enough to carry.
The tavern didn't go silent immediately. It took a second — first the nearest tables noticing him, then a ripple of confused whispers, then Kael's eyes finding him across the room and the mug slipping slightly in his grip, sloshing ale down his wrist.
"You forgot the part where you ran," Aryan continued, stepping further inside, letting the door swing shut behind him. "And the part where Reyna's detection crystal missed the Alpha entirely because nobody bothered checking the side tunnel. And the part where I told you there was a second presence, and you laughed at me."
"...Aryan?" Kael's voice came out thin, nothing like the confident performance from thirty seconds earlier.
"In the flesh. Mostly." Aryan held up his bandaged forearm, still stiff under the wrapping the appraisal clerk's assistant had insisted on. "Sorry to interrupt the eulogy. I know it's awkward when the corpse shows up to correct the record."
Someone at a nearby table laughed — short, nervous, immediately strangled into silence by the look on Kael's face.
"We thought—" one of Kael's teammates started.
"You thought I'd be dead," Aryan said evenly. "You made sure of that part. The thinking, I mean. Not the dying. That part didn't go according to plan."
Kael climbed down off the bench slowly, setting his mug aside with the careful, exaggerated calm of a man trying to look like he was in control of the situation. "Look — Aryan — what happened in there, that was a call I had to make. The squad's survival came first. You understand that, right? You're a porter. It's practically the job."
"It's not the job," Aryan said. "Carrying your bags is the job. Holding torches is the job. Getting handed to a boss monster so the rest of you can run isn't a job description, Kael. It's just what you decided I was worth."
The tavern had gone fully quiet now, every rookie hunter who'd been toasting Aryan's heroic death thirty seconds ago suddenly very interested in their drinks instead.
"It worked out, didn't it?" Kael said, an edge of desperation creeping into the bravado. "You're standing here. Alive. Whatever you killed down there, you're walking around fine, so clearly—"
"Clearly what?" Aryan tilted his head. "Clearly it's fine that you left a nineteen-year-old to die so a Level 25 boss would be too busy chewing on him to chase you? Clearly that's a sound tactical decision as long as the porter happens to survive it by sheer luck?" He let that sit for a moment. "I killed the Alpha, Kael. The one your squad's detection crystal completely missed. The one that, by your own report filed at the Guild this morning, doesn't officially exist, because admitting you ran from something you never actually identified would make for a less flattering toast."
Kael's face had gone the color of old parchment.
"You filed me as presumed deceased," Aryan went on, quieter now, which seemed to frighten the surrounding rookies more than if he'd shouted. "In line of duty. That's a nice phrase. Implies I did something noble instead of just being convenient. I haven't corrected it yet. I'm still deciding whether I want to."
"...You're not going to," Kael said, though it came out more like a question than a statement.
"I haven't decided," Aryan repeated. "That should probably worry you more than it seems to."
He let his eyes move slowly across the rest of the Silver Fang squad — Reyna, who wouldn't meet his gaze at all, and the two others, who'd gone very interested in the floorboards. None of them said anything. None of them had anything they could say that wouldn't make it worse.
"Drink your ale," Aryan said finally, turning toward the bar like the conversation had cost him nothing at all, though every part of him was still aware of exactly how much it had cost to walk in here and say it calmly instead of the way he'd imagined saying it back in that cave. "Toast to whatever you want. Just do it somewhere I'm not standing, from now on."
He sat down at the far end of the bar, ordered the cheapest thing on the menu out of habit before remembering, with a strange jolt, that he could afford literally anything on it now, and didn't look back toward Kael's table again.
He didn't need to. The silence behind him said everything the System's notifications never could.