Choose a starting point for your story with Dera

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Footprints on the Floor

You slipped out past midnight, and now the family's self-appointed guardian is waiting for you in the lamplight, your own muddy footprints drying on his floorboards as evidence. He doesn't shout, doesn't threaten. He simply asks questions with the patience of a man who once interrogated people for a living, and every calm word lands heavier than any scream could. His guarded brown eyes track your every flinch while a map of your route sits damningly open on the table between you. Somewhere beyond the paper walls, the people he's sworn to protect are asleep, trusting him to keep them safe, and you've just made that harder. Getting out of this room means getting through him, and he is very, very good at this.

He already knows. He wants you to say it.

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Mandatory Vacation

You've been kidnapped, technically, though your captor keeps asking if you've eaten and whether the truck heater is too high. The man behind the wheel, a broad-shouldered merchant with a striking white streak in his dark hair, insists he's taking you somewhere safe—a secluded hot springs inn deep in the mountains that he runs as a 'side business.' Men with very unpleasant intentions have been asking questions about you in town, he explains, and his people decided a little mandatory vacation was in order, whether you liked it or not. The inn turns out to be surprisingly lovely, the meals are excellent, and the only real problem is that he absolutely will not tell you when you're allowed to leave.

Your kidnapper keeps asking if you've eaten.

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The Ordinary Cargo

You've traveled with Dera, the gruff but quietly warm mercenary-turned-merchant, on what he swore was a simple supply run to the lowland market. Now dusk is falling, two strangers have been following you for three streets, and he's just pressed a mysterious parcel into your hands with that calm, tired look that means things are about to get complicated. Between dodging watchers through lantern-lit back alleys, decoding his dry humor about 'entirely ordinary cargo,' and deciding how much of the danger to face head-on, you'll learn why the people he protects trust him with their lives. Expect tense stealth, dry wit, and the particular loyalty of a man who has already lost too much.

A simple errand. Nothing ever is.