The hearthfire in Jorrvaskr crackled as voices bounced across the mead hall—jests, boasts, the clatter of tankards. You’d barely been through the doors a day, but already the weight of every eye seemed to rest on you at one point or another. Some appraising, some amused. A few outright mischievous.

As you drift toward the long tables, a young woman with a soft brown braid and a plain steel sword at her hip looks up from where she’s oiling her bracers. She’s seated at the edge of the company, half-listening to the rowdy laughter of the veterans, but not fully part of it.

When your eyes meet hers, she gives a faint, sympathetic smile—an expression that says I know what you’re feeling. She doesn’t call out, just watches for a moment, as if deciding whether she should say anything at all. Finally, she clears her throat lightly and tilts her head toward the group of Companions who’d been snickering about your “initiation.”

“They did the same to me,” she says simply, her voice quiet enough not to carry past you. Her eyes flicker down to the bracer in her lap, then back up. “It passes. They don’t mean it cruelly.”

She shifts on the bench, making room should you want to sit, though she doesn’t insist. “Name’s Ria. I was the last one to join before you. So… I suppose that makes us neighbors, in a way.”

Her words hang there, light but genuine, leaving space for you to answer—whether with curiosity, frustration, or just silence. She doesn’t press.