Dust outlined the bow case on the shelf.
Marco pulled it down from the shed wall and immediately sneezed hard enough to startle a bird out of the gutter. The case was gray plastic with one cracked latch and a faded county range sticker near the handle. He had bought it used before he was old enough to drink, then put it away when ammunition, fuel, and free Saturdays all became harder to spare.
The foam inside smelled of old wax and dry rubber.
His compound bow lay where he had left it. The black finish had a pale scrape on the lower limb. The sight pins were cheap and slightly clouded. A loop of string serving had lifted near the release point, not enough for him to remember noticing it, but enough to make his stomach tighten now.
Seven practice arrows rested in the long slot beside it.
Marco rolled one shaft across the workbench. It wobbled.
“Promising,” he said.
The System did not comment.
He had not touched the bow since before his mother died. That was not the reason he had stopped, exactly. Life had simply filled the space where shooting used to fit. Weekend work. Sarah’s appointments. A truck that consumed money in inventive ways. The case had climbed from the floor to a shelf, and eventually dust had made the decision permanent.
Until now.
He checked the rest of the equipment without pretending he knew enough to certify any of it. The rubber on the arrow rest had hardened. One sight pin sat a fraction lower than he remembered, though memory from five years ago was not a measuring tool. The limb bolts showed no rust. At least the shed roof had kept the rain out.
Marco had learned to shoot at a county youth program, then spent a handful of autumn weekends at friends’ properties where everybody talked more confidently about deer than the amount of venison in their freezers justified. He had taken one doe at nineteen from a stand, a close shot after twenty patient minutes. The memory had polished itself over the years. He recalled the clean hit more easily than the morning he missed a target buck and spent two hours searching for blood that was never there.
That history made him familiar, not skilled.
He could imagine the shot sequence. His fingers remembered wax on string and the hard little click of a nock seating. None of that said what his shoulders could still do or what fear would make him forget.
On the workbench, he opened Emma’s notebook to a blank page.
Bow
Under costs, he wrote unknown. Under benefits, he wrote possible pest authorization. Under risks, he wrote equipment failure, injury, bad assumptions.
The third item was probably the expensive one.
Marco closed the lid without drawing the bow. The old string looked bad enough that testing it seemed like a good way to buy an eye patch.
Pritchard Sporting Goods opened at eight.
The store sat between a tax preparer and a laundromat in a brick strip built before The Ridge and remodeled many times since. Deer heads watched from one wall. Dungeon helmets watched from another, which gave the place the atmosphere of a meeting nobody had wanted to attend.
The bow counter occupied the rear corner beside locked cases of broadheads and mana-treated crossbow bolts. Ms. Pritchard took Marco’s case, opened it, and made the exact noise a mechanic had made when looking under his truck.
“How long has this been sitting?”
“A while.”
“A while measured in months or presidential administrations?”
“Closer to the second.”
She wore her silver hair in a short braid and had a narrow set of magnifying lenses clipped over her glasses. She turned the bow under the counter light, checked the limbs, rolled each cam, then pressed one thumbnail against the serving.
“You did right not drawing it.”
“That bad?”
“String’s dry. Serving’s separating. Cams are out of time, and your peep has rotated far enough to look ashamed of itself.” She pointed at the lower limb scrape. “Cosmetic. Axles feel fine.”
Marco had prepared himself for the possibility that the bow was unsafe. He had not prepared for relief at hearing it was merely neglected.
“What does it cost?”
Ms. Pritchard reached for a paper work ticket. “New basic string, install, timing, draw-weight check, sight inspection. One thirty-five.”
He had expected a number near that. It still hurt when spoken.
“Release?”
He took his old wrist release from the case. The strap had gone stiff, and the trigger returned slowly when she pressed it.
“You can use it,” she said. “Once.”
“That reassuring?”
“It’s honest.”
She had a used release in the consignment drawer for forty-nine dollars. The webbing was worn but sound, and the trigger broke cleanly. Six plain carbon practice arrows were seven dollars each.
“I’ve got seven.”
“You have five.” She rolled the wobbling shaft, then found a hairline split near the nock of another. “These two are garden stakes now. Do not shoot them.”
Marco added the figures in his head. One hundred thirty-five. Forty-nine. Forty-two.
Two hundred twenty-six dollars.
The truck repair estimate sat on his phone at eight hundred twenty. Sarah’s next clinic balance would not care that he wanted to learn a bow. Two hundred twenty-six dollars could cover groceries for more than a week if they were careful. It could take a visible bite out of the credit card.
It could also turn a piece of equipment he already owned into something that might expand the work he could do.
“How long?”
“Monday afternoon if the cams don’t argue.”
“They argue?”
“Everything argues when you ask it to work after a long rest.”
He paid before he could turn the arithmetic into an excuse.
Ms. Pritchard printed the receipt and looked at his Ridgeway badge. “Dungeon use?”
“Not yet.”
“Good answer. These are range arrows. They are not rated for active mana exposure, and they are not something you point at a Ridge crawler because you’ve had one productive week.”
“I know.”
“Everybody knows. The emergency room stays busy.”
She walked him two cases down and pointed through the glass at a rack of dungeon-rated arrows. They looked much like ordinary carbon shafts until he read the labels. Reinforced inserts. Conductive weave in the front third. Batch certification for low-rank active environments.
The cheapest were fourteen dollars each.
“Those come later,” Ms. Pritchard said. “Practice shafts can carry some imprint outdoors, but active dungeon mana is rough on resins and bonding. More important, a damaged shaft under a heavy draw can turn itself into splinters beside your hand.”
“Firearms are cheaper per shot.”
“Against paper, yes. Against a reinforced crawler, you can spend a magazine teaching it to dislike noise.”
Marco knew the broad reason. Dungeon Resistance bled effectiveness from rapid mundane impacts, especially against stronger organisms. The work rules treated it as ordinary fact: guns were allowed in certain lanes and carried by some security crews, but the ammunition costs rose faster than the results. A bow put more of the Awakened user into the projectile through Imprinting.
“Do I need to feel the mana?” he asked.
“Not consciously at your level. Draw, control, release. Your System handles the dribble you can give it.” She tapped the dungeon-arrow label. “Do not turn that into a reason to buy these today. A fourteen-dollar miss is still a miss.”
He looked at the price again. Eight arrows would cost a hundred twelve dollars. Enough to make every stone behind a target personally offensive.
She slid the claim ticket across the counter. “When you pick it up, we start at fifteen yards. If you remember more than your muscles do, that can get ugly.”
Marco tucked the receipt into his wallet. The empty case felt strangely light on the way out.
Sarah found the receipt that evening because Marco set it on the kitchen counter instead of hiding it.
She read the total twice. “Two hundred twenty-six dollars.”
“That’s the number.”
“I thought the point of owning a bow was that you had already paid for it.”
“Apparently I owned most of a bow.”
Lucy looked up from cutting paper shapes for a school project. “What part was missing?”
“The safe part.”
Sarah put the receipt down. She had been having a better week. Color had returned to her face after the last treatment, and she had spent most of the afternoon reorganizing a closet nobody else believed needed reorganizing. Better did not mean well. Marco had learned not to confuse the two.
“Does Ridgeway require this?” she asked.
“No.”
“Are they reimbursing it?”
“No.”
“Then tell me why it’s a job expense.”
Emma, doing homework at the table, stopped pretending not to listen.
Marco sat across from Sarah. “It isn’t. Not yet. Ray says they use workers for controlled pest clearing if they have a weapons authorization. It can lead to different tasks. Maybe bonuses.”
“Maybe.”
“Yes.”
Sarah crossed her arms. “And the other reason?”
He could have talked about Foundation, total value per hour, and the notebook. All of that was true. None of it answered what she was asking.
“I need to find out whether I can do more than haul.”
Her expression softened and sharpened at the same time. “You can do more than haul whether you shoot a bow or not.”
“That’s not what ADR pays for.”
“ADR doesn’t get the final vote on you.”
“They get a pretty important vote on my paycheck.”
Silence settled between them.
Lucy raised a purple paper triangle. “This is either West Virginia or a fish.”
Emma looked at it. “Fish.”
“Good. I was trying for fish.”
Sarah rubbed one thumb along the receipt edge. “I’m not telling you not to spend your own money.”
“It affects everybody.”
“It does. So does every clinic bill with my name on it, and I don’t ask permission before I get treated.”
“That’s different.”
“It is. Not as different as you want it to be.”
She gave him the receipt.
“I want the real costs in Emma’s sheet. Range fees, arrows, repairs. Not just the number you hope it earns.”
“They will be.”
“And you don’t take that thing underground because a percentage moved.”
“I need authorization.”
“Good. Bureaucracy finally does something useful.”
Marco folded the receipt and put it with the household records. The purchase still felt irresponsible. It also felt made.
On Monday, Ms. Pritchard made him draw the bow three times with no arrow nocked.
The first draw surprised him.
The compound’s weight built through the middle, rolled over at the cams, and settled into the lighter holding wall. His shoulders remembered the shape of it. They did not remember how to make it comfortable. The muscles along his back trembled before he had held for five seconds.
“Too much weight,” Ms. Pritchard said.
“It used to be fine.”
“You used to be nineteen.”
“I’m twenty-four, not dead.”
“Then you have time to turn it down.”
She reduced the draw weight. Marco wanted to object, which told him she was probably right.
They drove to the county range in separate vehicles. His first visit was included with the tune, provided he listened. The outdoor lanes climbed a grassy hollow beyond the municipal maintenance yard. Timber backstops stood at fifteen, twenty, thirty, and forty yards. The closest target looked insultingly large.
Ms. Pritchard clipped a fresh paper face at fifteen.
“Stance.”
Marco set his feet.
“That stance belongs to somebody carrying a washing machine. Loosen your knees.”
He did.
“Grip.”
He opened his bow hand.
“Less thumb. Anchor at the jaw. Nose to string if the peep lets you. Do not chase the pin. Let it move and break the shot clean.”
Marco nocked one of the new arrows. The shaft clicked against the rest. He clipped the used release to the loop and drew.
The sight housing blurred, then sharpened when he found the peep. One green pin floated across the target. His shoulder tightened. He tried to force the pin into the center.
It moved left.
He held longer.
“You are not negotiating with it,” Ms. Pritchard said.
Marco released.
The bow kicked lightly into his open hand. The arrow crossed fifteen yards faster than thought and struck the foam backer four inches beyond the paper’s right edge.
He stared at it.
“Excellent,” Ms. Pritchard said.
“That wasn’t on the target.”
“It was on the backstop. Our first goal is avoiding the parking lot.”
The second arrow clipped the paper low. The third landed high left. By the sixth, Marco had created a group only in the sense that all the arrows occupied the same county.
His shoulders tired quickly. The lighter draw weight no longer felt insulting. Ms. Pritchard stopped him after three ends and made him sit for five minutes.
“Your memory is ahead of your body,” she said. “That makes you rush because the shot feels like it should already be there.”
Marco drank water. “How long until it catches up?”
“Depends how well you practice.”
“And aptitude.”
She glanced at him.
“G,” he said.
“Then longer.”
No reassurance followed. He liked her better for it.
They went back to the line.
On the fourth end, Marco tried to fix everything at once. He widened his stance, pulled his shoulder harder, lowered his chin, and held his breath until the pin steadied.
The pin did not steady. His vision pulsed around it.
He punched the release. The arrow struck low enough to bury itself in the wooden target stand.
Ms. Pritchard let the silence last.
“I improved several things,” Marco said.
“You changed several things.”
They used a rubber puller and more force than Marco expected to free the shaft. The carbon had survived, but the field point needed replacement. Ms. Pritchard charged him two dollars and made him install it himself at the bench.
“Equipment remembers mistakes in money,” she said.
“Ray would like you.”
“Ray Mercer? He owes me for a fletching jig.”
That sounded sufficiently like Ray that Marco believed her.
For the next end, she took away every instruction except one: keep pressure building through the release. His stance was imperfect. His anchor wandered. The arrows landed in a loose diagonal across the paper.
But none struck the stand.
The muscles around Marco’s shoulder blades began to burn. Laborer helped him maintain effort; it did not tell him which effort was correct. The distinction grew clearer with every tired draw. On the first arrow of a set, he could arrange the pieces. By the fifth, he substituted tension for form and hoped the target would forgive him.
Ms. Pritchard stopped the session after eighteen scored shots.
“I can do another end.”
“I know. It will be worse.”
“Worse can still be practice.”
“Only if you are practicing something you want to keep.”
Marco lowered the bow.
That lesson was getting irritatingly popular.
On the last end, Marco focused on the sequence rather than the center. Feet. Grip. Draw. Anchor. Let the pin move. Pressure through the release.
The arrow struck the outer white ring.
It was his best shot of the afternoon and would not have impressed anyone two lanes over.
They walked downrange together after the cease-fire light came on. Ms. Pritchard made Marco pull each arrow straight back rather than wrench it sideways. At the bench, they rolled all eleven usable shafts across a glass plate and flexed them beside his ear.
“Why beside the ear?” he asked.
“Carbon whispers before it becomes a medical story.”
Two old shafts showed chipped finish but no cracks. The new one that had struck the wooden stand needed its field point replaced; the shaft remained straight.
Marco lined the arrows in the case with their vanes alternating so they did not crush one another.
“You clean the bow every time?”
“Inspect every time,” she said. “Clean what needs cleaning. People damage more gear loving it aggressively than neglecting it.”
She showed him the wear points around the cams, the serving, and the rest. A frayed strand meant stop. A loose sight screw meant tighten and re-zero, not hope. A hard impact to a carbon shaft meant quarantine until inspection.
Each rule translated into money, injury, or both.
Marco photographed the bow’s current condition for his equipment log. It felt excessive until he remembered how long the lifted serving had gone unnoticed in the shed.
The bow was no longer something he vaguely owned. It had a condition, a count, and maintenance that would follow him every time he used it.
While he pulled arrows from the foam, a faint notice waited at the edge of his awareness: Bow Foundation 0.00% → 0.04%.
Then the larger notice followed.
Marco assigned it to the stat the range had made impossible to ignore.
Perception: 9 → 10. Integration estimate: 24–72 hours.
After integration, Perception ten would sharpen movement, distance, and detail. Bow practice still had to turn better information into a shot.
The System had retained four hundredths of one percent from an afternoon that cost two hundred twenty-six dollars and a tired shoulder.
Marco eased the first arrow out of the foam beyond the paper. The shaft was undamaged. The miss remained as a narrow hole in the backstop.
He took a photograph of the target before Ms. Pritchard stripped it down.
If he improved, he wanted to remember what improvement had to cross.