The laying of the first stones was a ceremony witnessed by the sun and the silent, watching mountain. Kaelen's stone, set with a whispered harmonic to ensure its perfect, eternal balance. Corvin's, set with the brute, precise force of a master mason, hammered into place with a satisfying finality. They stood side-by-side in the earth, the first two teeth of a new foundation.
Then the real work began.
What followed was a symphony of controlled chaos. The cleared site for New Stone Creek—a name everyone used but no one felt was quite right—buzzed with an energy that was both focused and frenetic. The air, once heavy with poison, now rang with the music of creation: the bite of saws on ironwood, the rhythmic *clang* of hammers on chisels, the low drone of conversations shouted over distances, and beneath it all, the ever-present, unifying hum of the Aethelburgers as they worked.
It was this hum that quickly became the first point of friction.
