The town of Greyrest was bleeding not from war, but from neglect.
Ethan stood on the parapet of the half-collapsed watchtower, staring down at the broken sprawl that called itself a town. The morning mist hadn't yet lifted, and through the haze he saw everything he needed to: crooked homes, stagnant ditches, rotting timber roads, and a wall that wouldn't stop a determined child, much less an invading force.
Lina stood beside him, arms folded tightly. "This is where your father used to stand," she said quietly. "He said from up here, you could see the soul of the town."
Ethan nodded absently. In his mind, measurements were already forming line weights, load paths, gradients. His fingers itched for a pencil. Instead, he grabbed a stick and knelt in the dirt by the wall.
"Lina, how far is the river from here?" "About a fifteen-minute walk. East." "Is the water clean?" "Not anymore. Too much waste." "Then we're building aqueducts," he said, sketching lines in the dust. "Gravity-fed, from upstream. Reservoir here, filter beds here…"
She watched in silence, her young eyes wide. To her, the stick scratches looked like gibberish. To Ethan, they were salvation.
By noon, he had filled five pages of parchment in the manor's study borrowed from a dusty drawer beside a forgotten ledger. Diagrams covered every inch: town grid revisions, drainage redirection, improved palisade angles, and a redesigned gatehouse that could withstand a siege.
It was crude work, the ink ran from sweat and the straight edges were drawn by hand but it was a beginning.
More than that… it was a plan.
That afternoon, Steward Marn approached the study with a knock. His face was lined with concern.
"My lord," he said carefully, "some of the townsfolk are nervous. The masons say you want to tear down the south wall?" "Tear down and rebuild," Ethan replied without looking up. "It's structurally unsound." "And the granary?" "Poor ventilation. It breeds rot and rats. We'll move it higher, near the wind." Marn frowned. "You want to change everything."
Ethan finally met his gaze. "If we don't, this town dies."