The restored train roared like a metallic beast over the old rusted rails until it screeched to a halt before the main station of Agrobia, a region once considered the agricultural heart of Norgalia. The station, covered in moss and cracks across its stone walls, groaned as its iron doors creaked open. The air that rushed in carried the scent of damp soil and ashes.
Nothing remained of the golden fields that filled the historical archives. Where seas of wheat and endless orchards once stood, now stretched a wasteland of mud, charred skeletons of trees, and forgotten mounds serving as improvised graves.
The silence was so deep that even the wind seemed to guard it.
Pablo descended from the carriage with steady steps. At his side walked Silvana, a botanist who had secretly worked during the Republic, cultivating underground laboratories and preserving seeds and trees in cryogenic capsules stolen from the old genetic banks. Her white coat fluttered in the breeze, a sharp contrast against the gray ruins.
Behind them followed engineers, soldiers, and farmers—descendants of Agrobia who had survived famine by fleeing to other regions.
"There's nothing left to save here," muttered a soldier, staring at the plains blackened by fires decades old.
Silvana did not reply. She knelt, pressed her hand into the mud, and rubbed it between her fingers. Then she closed her eyes, inhaling the scent with calm. A faint smile lit her face.
"Never underestimate Agrobia," she whispered, as if speaking to someone unseen. "The land never dies. It only sleeps. It only needs us to listen."
⸻
The plan was simple in theory: restore the irrigation systems, reactivate Agrobia's underground core—a machine built during the reign of Eldric I that drew energy from magma to power intelligent farms—and, with Silvana's preserved seeds, plant accelerated-growth crops.
But in practice, nothing was simple.
The canals had collapsed, the irrigation towers had crumbled, and the core was sealed beneath layers of volcanic stone hardened over the years.
"It'll take weeks to clear all this," said Keon, one of the young technicians who had accompanied Pablo from Cintekis.
"Weeks we don't have," Pablo answered firmly. "If Agrobia doesn't awaken soon, the starving cities will revolt. The kingdom's restoration depends on this soil."
⸻
Work began at dawn the next day. Workers dug trenches to restore the canals, while engineers tested ancient machines that screeched like dying beasts.
It was during an excavation at the center of a ruined farm that they unearthed something unexpected.
A worker struck something shining, harder than diamond. As they cleared the dirt, a Vidrium hatch emerged, buried under centuries of dust and neglect. It was sealed with a symbol Pablo recognized immediately: the same one they had seen in Cintekis's forbidden records. The emblem of the Pillars.
A murmur spread among the gathered crowd like a shiver.
"What is this doing here?" asked Keon, sweating.
Pablo stared at the seal, his brow furrowed.
"Open it."
Silence broke into a chorus of hands working with levers, torches, and tools. At last, the hatch gave way with a metallic snap that echoed like a voice from the grave.
Inside was a crypt.
And it was not empty.
⸻
Within lay bodies. Skeletons of farmers, but not ordinary ones. Their bones were longer, their rib cages wider, their skulls larger. Some showed deformities at the joints, as if they had borne inhuman burdens in life.
Horrified, Silvana brushed dust from a metal table where a journal rested, carved into plates of Vidrium. The name etched on its cover was unmistakable: Haskell, the Pillar of Life.
Silvana read aloud, her voice trembling:
"I tried to give them a better form. I wanted them to work without fatigue, without illness. They were my children… but they failed. All of them failed. I burned them… and planted flowers over their ashes."
Silence fell like a blade.
The workers, descendants of Agrobia's farmers, listened with clenched fists. Rage and grief burned in their eyes.
One of them, an old man with a white beard, raised his voice:
"So this is what they did to our grandparents? They treated us like beasts for their experiments?"
Pablo lowered his gaze. He knew there were no easy words.
"What they did was a crime," he said at last, his voice heavy. "But we will not repeat their mistakes. We will bury these bones with honor. And we will make their legacy bloom."
⸻
The following days were filled with mourning and labor. They dug graves, laid stones, and planted blue flowers over each crypt. Silvana chanted ancient prayers, inherited from farmers who still preserved forgotten traditions.
And then the true restoration began.
Silvana's cryogenic capsules were opened one by one. Seeds of golden wheat, fruit trees, medicinal roots—everything that had been preserved in darkness found new soil. With energy sent from Cintekis, the underground systems roared back to life. The core ignited, and the canals revived like veins that had begun to pulse again.
Rain returned. At first timid drops, then downpours that soaked the mud. The roots answered the call of the earth, and within days, green shoots pierced through the ashes.
In two weeks, the blackened fields transformed into a sea of hope: wheat swaying in the wind, orchards of apples, rows of medicinal flowers glowing faintly in the night.
The workers danced among the harvests, laughing like children. Silvana wept silently, her hands sunk deep into the soil. From the hilltop, Pablo allowed himself the faintest smile.
⸻
That night, under the stars, Pablo and Silvana walked through the new glass greenhouses, which shone like temples of light.
"What will happen if the Pillars awaken, Pablo?" asked Silvana, her voice trembling. "What if they demand their power back?"
Pablo stopped before a young tree already bearing green fruit. He touched it gently, as though greeting an old friend.
"Then we will show them that true power does not lie in destroying… but in planting again."
Silvana stared at him in silence, and for a moment, the future seemed possible.
From the hilltop, Agrobia appeared to burn in fire—
Not of war,
but of life.
⸻
Days later, while overseeing the fields, a farmer's child approached Pablo with a bouquet of blue flowers.
"My grandfather said these flowers grew when the land was happy," the boy said innocently.
Pablo took the bouquet, smelled it, and tucked it into his belt.
"Then let Agrobia smile again."
The murmurs of approval from the farmers mixed with the night breeze.
⸻
But not all shared in the calm.
At the border of Agrobia, a band of mercenaries watched the fields being reborn. Among them, a man in a gray cloak whispered:
"The king awakens ghosts that should remain buried. The Pillars will not allow this land to breathe again."
The warning lingered in the darkness.