The carriage groaned as it crested the final hill. Below them, nestled in a grey, wind-scoured valley, lay what was supposed to be Kael's domain. His fief. His new home. He didn't need the AI to tell him it was a disaster.
"Gods above," Finn whispered from his horse, his young face pale. The boy was only seventeen, full of stories of knightly honor and noble duty. Nothing in those stories had prepared him for this.
Gregor, the mountain of a man who'd served Kael's father for years, just grunted, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. His jaw was tight. Silas, ever the opposite of his counterpart, had a look on his face that was less shock and more grim confirmation. He'd expected nothing, and this place had still managed to disappoint.
Kael stared out the window, his own breath misting the glass. The term "village" was generous. It was a collection of hovels, slumped and leaning against each other like drunks after a long night. Many were missing roofs, their dark interiors exposed to the unforgiving sky. There was no smoke from the chimneys. No sign of life, at first.
Then he saw them. People. They moved with a slowness that spoke of deep, gnawing hunger. Their clothes were rags, their limbs thin as sticks. Skeletons draped in skin. As their small entourage—a single carriage and three riders—trudged down the rutted path into the settlement, a few heads turned. Hollow eyes met theirs for a moment, flat and empty, before looking away. There was no curiosity. No hope. No fear. Just a profound, soul-deep apathy.
Kael had seen news reports of famine zones back on Earth. The vacant stares were the same. These people had seen lords before. Lords who made promises they never kept. Lords who took what little they had. To them, Kael was just the next wave in an endless tide of suffering. Another mouth to feed, or another fist to endure. They had simply stopped caring which it would be.
"They're ghosts," Finn said, his voice trembling slightly.
"They're not dead yet, lad," Gregor corrected, his tone rough but not unkind. "Just forgotten."
Kael sighed, the sound barely audible over the rattling carriage. He felt a familiar weight settle in his chest. It wasn't just pity; it was the cold, heavy feeling of a problem so immense it threatened to swallow you whole. *What can I do?* he thought. *I'm a Tier 3 Apprentice with a handful of silver coins and two knights who are loyal to a dead man.* He was exiled, disgraced, and utterly broke. He could barely save himself, let alone a whole territory that the world had left for dead.
The road led to what must have been the lord's manor. It was the largest building, but that wasn't saying much. It was a two-story stone house with a partially collapsed roof and boarded-up windows. A place that looked more like a tomb than a home.
"Right," Kael said, his voice startlingly clear in the quiet. "Gregor, Silas, secure the area. See if the structure is sound. Finn, help me with the supplies."
The simple orders seemed to break the spell. Gregor and Silas dismounted, their presence alone a stark contrast to the listless villagers. They moved with purpose, their armor clinking, a sound of authority this valley probably hadn't heard in years. Finn scrambled to obey, his relief at having a task to focus on palpable.
They spent the next few hours making a small section of the manor livable. They cleared debris from two ground-floor rooms, unboarded a window to let in the pale light, and started a fire in the hearth with the dry wood they'd brought. The smoke that finally curled from the chimney was the first sign of life the building had shown in a long time. It drew no attention. Nobody came to investigate.
As night fell, they ate a quiet meal of dried meat and hard bread. The silence was thick with unspoken thoughts. Finn kept glancing towards the window, as if expecting the walking dead to shamble out of the darkness. Gregor ate methodically, his gaze fixed on the fire. Silas sharpened a dagger, the soft scrape of stone on steel the only sound for long stretches.
"My lord," Gregor said finally, breaking the quiet. "What's the plan?"
All three of them looked at him. Their new lord. A boy of nineteen in a man's body, with a title that meant nothing and land that was worthless.
Kael met their gazes. He couldn't give them false hope. He couldn't promise a bright future built on fantasies. He was a scientist. He dealt in data and observable reality. "First," he said slowly, "we need to understand the problem. Not just what we can see, but the things we can't."
They looked confused, but they nodded. Trusting him, for now.
Later, when the others were asleep—or pretending to be—Kael sat by the dying embers of the fire. He closed his eyes, focusing inward. It was a sensation he was still getting used to, like accessing a second, silent consciousness.
*AI, run a comprehensive environmental scan. Focus on a five-kilometer radius around this location. I want soil composition, water purity, atmospheric particulates, and a topographical analysis. Prioritize resources essential for agriculture and human survival.*
A soft chime, heard only in his mind, confirmed the command. There was no flashy display, no holographic interface. Just a flow of pure information directly into his consciousness. It felt like remembering something he'd never learned.
The data streamed in, neat and organized. He saw the world not as a desperate landscape, but as a series of values and metrics.
Analyzing... > Target: Soil Composition > Results: Severe nitrogen and phosphorus depletion. High acidity (pH 4.8). Trace elements of what appears to be a blighting agent, magical in origin, concentrated in the topsoil. Recommendation: Traditional farming methods will yield less than 5% of expected crop output. Soil remediation required.
A curse. The stories were true. But the AI didn't call it a curse; it called it a blighting agent. Quantifiable. Analyzable. That was a start.
Target: Water Sources > Results: Single primary source, a creek flowing from the mountains. Analysis shows high levels of heavy metal contaminants, consistent with upstream mineral deposits. Additionally, contains a parasitic microorganism, dormant in cold temperatures but active when ingested by a warm-blooded host. Causes severe malnutrition, lethargy, and eventual organ failure.
Kael's blood ran cold. It wasn't just starvation. The people were being poisoned by the very water they drank. That explained the apathy, the skeletal thinness that went beyond simple hunger. Their bodies were fighting a losing war on the inside.
He continued to process the information. The AI mapped out the valley, highlighting the rocky, unusable land and the few patches that, if the soil were fixed, could potentially be farmed. It analyzed the air, finding it thin but clean. It even scanned the dilapidated buildings, highlighting structural weaknesses and potential collapse points.
He sat there for an hour, the fire long dead, the room plunged into cold darkness. The despair he'd felt earlier was still there, a cold knot in his stomach. But now, it was mixed with something else. Not hope, not yet. It was clarity.
The problem wasn't a vague, mystical doom. It was a series of interconnected, physical failures. The soil was poisoned. The water was tainted. The people were sick and starving as a result. These were variables. And if they were variables, they could be changed.
He couldn't fix the magical blight in the soil, not yet. He had no idea how to even approach that. But the water... the water was a different story. Heavy metals and microorganisms. That was a physics and biology problem. That was an engineering problem.
He thought back to his labs on Earth. Distillation. Filtration. Boiling. Simple principles that had saved countless lives throughout history. Could he do that here? He had no equipment, no power source. But he had his mind, the AI's analytical power, and a basic understanding of this world's energy—the Life Aura that knights used.
It was a long shot. A ridiculous, desperate plan. But it was better than sitting here and watching everyone, including his own small party, slowly waste away.
Kael opened his eyes, staring into the darkness. He had his first step. It wasn't a promise of a better future. It was just a task for tomorrow. Find a way to clean the water.
The dawn brought a weak, grey light that did little to warm the stone hall. Kael was already awake, having barely slept. The stream of data had replayed in his mind all night, a litany of failures and poisons. When he heard Gregor stirring, he didn't wait. "Get everyone up. We have work to do."
A few minutes later, the three of them stood before him, bundled against the chill. Finn looked nervous, Gregor impassive, and Silas faintly annoyed at being roused so early for what he likely assumed was another pointless task. Kael didn't waste time on pleasantries.
"The problem isn't the soil," he began, his voice flat and direct. "Not the main one, anyway. It's the water. It's making them sick."
Finn frowned. "Sick how, my lord? A plague?"
"Something like that. There are… things in the water. Too small to see. They get inside you and eat you from within. Slowly. That's why the people are so weak. It's not just hunger. The water is killing them." He decided against mentioning the heavy metals; one incomprehensible poison was enough for now.
Gregor's heavy brow furrowed. "We've been drinking it."
"Only for a day, and we've been boiling it for tea. That helps, but it's not enough. And we can't boil an entire creek." Kael looked at them, letting the severity of the situation sink in. "Forget the farming. Forget the manor. Nothing else matters until we have clean water. If we can't fix this, we'll end up just like them, or we'll die of thirst."
Silas snorted, a dry, rasping sound. "And how do you propose we 'fix' a creek, my lord? With a prayer?"
"With rocks," Kael replied, meeting the man's cynical gaze without flinching. "And sand. And charcoal. We're going to build a filter. A big one. We force the water through layers of material, and it will trap the sickness. It's a simple principle."
It sounded insane, he knew. Like a child's game. But it was the only thing he could think of. Gregor, ever the practical one, considered it. "You're certain this will work?"
"I am certain it is better than doing nothing," Kael countered. "We'll start small. Prove the concept. Gregor, I need you to find a source of charcoal. There must be burnt trees in the woods. Silas, you're with me. We're going to the creek to find the best place to build this. Finn, you stay here. Keep the fire going and guard the supplies. Don't let anyone in."
The commands were crisp and clear, leaving no room for argument. Silas still looked skeptical, but he gave a curt nod. Gregor, having a tangible task, simply said, "Aye, my lord," and went to fetch his axe. For the first time since they'd arrived, there was a shared purpose, however desperate it might be.
Kael and Silas walked towards the sound of running water, their boots crunching on the brittle, dead grass. A few villagers were out, moving with that same deathly slowness, gathering fallen branches or simply sitting against the walls of their hovels, staring into nothing. They paid the lord and his knight no mind. Their world had shrunk to the size of their own aching bellies and the few feet in front of them.
The creek was just as the AI had described. It trickled down from a series of rocky shelves in the mountainside, the water deceptively clear over a bed of grey stones. Upstream, Kael could see the discolored rock faces the AI had flagged as the source of the heavy metal contaminants. Here, the water looked pure. Inviting. It was a perfect trap.
"The flow is slow here," Kael observed, kneeling by the bank. "If we build a dam, just a small one, we can divert a portion of the stream. We'll need a trough. Something long." He looked around. "We'll have to fell a tree and hollow it out."
Silas stared at the water, then at the skeletal village, then back to Kael. The look on his face was no longer simple cynicism. It was a deep, ingrained weariness, the expression of a man who had seen a hundred grand plans fail. "This is a lot of work for a theory, boy."
"Every plan is a theory until it works," Kael said, standing up and brushing dirt from his knees. "Now, help me find the right kind of stones. We need gravel, fine sand, and larger rocks for the dam. " He narrowed his eyes. "I know what we're looking for." He started walking along the bank, his eyes scanning the ground with an unnatural precision, already mapping out the solution in his mind. For the first time, Silas followed without comment, his own gaze starting to truly assess the rocks and the trees, a flicker of professional interest finally breaking through his hard-won apathy.