The following morning, the wind was a relentless, abrasive force, driving the gray dust through the cracks of the manor house and into the narrow streets of Ashfall.
Kael stood on a collapsed cart, repurposed as a crude platform outside the manor. Below him, the assembled population of the barony—roughly three hundred weary, cloaked figures—shuffled nervously. They had been summoned by the knights, and their faces were hollowed out by months of hunger and hopelessness.
Beside Kael stood Sergeant Rylen and his four mounted knights, their presence a silent, armed declaration of the new chain of command. Steward Elms hovered at the base of the cart, clutching his ledgers like shields.
The people expected a formal greeting, perhaps an empty promise of relief from the capital. Kael gave them neither. He did not raise his voice; he projected it, using the deliberate, measured cadence of a field briefing officer.
"I am Kael Veynar, your appointed Baron. I will not waste your time with flowery lies."
A wave of bitter murmuring swept through the crowd.
"You believe this land is cursed," Kael continued, ignoring them. "You believe the failure is divine punishment. It is not. The failure is human. It is the result of mismanagement, greed, and the criminal neglect of the man who held this title before me."
He watched their expressions shift—from fear to a sudden, brittle anger directed at the former Baron.
"We have six weeks of grain left in the granary," Kael stated. He delivered the figure flatly, without preamble. "At current consumption rates, every one of you will be too weak to stand in thirty days, and everyone will be dead in forty-five."
The murmuring stopped. The silence that fell was heavy, broken only by the sharp, whistling wind. People exchanged shocked glances; some began to weep.
"The well water is contaminated," Kael added, driving the point home. "Drinking it without treatment is a sickness, not a cure. The land is depleted. The seed stock is nearly worthless. We have been condemned to die."
He let the despair hang in the air for a moment, then snapped the silence with a new tone, hard as cold iron.
"But we will not die. I refuse to be discarded, and I refuse to allow you to be discarded."
He held up a single, large, dark root—the bitter Goat's Foot Tuber that Steward Elms had identified.
"This grows where nothing else will. It is bitter, but it is calories. We will forage it. We will boil it. We will survive on it until the land yields better."
He then delivered the command that would secure their long-term survival while crushing their immediate dignity.
"The food supply will be rationed starting tonight. The rules are absolute. Any person who is healthy and capable of hard labor will receive rations only in exchange for a day's work. You work, you eat. You refuse to work, you do not eat."
A man near the front, gaunt and stooped, found his voice. "My lord, I am old. I cannot dig the hard earth. Will you starve the old men and women?"
Kael met the man's gaze, his own expression unyielding. "Those unable to labor—the infirm, the very old, and the youngest children—will receive a minimal subsistence ration, distributed by the healer and overseen by the Steward. They will survive, but they will not be working."
He did not apologize for the cruelty of the logic. He only stated the necessity.
The able-bodied in the crowd began to shout, their fear turning into immediate outrage.
"We are not slaves!" cried a woman. "You take our food! You are worse than the last Baron!" roared a farmer. "We will raid the granary ourselves!" another yelled, pointing at the secured stone building.
Kael allowed the noise to rise, watching the crowd's tension peak. Then, he held up a hand, silencing the square with a single, sharp gesture.
"Rylen," he called.
Sergeant Rylen spurred his horse forward until the animal stood directly at the edge of the platform.
"The granary is Imperial property," Kael announced to the crowd, his voice cutting through the final pockets of protest. "The rations are under my command. Any attempt to breach the granary, to steal from your neighbor, or to defy a direct order will be met with immediate, unsparing force from the knights. Under the Emperor's law, I am authorized to execute deserters and saboteurs without appeal."
His eyes swept over the shocked faces. He saw the shift in them—from simple anger at a noble, to terror of a commander. They had expected weakness; they found calculation.
"Tomorrow, we work. We will dig a trench to divert rainwater away from the contaminated well. We will collect ash and mix it into the fields. The land is not cursed. It is broken. And we are going to fix it. Those who work will live. Those who defy will die. Choose."
With that, Kael stepped down from the cart, leaving the population of Ashfall paralyzed by the sudden, terrifying choice between starvation by neglect and survival through absolute obedience.