Chapter 3: Hidden Potential
POV: Ser Gareth Stone
The lord rode like a sack of turnips.
Gareth kept his expression neutral, guiding his own horse along the rocky hillside trail. Behind them, Duskhollow Keep had shrunk to a gray smudge against the morning sky. Ahead, the eastern hills rose in jagged ridgelines, treeless and unwelcoming.
"Three days ago this boy was dying in his own vomit. Now he wants to survey abandoned mines."
The transformation unsettled him. Gareth had served three lords: old Lord Darke, his wife, and their disappointing son. The old lord had been stern but fair. The lady, kind but fragile. Corwyn had been... neither. Lazy. Self-pitying. More interested in wine and complaints than in learning his duties.
This Corwyn was different.
He held himself differently. Straighter. His eyes didn't wander the way they used to. When he asked questions—and gods, the questions—he actually listened to the answers.
"Here." The lord reined up at a cluster of boulders. The System—whatever that meant—had led him here. Gareth didn't understand how a man could find his way to a specific spot on a featureless hillside, but Corwyn had done it twice already. "This is one of them."
"One of what?"
Corwyn dismounted, stumbling slightly—still weak, but pushing through—and crouched by a dark stain on the exposed rock face. Rust-colored. The boy ran his fingers along it, then lifted them to his nose.
"Iron oxide," he murmured. "High concentration. The deposit goes deep."
"My lord, how do you—"
"Books, Ser Gareth." The lord flashed a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Amazing what you can learn from books."
"He never read books. I watched him burn his lessons more than once."
But Gareth said nothing. A good soldier knew when to question and when to shut up and follow orders.
"Mark this location," Corwyn said. "We'll need to come back with proper tools. Survey stakes, picks, someone who knows mining."
"There's no one in Duskhollow who knows mining, my lord. The mines closed before I was born."
"Then we'll find someone. Or train them." Corwyn stood, brushing dust from his hands. His gaze swept the hills with that strange intensity. "Three deposits total. Maybe four. If even one of them has viable ore..."
He trailed off. Gareth watched the calculations play out behind his lord's eyes—numbers, projections, possibilities.
"He's thinking like a merchant. Or a maester. Not like a lord."
"My lord," Gareth said carefully. "Even if there's iron here, mining costs money. Labor, equipment, transport. We don't have—"
"I know what we don't have." Corwyn's voice was sharp. Then softer: "I also know what we could have. That's the difference, Ser Gareth. That's always the difference."
He mounted his horse again—badly—and pointed downhill, toward the cluster of farmsteads visible in the valley below.
"The peasants next. I want to talk to them."
"Talk to peasants." Gareth had heard many strange things in his life, but that might have been the strangest. Lords didn't talk to peasants. Lords taxed them, judged them, occasionally hanged them. Conversation wasn't part of the arrangement.
"My lord—"
"Move, Ser Gareth. We're burning daylight."
POV: Old Farmer Torren
The lord came to his fields.
Torren had seen sixty-three winters. He'd survived the Hard Spring, the Rot Year, and three different lords of Duskhollow. None of them had ever come to his fields.
"Something's wrong," he thought, leaning on his hoe as the two riders approached. "Lords only visit peasants when they want more taxes."
The young lord dismounted—clumsily, like a city boy who'd never sat a horse—and walked straight toward him. The big knight stayed back, watching with an expression Torren couldn't read.
"You're Torren, yes? You've worked this land for forty years?"
Torren blinked. The lord knew his name. The lord knew how long he'd been farming.
"Y-yes, my lord. Since I was a boy helping my father."
"Then you know this soil better than anyone." The young man crouched—crouched, like a common laborer—and picked up a handful of dirt. He rubbed it between his fingers, sniffed it, let it fall. "What did your grandfather grow here?"
The question caught Torren off guard. "My... my grandfather?"
"Someone mentioned that harvests were better in the old days. Before the mines closed. Why?"
"Because lords cared more back then," Torren thought but didn't say. Instead: "The old lord, he had us rotate the fields. Plant beans one year, wheat the next, let a third lie fallow. Said it kept the soil strong."
The young lord's eyes lit up. Actually lit up, like Torren had handed him a gold dragon.
"Crop rotation. Of course." He stood, brushing dirt from his knees. "And when did you stop?"
"When the new lord's father took over. Said fallow fields were waste. Made us plant wheat every year." Torren shrugged. "Yields dropped. Keep dropping. Soil's tired now."
"Tired." The lord nodded slowly. "What if we went back to the old way? Rotation, fallow periods, maybe add some fertilization techniques?"
"Fertilization techniques." Torren had no idea what that meant. But something in the lord's tone—earnest, curious, lacking the usual noble contempt—made him answer honestly:
"Might work, my lord. Take a few seasons to see results. But might work."
"That's all I needed to hear." The lord reached into his belt and produced a small flask. "Ale?"
Torren stared. A lord was offering him ale. In his own field. Like they were equals sharing a drink.
"Something is very wrong with this one," he thought. But he took the flask anyway.
POV: Corwyn Darke
The evening meeting felt different from the morning one. Tenser. Mira Waters sat straighter than before. Maester Harlan had traded his confused expression for something more guarded. Even Ser Gareth seemed caught between professional distance and genuine curiosity.
"They're wondering what I'm going to say. They've been wondering all day."
We gathered in the keep's small hall—not the formal dining room, but a cozier space with a fire crackling in the hearth and a rough wooden table holding maps, ledgers, and the remnants of a simple meal.
"Crop rotation," I said without preamble. "The old methods. We implement them starting next planting season."
Harlan's eyebrows rose. "My lord, the current practice—"
"Is killing our soil. The yields have dropped every year for two decades. Even I can read that much from your records." I spread a hand over the ledger Mira had provided. "We're farming ourselves into starvation."
"Changing agricultural practice is... not simple," Harlan said carefully. "The smallfolk are set in their ways. They'll resist."
"They won't resist if it works. And it will work." I leaned forward, keeping my voice level. "This is a pitch meeting. Treat it like a pitch meeting." "I spoke with a farmer today—Torren, been working his plot for forty years. He remembers the old rotation methods. His grandfather's yields were nearly double what we're seeing now."
Gareth grunted. "Old men remember things bigger than they were."
"Maybe. But the principle is sound. Bean crops fix nitrogen in the soil. Fallow periods let nutrients recover. This isn't magic—it's basic agriculture." I caught myself before dropping the word science. "Old wisdom from Essos. The Free Cities have used these methods for centuries."
That gave them pause. Essos was far away, exotic. Easy to believe they might have knowledge Westeros lacked.
[ AGRICULTURAL BLUEPRINT (BASIC) UNLOCKED ]
[ YIELD IMPROVEMENT: +15% (ESTIMATED) ]
[ IMPLEMENTATION TIME: 2 SEASONS ]
The System confirmed what I already knew. Good. I dismissed the notification before anyone could wonder why I was staring at empty air.
"There's more," I said. "The eastern hills have iron deposits. At least three veins, possibly four, all untapped."
Dead silence.
"The mines closed sixty years ago," Harlan said slowly. "The records state—"
"The records state the known seams were exhausted. No one looked deeper. No one surveyed the surrounding area." I pulled out a crude map I'd sketched during the ride back—locations marked, rough estimates of deposit sizes. "These are surface indicators. Iron oxide staining, specific rock formations. The ore is there."
Gareth leaned forward, studying the map. His expression shifted from skepticism to something harder to read. "If this is true... iron ore would be worth a fortune."
"Worth more than our debt to the Crown, if the deposits are rich enough." I sat back, letting them absorb it. "But development will take capital we don't have. Labor we don't have. Time we might not have, if Darklyn decides to push his advantage."
"Then why tell us?" Mira asked. First words she'd spoken all evening. "If we can't act on it, why raise hopes?"
Smart question. I met her eyes. "Because knowing what we could have changes how we think about what we do have. Because planning starts now, even if execution comes later. And because—" I paused, choosing words carefully "—I want you to understand that this domain isn't dying. It's dormant. There's a difference."
The fire crackled. Outside, wind moaned against the shutters.
Gareth spoke first: "You're not the man you were, my lord."
A statement, not a question. I held his gaze.
"No," I admitted. "I'm not."
He nodded once. Something settled in his expression—decision, maybe. Or the first crack in sixty-five percent loyalty.
"Then show me what this new man can do. We'll train in the morning. Real training. If you're going to lead men, you need to know how to fight."
"Great. Swordfighting lessons with a medieval drill sergeant while recovering from poisoning."
But I nodded. "Dawn. I'll be there."
Later, alone in my chambers, I wrote by candlelight.
Not real notes—nothing that would make sense if someone found them. Poetry. Bad poetry. Terrible, in fact. But the rhythm of the words encoded information: iron deposit locations, crop rotation schedules, names of peasants who seemed influential in their communities.
[ QUEST PROGRESS: SURVIVE AND PROSPER ]
[ CURRENT STATUS: 3% ]
[ TERRITORY ASSESSMENT COMPLETE ]
[ RECOMMENDED NEXT STEP: SECURE RESOURCES ]
Three percent. A long way to go.
A knock interrupted my writing. Edric's face appeared at the door, carrying a tray with bread and cheese.
"Evening meal, my lord. Mira said you missed supper."
"Thank you, Edric." I gestured him in. "Leave it on the table."
He did, but hesitated at the door, shifting his weight foot to foot.
"Something on your mind?"
The boy's ears reddened. "My lord... why did you ask me to sit with you this morning? And remember my name? I'm... I'm just a stable boy."
"Because in my world, the stable boy might become the CEO. Because potential doesn't care about birth. Because I need every ally I can get, and kindness costs nothing."
What I said was simpler: "Because you matter, Edric. Everyone here matters. The keep doesn't run on lords and knights alone."
His eyes went wide. For a moment, I saw something flicker there—the beginning of loyalty, maybe. Or just hope.
"Good night, my lord."
"Good night, Edric."
The door closed. I turned back to my coded poetry, candle flame dancing in the draft.
Tomorrow would bring sword training and more surveys and a hundred small fires to put out. The day after would bring the same. And the day after that.
But for the first time since waking in this strange body, in this strange world, I felt something other than desperate panic.
"I can do this," I thought. "One project at a time. One day at a time."
The candle burned low. The keep settled into silence around me.
And somewhere in the darkness beyond my walls, Lord Bryen Darklyn was still waiting.