As the sun struggled to rise above the eastern ridge, the mist hung low over Greyrest's valley. The morning was muffled by the dew that clung to everything. However, the sound of muddy, tired hooves and the slow creak of a cart that shouldn't have come this far broke the silence.
Ethan watched the figures below rise from the treeline as he stood on the ridge with his arms folded.
They arrived in small groups, perhaps twenty in total, consisting of women, men, and a few kids. Sun-hollowed and dirt-streaked. At the side of one cart was a limp man with blood crusted through the linen he was wrapped in. Bark and rags were used to splint the arm of another woman.
No troops. No armaments. Hope and tools only.
The guard at the southern gate raised no weapon as they approached. Greyrest did not have enough steel for such luxuries. Instead, he gave them water.
"They're from Emberwell," said a voice behind Ethan.
He turned. It was Micah, the elder who oversaw provisions. She rarely climbed this high. Her knees ached with the cold, but her eyes were sharp as ever.
"Emberwell's two weeks south," Ethan said.
"It's gone," Micah replied. "Burned. Two nights ago. Raiders, maybe worse. A few survivors broke off and came here. Said this is the only settlement still standing between the High Marsh and the Western Teeth."
Ethan said nothing. He looked down again.
The cart had stopped. The refugees—because that's what they were—stood in silence. There was a waiting in them. A hollow sort of patience. Not the kind born from humility, but from exhaustion. People who'd run out of places to go.
He counted among them an older man with leatherworker's hands, a girl no older than sixteen but already carrying a carpenter's pouch, and a one-eyed mason with lime burns on his forearm. Skilled. Hardened. And afraid.
"We'll need to ration again," Micah said. "Our stores won't hold with more mouths to feed."
"We'll make it work," Ethan said absently. His mind was already elsewhere.
The attack on Emberwell wasn't the first, but it was the closest. Other settlements had vanished in whispers over the last few months, but this, this was real. These were not rumors carried by crows. They were people, bleeding and breathing and now standing on Greyrest's threshold.
It was no longer a matter of if something came.
Only when.
And when it did, this town would not hold.
Greyrest lacked adequate walls. Only a rudimentary perimeter, with low dry-stone barriers and wooden stakes, intended to discourage animals more than intruders. It was a defensive whisper. A delusion.
Ethan's jaw tightened. He wasn't merely a settler. No longer. He worked as an architect. A strategist. And now something more, a leader, by circumstance and silence.
Long before he needed it, he had studied defense. examined how the walls of ancient cities were built to project strength as well as to withstand force. He considered the mountain holds in Ardrath, where the stone was fused with bronze rods to reduce impact, and the walls of Volaren, where angled defenses were formed by staggered bastions.
He thought of the topography here. The northern ridge was high and rocky, perfect for foundation. The southern stretch held more loam and would need reinforcements, possibly a dual-core wall.
But none of it could be done alone.
He would need laborers. Stonecutters. Smiths. He would need raw materials, iron for bindings, timber for scaffolding, lime for mortar. Things Greyrest did not have in surplus.
Yet there was someone who did.
The Baroness.
His cousin.
Their last meeting had been frosted with pride and political difference. She had taken her inheritance and shaped it into a trading fortress near the River Vane. She commanded respect, and a wealth of resources.
She owed him nothing.
But she respected order. She respected long-term vision. And if he framed this the right way, as a mutual investment in survival, he might sway her.
He would offer her something in return. Not coin, but contracts. People. Skilled ones.
Among the refugees were men and women with trades, not just mouths to feed, but hands to build. He could draw up agreements. Offer her controlled access to their talents, perhaps a future seat in Greyrest's emerging council. Enough to entice her. Enough to get what Greyrest needed.
A true wall.
Not to cage them, but to give the people something solid to believe in.
He exhaled slowly.
The wind shifted, carrying the faint sound of hammer against stone, someone already beginning to mend a cracked stair. The town didn't sleep anymore. Not fully. It waited. And watched
He stepped down the ridge, mind already drafting the letter he would send. The first paragraph would need to strike the right tone, dignity, not desperation. Strategy, not pleading.
Behind him, in the thinning mist, something shimmered. He paused, but didn't turn.
It was there again. Watching. Not threatening. Simply present.
He didn't speak to it. Didn't invite it closer.
Not yet.
Let it see that he was doing something. That he was preparing.
Because Ethan was no longer just surviving.
He was building.