Location: Armathane → Southern Midgard Coast
Time: Day 53–58 After Arrival
The Selection
It began not with soldiers, but with craftsmen.
Alec stood in a walled courtyard behind the palace's lower stables, surrounded by the creak of wagon wheels and the hammering rhythm of workers prepping for departure. The air smelled of cured leather, cut cedar, and the faint iron tang of tools being packed with reverence.
Before him stood nine individuals — eight men, one woman — handpicked from guild halls, rural fiefdoms, and private artisan circles across Midgard. None wore armor. None bore banners. But every one of them had calloused hands, sun-leathered skin, and the wary eyes of people too long underestimated.
These weren't soldiers or noble retainers.
These were Midgard's engine room — masons, millwrights, waterwrights, stone-carvers, and forge-trained engineers. The kinds of minds that worked in iron and timber instead of ink and decree.
Alec looked each of them in the eye before he spoke.
"My name is Alec. You've heard of me by now. Some of you think I'm a prodigy. Others — a fraud. Most of you don't know what I am. That's fine."
He paced slowly, deliberately.
"We're headed to a village called Grendale. You know the story — collapsed wharf, salt-choked farmland, a river that eats more than it gives. This is not a repair mission."
He stopped in front of them.
"We're not going to fix it. We're going to make it better."
Silence.
Then a low voice — the millwright with a braided black beard and one clouded eye — stepped forward. He wore no insignia, just a copper torque and a leather apron slick with oil.
"You know rivers?" he asked, arms folded.
"I understand them," Alec said.
"You ever argued with one after it's swallowed twenty acres of good field?"
"No," Alec replied evenly. "But I've studied how to make water obey."
A second voice from the back: "What do you want from us?"
"Brains. Skill. Endurance. And no loyalty to failure."
A third — the woman, squat and gray-braided with the heavy wrists of a roofwright — gave a snort.
"You don't outrank us, sky-man. We do what we do, and we do it right."
Alec gave a single nod.
"Then we'll get along."
She smirked, pulling her gloves tighter.
"We'll see what you're made of, stranger."
Departure
They departed Armathane under gray light, just past first bell. No guards. No fanfare. Just ten people, two carts, a half dozen horses, and enough tools to rebuild a city if wielded properly.
Alec rode at the head atop a dark-coated mare named Nettalyn, chosen for her sure footing and mild temperament. Behind him rolled carts piled with measuring rods, chalk, plumb lines, inked parchment, lime powder, masonry tools, forge clamps, surveyor tripods, and several large timber templates etched with mathematical notations.
There was no military escort — just a silent courier named Teren, skin pale as fresh scrolls, who rode with the group and spoke only when recording names and events in his wax-sealed ledger.
Alec didn't mind being watched.
Let them observe.
Let them measure.
The Road South
The southern road unfurled like a slow thought across the landscape — meandering through hills brushed with heather and autumn-thinned orchards. At first, the journey was peaceful: lazy farmland, stone terraces, occasional shrines to Auron and Velistra faded by wind.
But within two days, the scenery shifted.
The apple groves gave way to twisted saplings. Irrigation ditches ran dry or brimmed with standing brine. Old fences leaned like exhausted drunks. The wind changed, too — salt-stained, pulling the taste of the sea deep into every breath.
By the third day, Alec dismounted to walk beside the lead cart.
Dead fields surrounded them now. Wheat stalks bleached gray. Trees brittle and bone-thin.
"There," one of the masons muttered, pointing toward a jagged silhouette on the horizon. "That'll be Grendale."
Alec stared.
The land seemed to sink as they neared — like the whole region had begun to give up.
Arrival at Grendale
It was worse than he'd imagined.
Grendale slouched against the cliffside like a man too proud to fall but too broken to rise. The wharf had collapsed into the surf — skeletal beams jutted from the water like ribs torn from the earth. The church bell had cracked and fallen. Paint peeled from homes like burned skin.
And the people?
They watched with neither hope nor anger.
Just the blank, steady eyes of those who had run out of expectations.
Teren dismounted, presented a sealed writ to the reeve — a gaunt man named Corden, whose beard looked forgotten and whose clothes hung like surrender flags.
He read the seal, nodded once, and led them to the village's longhouse.
"You can stay there," Corden said flatly. "If you think you'll last."
The First Walk
That night, Alec walked the town alone.
He followed the river's mouth, measured the current with a reed marked in charcoal, then waded into the inlet barefoot to feel the pressure at the base — the pulse of the sea bleeding in at each high tide. His notes filled three pages before nightfall.
The problem wasn't inland flooding.
It was tidal rebound — a narrowing delta paired with poor outflow during low tide. Each wave hit harder, forced upward into the soil, salting the roots before the water ever reached the farms.
Fixing the dock wouldn't help.
He needed to change the terrain.
The Team Gathers
By dawn, he'd drawn a diagram in the dirt using a broken stick — three tiers of stone catchment leading to angled pressure drains cut into the southern bluff.
"The dock's in the wrong place," Alec said, as the workers gathered.
He pointed toward the bluff's curvature.
"We don't fight the tide. We redirect it. A high basin to catch surge. Sluice gates to regulate overflow. Pressure channels cut here—"
He traced a line with his boot.
"—to vent water into the southern ravine at peak force. If we're smart, we can harness that pressure to rotate grain turbines."
The old millwright gave a low whistle.
"You want to trap the sea."
"No," Alec said. "I want to bribe it."
Laughter. The first since arrival.
The roofwright crossed her arms.
"And the farmland?"
"We trench in three rings. Above, middle, drainage. Line them with reedgrass. It eats salt and holds topsoil. In two months, you'll have green patches. In a year — usable yield."
The masons stared.
Not arguing.
Not doubting.
Just… calculating.
And for builders?
That was assent.
The Village Responds
That evening, Alec shared tea with the reeve. They sat on the stoop of the longhouse, listening to the wind scrape the salt off the rooftops.
"Three crews came before," Corden said. "All left. Said we weren't worth the time."
"Then they misunderstood the cost of letting a place rot."
"And you? You here to prove something?"
"I'm here to test the limits of belief," Alec said quietly. "Starting with yours."
The reeve didn't answer right away.
Then:
"You talk like a priest. But you look like a bricklayer."
Alec smiled faintly. "I'll take that as a compliment."
The First Marker
On the fifth day, with the sea foaming beneath, Alec stood atop the southern bluff and drove the first foundational stake into the cliffside with the old mason.
Blood blistered his palm. The wind howled.
The waves slammed the rocks below.
But the stake held.
Straight. Firm. Unyielding.
"This," Alec said, wiping his hand on his coat, "is the line."
Behind him, the engineers lined up beside him — silent.
Below them, the tide continued to rise.
But this time, someone had drawn a boundary.
And the sea would have to learn it.