Tamsin clucked to her mule and angled the cart toward the inn, wheels bumping over the ruts. A few villagers who had definitely finished their errands for the day suddenly remembered vital business in the same direction.

  Elspeth wiped her hands on her apron and met us halfway.

  “You’ll be after a room and a hot meal, I expect.”

  “Only if you insist on spoiling me,” Tamsin answered, already unhooking a small pack from the cart. “I brought that spice you like, if your boy didn’t eat all the coin you sent with the last caravan.”

  Finn materialised at Elspeth’s elbow.

  “I only spent a little of it. On nails. Mostly.”

  Elspeth’s mouth twitched.

  “Nails that walked themselves into your pocket, no doubt. In you go, both of you. I’ll have stew on in a moment.”

  Tamsin tipped her chin toward my crate.

  “Get those put where clumsy feet can’t reach them, plate-girl. I’ll want you sharp when we talk numbers proper.”

  Numbers proper. Right. My favorite anesthetic.

  I lugged the box inside and up the narrow stairs to my room. The inn felt smaller with so many bodies moving through it, boards creaking, low voices tumbling against the walls like a familiar tide.

  In my room, I set the box on the bed and lifted the lid. Rows of glass vials stared up at me, waiting to be filled. I ran a finger along one neck, checked for flaws. I slid the vials out in bundles, nested them carefully in the bottom of my small chest, tucked spare linen around them. Field-expedient supply chain. We had glowgourds. We had sap. We would need more ash, more hands, more—

  My stomach growled.

  “Fine,” I muttered. “Maslow before capitalism.”

  Downstairs, the common room glowed. The big hearth roared, turning the room into a single, breathing thing. The air smelled of barley, onions, and meat—boar again, of course.

  Tamsin already occupied a corner of the main table, boots hooked on the rung of the chair opposite her, a tankard in hand. Mayor Brody perched on the seat across, shoulders hunched as if he expected the roof to fall in. Around them, people drifted into loose orbits, all very busy not-listening.

  Elspeth waved me toward an open spot near the end of the table and slid a bowl in front of me.

  “Eat before the gossip gets all the meat,” she murmured.

  Brody cleared his throat, fingers worrying the rim of his own untouched stew.

  “The roads from Dawnsbridge… any worse?”

  “Worse implies they were good to start with.” Tamsin took a long drink. “They’re passable. If you don’t mind losing the odd wheel and the occasional passenger.”

  Scattered chuckles, quickly swallowed.

  Gideon’s eyes stayed on her.

  “And the city? Trade holding? We’ve not had word in… some time.”

  “Word costs extra, Mayor. Lucky for you, I like your bread.”

  She let us hang a heartbeat.

  “Dawnsbridge is… thinner. That’s the best way for it. People, stock, patience. All a little worn. Harvest’s patchy up the whole valley. Late frosts, then too much rain, then not enough. You know how it goes.”

  Kael leaned against the hearth, arms crossed, attention snagged.

  “Short harvest in Dawnsbridge usually means the south picked up the slack,” he muttered. “Any word from there?”

  Tamsin flicked a glance his way.

  “Southfields got hit by blight. Twice. Whatever didn’t rot in the ground, hail took. Granaries in Dawnsbridge are locking their doors early this year. Counting sacks like misers count coins.”

  My spoon paused halfway to my mouth. In game terms, that sounded like “global drop rate nerf on food.”

  Brody’s fingers dug into the table edge.

  “Rationing already?”

  “Not in the open.” Tamsin traced a circle in the condensation on her tankard. “Prices creep a little each market. Loaves come out a touch smaller every week. Bakers blame the millers, millers blame the farmers, farmers blame the sky. You know the dance.”

  Elspeth’s jaw tightened. She ladled more stew to someone without looking.

  A farmer near the window scratched his beard.

  “They’ve got walls, guards, merchants. If they’re struggling, what’s left for the likes of us?”

  “Trouble,” Tamsin answered. “And opportunity, if you’re stubborn enough to survive it.”

  Gideon latched onto the first part.

  “The trouble being…?”

  “Bandits.” Tamsin’s mouth flattened. “More of them, and hungrier. Used to be you knew where they lurked, who they’d hit, and when. There was a rhythm. Now they’re bolder. Testing wagons in daylight, taking livestock right off the road. A few caravans just… didn’t arrive.”

  Myriam’s hand stilled on the cup she carried.

  “Death toll?”

  “Too many, Sister. Not enough witnesses left to count them proper.” Tamsin rubbed her thumb along the handle of her tankard. “City guard rides out when it’s bad enough to embarrass the Council. Chases raiders off one stretch, leaves three others bare. Without… your old sort of folk—”

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  Her eyes flicked to my armor stacked by the stairs.

  “—cleaning out the nests for bounties, the vermin breed fast.”

  There it was. No players. No respawns. No daily quests to keep the roads tidy.

  Gideon swallowed.

  “Will Dawnsbridge send aid north if winter bites hard here?”

  “They’ll send notices about fair pricing and unity between communities,” Tamsin answered. “Lots of wax seals. Very official. As for grain and guards…” She lifted one shoulder. “They can’t feed their own wards proper. No matter how pretty the charters, you can’t eat ink.”

  A low murmur rippled through the room. Someone swore under their breath. Finn shifted closer to his mother, eyes wide.

  I spooned stew into my mouth because chewing gave my face something to do. Calories in, information in. Standard night shift.

  Tamsin tapped the table with two fingers, drawing focus back.

  “You lot are tucked out of the way, and that’s good and bad. Bandits prefer fat pigs, but lean ones can’t buy my wares. If Oakhaven wants to stay on the map, you’ll need to think how you trade without bleeding yourselves dry.”

  Gideon’s gaze slid toward me at that, just for a heartbeat, then back to his bowl.

  Elspeth topped off Tamsin’s tankard.

  “Plenty of time to speak of trade after you’ve eaten your fill. No one thinks straight on an empty stomach.”

  Tamsin raised the refilled mug in a small salute.

  “On that, innkeep, the whole world agrees.”

  Conversation loosened as bowls clinked and benches scraped. The tightness in the room shifted, not gone, just finding new corners to nestle in while we listened and ate.

  By morning my brain felt like cold porridge.

  Sleep came in patches, around dreams of empty grain bins and bandits with grocery-store scanners instead of faces. When Elspeth handed me bread and honey, I stared at it too long before I ate it. It felt rude to bite into anything that soft.

  I took the hill path to the chapel because my feet knew the way now.

  Sunstone Chapel crouched under the old oak like it tried not to attract attention. The door stood propped open, light cutting a thin rectangle across the swept floor. Myriam knelt near the altar stone with a basket of cloudy glass and metal disks, polishing one with an oiled rag.

  “You’re early,” floated out, dry as kindling. “Either the inn’s breakfast burned, or your thoughts did.”

  “That obvious?”

  She glanced up. Her eyes skimmed over my face, down to how I held my shoulders, back up again. The corner of her mouth dipped.

  “Mm. Come in before you wear a trench in the threshold.”

  I stepped inside. The chapel always smelled like dust and beeswax, with a faint herbal note that clung to Myriam’s robes. Morning light slanted through the high side window and caught the embedded sunstone, scattering warm flecks over the altar.

  She held out a cloth.

  “Hands.”

  I took it, more muscle memory than piety now, and picked up a metal bowl from the basket. Soot streaked the inside. Someone’s old offering lamp, probably.

  We polished in silence for a while, the small rasp of cloth on metal the only sound.

  “Travelers brought hard news?” Myriam didn’t look at me. “The village hums when a cart arrives. Yesterday it buzzed, like a nest struck twice.”

  “Tamsin.” I rubbed at a stubborn black smear until my arm ached. “Yeah. Hard news.”

  “Bandits.” Myriam set her finished disc aside, picked up another. “Always bandits.”

  “It’s not just them.”

  I heard my own voice come out flatter than I meant.

  “She says Dawnsbridge had a bad harvest. Southfields got hit by blight, then hail. Prices creeping up. Loaves shrinking. If the city’s worried…” I trailed off.

  “Oakhaven can starve.”

  Her words landed like a mallet on a chisel. Clean, direct, no cushioning.

  I swallowed.

  “Where I’m from,” I started, then stopped, because that sentence always felt like lying. I tried again. “Back home, hunger meant… your paycheck sucks so you buy lower-quality food. Or you skip meals to pay rent. It’s awful, don’t get me wrong, but there’s always food somewhere. Warehouses. Stores. We throw out enough to feed a small country.”

  My fingers tightened on the bowl’s rim.

  “The idea of a whole village starving because the rain showed up late feels… fake. Like something in a history book. Or an event in a game zone I grind through and then log off.”

  Myriam rested her cloth on her knee.

  “And now the book stands up and stares back at you.”

  “Yeah.” I let out a thin breath. “In med school, we had lectures about malnutrition. Photos. Numbers. I memorized all of it for exams. Then during residency I had this kid come in—” I cut it off, shook my head. “Point is, there’s knowing something can happen, and then there’s realizing it might happen to people you ate stew with last night.”

  The bowl in my hands gleamed now, almost mirror-bright. My face in it looked older.

  Myriam studied that reflection instead of me.

  “Truth has weight. The mind learns it long before the body believes it.” Her thumb smoothed a wrinkle from the cloth. “You’ve been walking on a floor you thought was stone. Tamsin pulled up a board and showed you the drop.”

  “I keep thinking there should be a… system. Safety net. Some mechanism that kicks in so entire communities don’t just…” I made a helpless gesture. “Isn’t there a god whose job description is basically ‘don’t let everything die of famine’? Someone watching the crops, the wild game, all that?”

  Myriam’s eyes warmed, faintly amused.

  “You’ve met Solaire in the old tales. You think he shines only on skin and bandages?”

  “I thought he was more… truth, healing, light. Surgical lamp over the operating table, not irrigation manager.”

  She chuckled under her breath.

  “He has broad shoulders, but not that broad. No. What you’re reaching for is Her.” Myriam tilted her head toward the small north window, where branches scraped faintly. “Sylvana. Green Mother. Roots as wide as her branches. Forests, fields, vines breaking stone where it weakens.”

  “Plants.” I leaned back against the bench. “So… a nature god. Does she care about people, though? Or are we just the things trampling her moss?”

  “Children stomp mud in the house.” Myriam picked up a glass lens, held it to the light, turned it until a clear spot caught and flung a bright circle onto the far wall. “You still keep a roof over them if you can.”

  She shifted the lens, the circle sliding over the altar stone.

  “She is growth and interconnection. Roots, mycelium, flocks, markets. One system feeding another. When the world ran as the Stewards meant it, farmers tilled, hunters tracked, merchants hauled—and all of that, every hand lifting seed or sack, honored Sylvana without a word. She wants balance, not perfection.”

  My chest eased a fraction, like someone had loosened a too-tight bandage.

  “So if the fields fail, she… notices?”

  “She notices when the pattern breaks.” Myriam set the lens down with care.

  “First it’s small things. Blossoms too early, frost that comes without warning, bees that forget which flowers they like. Hunters bring back lean meat in fat season. Then fields that should rest won’t stay fallow, and fields that should grow stay stubborn.”

  “That’s… already happening, isn’t it? The way people talk about past harvests.”

  “The world coughs. We keep patting its back and pretending it’s just dust.”

  I rubbed the heel of my hand over my brow.

  “If Sylvana’s about networks and balance… is there a way to, I don’t know, boost the signal? Like putting in auxiliary blood flow when an artery’s blocked.”

  Her gaze snapped to me, sharper.

  “You think in vessels.”

  “Vessels, supply lines, whatever. If the main… Sylvana-channel is clogged, could we help the systems talk to each other better? Smarter planting, better storage, trading with places that have surplus. Does that count as worship or just not being idiots?”

  Myriam’s laugh came out low and pleased.

  “You want grand rituals? Build a granary that doesn’t leak. Teach three farmers to plant in guilds instead of rows. Convince Brody that trading seed with Southfields now is cheaper than burying children later.”

  “So… spreadsheets for a goddess.”

  “She prefers compost heaps and hedgerows. But she’ll take your spreadsheets.”

  “And humans?” I pushed. “Where do we actually sit in all this? Are we part of her system, or parasites on it?”

  “Both, on our worst days.” She smiled, not kindly, but honestly. “We clear fields and overhunt and forget to plant trees for our grandchildren. Yet we also tend gardens, replant forests, feed neighbors. Sylvana cares for the web, Emily. People are knots in it. If a knot loosens, the whole pattern changes.”

  I let that picture settle. A net, threads running from Oakhaven’s fields to Dawnsbridge’s granaries to some nameless farm three valleys over. Tug one, all of them twitch.

  “I’ve spent my whole life thinking in terms of individual patients,” I murmured. “Bodies. Organs. Not… ecosystems.”

  “You’re learning a different anatomy.” Myriam picked up another tarnished plate and passed it to me. “Here, the veins run under soil.”

  I took it. The metal felt cool, solid, reassuring.

  “Sylvana,” I repeated, tasting the name. “If anyone’s listening about this whole famine thing, she would be.”

  “If anyone is listening about growth and hunger both,” Myriam corrected, eyes on the light-filled stone. “It would be her.”