Day One

  Jack started with chores that didn’t need a wizard.

  He shouldered a broken cart axle so a farmer could re-pin it, reset two ward-stakes that had drifted out of true along the south lane, and quieted a squealing mill gear with a patient twist of Stone and a dab of grease. The town breathed easier when small things worked.

  At Records, Tina slid him a donation slate already half full. “We’re heavy on root veg, light on spice and wood.”

  “I’ll shake the trees,” Jack said.

  He stuck his head into Magical Theory long enough to catch Eamon mapping resonance nodes on the slate, and Petros bent over the Anchor cradle. Eamon lifted a quill in a warning that meant Don’t you dare guest lecture. Jack grinned and moved on.

  On the parade ground, Asil ran drills, call, rotate, cover, until the rhythm lived in their feet. Sera bent arrows truer than yesterday; Lio tied a Knot so clean the air cinched like a belt. Asil didn’t look his way. She didn’t need to.

  He spent the afternoon on the rounds: a spice jar from the noodle place (“it bites back,” the cook warned cheerfully), a sack of carrots from the communal beds, a promise of hardwood from the carpenters if he helped haul. “Deal,” he said, and meant it.

  Crossing the inner yard, a young gate guard paced the wall-walk, practicing his best heroic slouch. “I once was an adventurer like…”

  “Quit it,” Jack said without looking up.

  “Yes, sir,” the guard answered, grinning anyway.

  Day Two

  Abby’s orientation brief at the east gate drew three dozen new faces. “No solos east,” she said, voice carrying clean. “You want risky? Earn it with drills.” Lucy’s team stood beside her, wearing fresh Lead bands. Selena fielded route questions without sighing once. Progress.

  Jack approved a transmog pattern at the tailor’s (turning ridiculous pauldrons into something less likely to knock over tavern chairs) and swapped a pouch of iron gems for heavy butcher paper. “For entirely normal reasons,” he promised.

  He hauled wood with the carpenters, log rounds shouldered two at a time, an old Earthworksong under his breath. At the forge, the blacksmith handed over a crate of pre-cut hooks and spits. “For the great burning,” the man said. “Return what the wolves don’t steal.”

  Speaking of wolves: Jack physically carried Saul and Lucia out of the butcher’s back room, one under each arm like misbehaving children. The butcher crossed his arms and didn’t look impressed.

  Jack set them down, crouched, and scratched ruffs until they tried to look repentant. “South woods,” he said. “Hunt there. Do not harass training runs.”

  Saul sneezed affirmatively. Lucia pretended she had never even heard of a butcher.

  He checked the waterworks on his loop back. The mana battery hummed steadily; the Blurp gurgled contentment in the reclamation hut. Jack nodded respectfully and did not ask follow-up questions.

  Day Three

  He passed Abby in a hallway, triaging requisitions with two quills and a frown. “Later, I’m stealing you for food,” he said.

  “Later I’ll let you,” she replied without looking up.

  From the shade, he watched Asil’s afternoon evals, Imani tanking a mock alley fight like a dropped anvil; Pax converting a miscast into cover on the fly. Asil’s quiet “better” made three recruits stand taller.

  In the ward lab, Petros and Eamon were mid-bind: the Anchor humming at a pleased pitch, the Key answering like a bell a room away. Jack left a wrapped bundle of spice and a note for after, and ghosted out.

  One last sweep for the feast netted a barrel of apples, a sack of onions, and two questionable “seasonings” from a proud new alchemist. “No exploding food,” Jack warned.

  “Probably,” the alchemist said.

  On the green, he stacked hardwood, laid kindling, and coaxed a coal bed without a spark of magic, old skills under Aerothane sky. When the heat was right, he lowered the smoke-pit grate, rubbed down the first racks with salt and the tavern’s secret, and settled the meat to kiss the smoke.

  The air changed. People started appearing with “just happened to be nearby” faces. Kids tried to look casual. Saul and Lucia materialized at the edge of permission and did not cross it.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Jack set the lid, checked the vents, and leaned back against warm stone, shirt already smelling like tomorrow’s feast. “Okay,” he told the evening. “Let’s feed a town.”

  By late afternoon, the green had turned into a crossroads of smells. Smoke and spice braided over the square: racks of meat coming off the pit in shimmering waves, kettles of stew shouldered up beside flatbreads blistering on stones, a cauldron of “noodles” that the cook insisted were authentic and everyone else insisted were good anyway. The voucher line curled and thinned; after first serving, the tables opened and the town poured through like a tide. Laughter carried. So did the sound of someone discovering pepper for the first time.

  A trio of bards tuned at the low platform by the oak, two lutes, a hand drum, and Yaz with a lap harp, stringing Resonance through the other instruments until the chords felt like they had shoulders. Children tried to sneak into the musician’s space and were bribed away with sugared apples.

  Tina worked the perimeter with a clipboard as if it were a holy relic. Abby managed supply lines by giving orders and being obeyed. The tailor draped blankets over benches to make them appear as deliberate choices. The blacksmith pretended not to hover near the pit; when Jack handed him the first rib with that rub, the man closed his eyes like someone had cast a gentle spell.

  Games grew in the gaps. Someone had set up a ring toss with rune-etched hoops and ward-stakes; when the ring settled true, the stake chimed and threw a tiny spark that made kids hop up and down like they’d captured lightning. A strength tester, hammer, lever, bell, refused to budge for bravado and sang for technique, which infuriated exactly the right number of people. The artificers rigged an “illusion pond,” where paper fish swam in real water; if your hook caught a glyph at the right angle, the fish burst into confetti and left a tin whistle behind. A knife-throwing lane appeared and, miraculously, stayed orderly under Selena’s glare.

  At some point in the third hour, Abby vanished and came back dragging both Petros and Eamon by their sleeves like schoolboys caught reading during recess. “Eat. See people. Remember to blink,” she said, steering them toward the table nearest the pit. Petros blinked into the light, caught Jack’s eye, and grinned. Eamon, blinking slower, muttered, “If the Key goes off without me, I’ll haunt you,” and then promptly accepted a plate stacked to architectural standards.

  “Attunement’s holding?” Jack asked around the line.

  “Like a hymn,” Petros said, already chewing. “No shop talk,” Abby warned, loading their cups.

  Geraldine, Loren’s wife out of Hajill, slipped in and out of the bustle like someone who’d been useful all her life. She’d come to Anjelica on business and quietly welded herself to the gala prep. Now she set a jar of honey on Asil’s table, kissed her cheek, and said, “I’m staying put until that portal saves me three days of saddle.” Asil squeezed her hand. “We’re on it.” Geraldine’s eyes flicked to the wolves at the edge and back with a smile. “They’re better behaved than half of Hajill.”

  Jack and Asil chose a bench among farmers and smiths instead of the dais-that-didn’t-exist. They ate off metal plates, drank something with too much spice and not enough regret, and let people come to them as they wanted. A weaver thanked Asil for getting her niece into a safe housing unit. A boy solemnly informed Jack that he had once seen a goblin, and it had been small, and Jack solemnly agreed that small things were often the worst. The butcher walked past, saw the wolves pretending to be statues, and sighed the sigh of a man who had made his peace with living in a story.

  Then the bards hit a festive reel, strings bright, drum quick, Yaz’s harp tugging at feet, and Jack stood, a grin already getting away from him. “Come on,” he said, and Asil rolled her eyes without resisting as he swept her onto the packed dirt like they’d paid for the floor.

  For two people who insisted they did not have time for dancing, they moved like they’d been bribed by rhythm itself. Jack spun Asil under his arm; she came out of the turn laughing, hair loose, steps clean. He threw a heel-click that made two kids attempt it and fall over on purpose. Asil answered with a quick-foot pattern that would have humiliated most soldiers. The circle widened to give them room; Yaz’s harp slid a sly flourish under their feet. Someone yelled, “Dance-off!” and someone else shouted, “Shut up, let them,” and everyone kept clapping on the beat.

  Lucia and Saul pranced the edge of the circle, tails high, pretending they weren’t dancing. A ring of flowers ended up around Lucia’s neck from a girl with more bravery than sense; Lucia wore it like a queen. Saul discovered that if he lay down next to the strength tester, every child would scratch his belly in passing; he has never been accused of lacking strategy.

  Between songs, Asil tucked her hand into Jack’s elbow and they drifted back toward their bench, breathless and satisfied.

  “Remember when we snuck into that VR studio at Gamecon because we thought the test would have better snacks?” Jack said, passing her a cup.

  “We got both,” Asil said, eyes warm. “Snacks and a world.”

  He tipped his head toward the green. “We’re doing better with this one.”

  She didn’t argue.

  Around them, merriment found its grooves. Lucy’s team, new Lead bands glinting, circulated like they’d been doing it all their lives, pointing recruits toward safe games, answering a hundred small questions, laughing at exactly the right volume. Tina finally put down the clipboard and lost at ring toss with dignity. The blacksmith admitted the noodles were fine. The tailor fitted a flower crown to Saul with needle-thread precision and zero fear. Petros and Eamon argued about whether Resonance should precede Thread in the coupling while demolishing a tray of ribs; Abby confiscated the tray and replaced it with another.

  As dusk slid down the walls, lanterns woke, warded glass, soft gold, and the green took on that glow a place gets when it believes in itself. The bards slipped into a slower time. A handful of couples found their own small circle of ground. Two apprentices tried to harmonize and managed something that counted. The Blurp, miles away and mercifully out of sight, burbled contentment that no one heard.

  Jack refilled cups and handed one to Asil, palm brushing warm against her fingers. “Three days…” he said.

  “Three days,” she agreed. “Then, council at Hajill”

  He glanced toward the lab wing, to the stone under which new routes hummed themselves into being. “Then more roads.”

  Asil clinked her cup to his. “And fewer goodbyes.”

  They drank to that. The night, obliging, unspooled like a long, bright thread. Then they slipped off for the kind of quiet they’d been owed, knowing the next three days, and the weeks beyond, would not be kind to free time.