Location: Grendale, Midgard's Southern Coast Time: Day After Arrival
The sea still tried to take the village, but Alec no longer saw it as an enemy.
It was an equation. A constant. A pulse that didn't care what walls men raised in defiance. Most looked at the tide and saw violence. Alec saw potential. A force that could be shaped.
He stood at the edge of the broken cliff road where the old seawall had once extended. The timber skeletons of the wharf jutted like ribs from a long-dead creature. Behind him, a line of workers waited with bundles of stone, ropes, and the kind of patient suspicion only masons carried after a week of hauling rock without seeing results.
Today would be different.
Today, they'd start building.
He turned to the team.
"The foundation point is marked. Lower anchors go here." He pointed to a chalked symbol etched into the dark rock. "We'll drive the iron lengths into the bluff, layer quarried stone outward. Set the first sluice curve against the tidal slant."
The old millwright crossed his arms. "And the current? At full tide it'll shear off half the work before it dries."
"It won't get the chance," Alec said. "We'll drop the curvature sluice gate into the trench trench before nightfall. It won't stop the water. It'll train it."
The roofwright with the braided hair spat to the side. "Stone won't hold unless it's keyed properly."
"I've already marked the guide channels." Alec handed her the stone schematic etched into a thick hide sheet. "Every piece ties to four. No isolated links."
The woman whistled through her teeth. "This is... clever."
"It's proven," Alec said. "Just not here yet."
The masons grunted their acknowledgment. That was all he needed.
By midmorning, the first stone was laid.
It wasn't grand. It wasn't even impressive to look at. But it locked into place with a satisfying click, held by the pressure of three anchors and a counterbalanced wedge of lime-bound gravel.
Then came the second.
By noon, the fourth layer of the lower basin was set into a roughly bowed crescent, curving out like a jaw catching a punch. The waves lapped against it at low tide, foam curling, trying to find a weak edge.
It didn't.
Not yet.
By evening, the first test sluice was placed.
It was crude—nothing more than a shaped plank with interlocking notches and two side pivots—but when the tide began to rise, Alec stood with the workers and watched as the sea poured into the catchment basin, hissed along the curved stone, and redirected toward the pressure trench without slamming into the town edge.
The impact hadn't been stopped. But it had been softened. Bled off.
"Not bad," the millwright muttered.
"It's only one tooth in the gear," Alec replied. "We're building the whole mechanism."
The woman chuckled. "Gods help the sea, then."
The others nodded, slowly.
A shift was happening.
They were beginning to believe.
—
The next morning, Alec visited the inland edge where the farmland met the tidal marsh.
It was worse here. Every third step sank into salt-rotted mulch. The old trenches were shallow, uneven, and twisted like drunk snakes through the field edges. Corden, the village reeve, stood nearby with a group of local laborers.
"You really think you can grow food in this?" Corden asked, arms crossed.
"No," Alec replied. "Not yet."
He stepped forward, pulled a cloth-wrapped sample from his satchel, and poured the contents into a shallow furrow.
"What's that?"
"Pulverized limestone, charred grain ash, and powdered clay."
Corden narrowed his eyes. "Witchcraft?"
"Drainage amendment," Alec said. "Rebalances pH, hardens the soil beneath. We layer this, then we add reedgrass on top. Two weeks of growth, we cut it back, repeat. In four rotations, the soil becomes viable again."
"And if it doesn't?"
"Then it still chokes less than what you have now."
Corden didn't reply.
But the workers nearby began copying Alec's steps.
Later that day, he supervised the digging of a proper trench-ring system around the marsh edge. A precise three-tier design. The outermost channel carried away excess water. The middle acted as a collection loop. The innermost, deepest ring would become the root of new crops—once the soil could hold them.
The villagers worked slowly. Skeptically. But they didn't stop.
That night, they asked for more chalk to mark rows.
Alec gave it without comment.
But inside, he marked the first tick of success.
—
On the fourth day of construction, the breakthrough came.
It wasn't one moment, but a culmination.
The sea hit harder that night than before. Wind drove waves against the partially completed sluice basin, and the pressure trench began to spill.
But the redirected current worked.
The flood didn't reach the village edge.
Instead, it carved itself along the prepared channel, rushed along the stone slope, and hissed into the widened estuary Alec had ordered cleared by pickaxe the day prior.
When morning came, the villagers found the roads damp but intact.
The wharf still ruined.
The town still ugly.
But it was not drowning.
And that changed everything.
Alec stood near the trench mouth, arms folded, watching as a boy dragged his foot along a line of newly compacted sand and didn't fall in.
The masons were already assembling the next set of stone layers. No prompting needed.
The roofwright looked at Alec from atop a scaffolding beam and called down.
"It's working, you bastard."
Alec allowed himself the smallest smile.
"Yes," he said. "Now we build faster."
—
Later that day, as Alec marked slope angles for the secondary trench alignment, Teren, the quiet courier, approached.
"Message, sir."
Alec didn't stop drawing. "From Armathane?"
Teren nodded. "Indirect. The duchess hasn't spoken yet. But other ears are listening."
"Let them."
"She'll want numbers. Measurements. Completion timelines."
"She'll get results," Alec said, standing.
Teren watched him.
"She wants more than success," he said finally. "She wants certainty."
Alec stepped past him, eyes scanning the horizon where the estuary opened like a lung. His chalk scraped against the slate tablet he used for surveying.
"Then I'll give her the future."
Teren said nothing else.
—
On the fifth evening, as the sun painted the salt flats gold, Alec walked the edge of the new seawall.
He counted every bolt, every fitted notch, every wedge.
It wasn't perfect.
But it worked.
A few villagers stood on the opposite end, watching. Not talking. Not mocking. Just standing. Observing.
It meant more than any praise.
He stopped near a half-built arch where two younger builders were resting. One of them looked up.
"Why do you care?"
Alec blinked. "About what?"
"About fixing this."
Alec looked back toward the sea.
"Because it's broken."
The builder hesitated. "So's half the world."
Alec nodded.
"Then I'll fix that too."
The two exchanged glances.
Then returned to work.
—
By the end of the seventh day, half the lower wall was complete. Two of the three trench rings were dug and lined. The first reedgrass bed had sprouted in the marsh test plot.
It was small.
But it was real.
Alec wrote the first full entry in his project ledger that night.
"Grendale has begun to breathe."