When Daalo rode into the south, the heat hit harder than the north's cold ever could. Dust stuck to his face, sweat bled into his collar, and every eye that watched him come down the trail wore the same expression-wary, tired, untrusting.
Chaghan waited near the half-built palisade, helm tucked under one arm, a long scar showing on his cheekbone. Beside him stood his masked second, face hidden but posture rigid. Daalo dismounted slowly, brushed grit from his cuffs, and handed over the sealed scroll.
"Altan says we hire the freed," he said.
Chaghan read the seal, broke it, and glanced over the first lines. He grunted. Not agreement. Just acceptance.
That night, campfires burned all along the river plain. By morning, the world shifted.
They came walking. Not fleeing. Not begging. Walking.
They came from collapsed farmsteads, border ruins, and half-choked canyons where nothing grew but thorn and spite. They brought blistered palms, broken sandals, and backs bent by other men's orders. But they didn't kneel. They looked at the foundation lines scratched into the dirt and waited.
Daalo met them not with speeches, but with work charts, shift boards, and material stacks. He assigned foremen. He set quotas. He opened the chests Altan had sent with coin and handed out pay slips. It changed everything.
The southern jewel began as a city of hands. Stonecutters hammered sandstone from nearby cliffs. Masons guided spells into mortar, each sigil placed with exacting care. Mages etched fire-stabilized runes into the beams. Carpenters sealed roof slats with ward-scribed nails.
Magick wasn't a show-it was reinforcement. It meant structures didn't rot in the humidity or snap under dry wind. Altan had designed the sigils himself. Each one coded with breath-marks from the old tongue. Daalo oversaw every carving.
"You miss a stroke," he told one mage, "the load shifts and fifty men die. Redo it."
The mage grumbled, but obeyed.
The city was laid out in wide concentric rings. The outer ring rose fastest. Rows of low dwellings-flat-roofed, with double-room interiors, each one cooled by clay tiles and shaded by woven reed awnings. No luxury, but better than tents and chain-barracks.
In the central district, Daalo paced the frame of what would become the Civic Hall. Slabs were hoisted by mage-fire cranes. Bronze chains creaked as the walls locked into place. Craftsmen shouted at apprentices. Sparks hissed from enchanted chisels.
The first storm blew in on the fifteenth day. Rain, thunder, gusts. They worked through it. By lantern light, drenched to the bone, hauling stone and arc-laced timber. Nobody stopped. Not for the weather. Not for the cuts.
They were paid. That made them stay.
The new district names came quickly, carved into blackstone markers: Rivermouth, where the shipyards began to form. Stonecradle, where the workers lived. Coinrow, where markets rose, noisy and raw. The Wardline, where walls, towers, and sigil-bound anchors were tested by force.
At the city's edge, drydocks were carved into the riverbank with excavation runes and chisels blessed by flamecraft. Bronze cranes, their arms shaped like hawks, lifted ship ribs onto reinforced rails. Planks slid into place with mage-sealed glue and hammer-song.
The naval base sprawled in long rows of low, wide buildings with reinforced ceilings. Runes lined every threshold. Not all protection-some control. Weapons stored.
Daalo designed the new Naval Academy beside it. A long hall with three towers, one for drill, one for theory, one for command simulation. Here, the young were already lining up, eyes raw from sleep but burning with purpose. They'd heard the phrase: "You work, you eat. You learn, you rise."
The Stormguard Bastion, the heart of the new city, took longer. It had to. Daalo had built its sister in Vrael. This one was sharper. Harder. More layered.
Four tiers, each locked by different access runes. The lower tier held barracks, armories, and vaults lined with copper-thread wards. The second tier contained planning halls, war maps, the Council Chamber. The third: signal towers, mage-lines, officer rooms. The fourth, a blackstone chamber called Oathkeep-no relics, only space for names to be carved.
There were hidden chambers, of course. Daalo made those himself. No plans. No sketches. Only chisel and rune. He placed them behind false walls, under dry foundations, inside walls where no door should be. Storage? Maybe. Safe rooms? Maybe not. Even Altan hadn't asked.
Chaghan watched the city rise from a makeshift tower of crates and scaffold. He never spoke much. But when Daalo handed him the day's reports, he nodded.
"Any complaints?"
"One fight," Daalo said. "Two drunks. One said the other took his hammer. Other said he didn't."
Chaghan flipped through the parchment.
"Resolution?"
"Gave them one hammer. Made them work opposite ends of the yard."
Daalo grunted. "Fair enough."
The hunger for work spread fast. But the hunger for learning spread faster.
Education began as a whisper. The library swelled. Too fast. Hundreds gathered daily, yearning to learn. The mages couldn't keep up. So Daalo drew new blueprints.
He designed three levels of education.
First: Foundations. Smaller schools were built in every district. Children aged six to twelve were taught under shaded colonnades using chalk, slates, and repurposed scrolls. Basic numeracy, glyph-tracing, and spoken literacy were the core.
Second: Apprentice Track. For teenagers and adults who could read, write, and count, but wanted more. Here, they learned toolcraft, mapwork, old imperial script, history, and public speech. Many were former field hands who had never held a pen before.
Third: The Civic College. Entry by exam. Those who passed studied under Vrael-trained instructors in leadership, statecraft, military theory, medicine, and construction. Those who failed were not discarded-they returned to the apprenticeships, guided by mentors to try again.
Laborers not selected for city work were not dismissed. Instead, Daalo deployed them to build additional schools in the surrounding villages, towns, and hamlets. Within the month, letters flew north requesting more instructors.
Altan responded swiftly. One week later, thirty-five teachers arrived, teaching by lantern light, sometimes from memory alone.
Children from broken lineages learned their first words beside their parents. Families studied together under oil lamps. Language became salvation.
For the youth aged fourteen and up, the new college opened its doors within a fortnight. Free, open, and sacred. Every lesson began with the same phrase: "You are no longer tools. You are the ones who will shape them."
And while no law demanded it, many parents brought their children daily, not by force but with pride. They carried them on their shoulders, led them by the hand, and stood at the back of classes just to listen.
But it was not only the freedmen who thirsted for knowledge.
From the scorched edge of the realm, veiled riders emerged-Zhaqarin from the southern dune reaches. Their presence stirred no alarm. Their leader had ridden with the rebellion before. But this was not a war party.
They brought a request.
A scroll written in a spiraled glyph no scribe in Vrael recognized, but which Altan understood. "We ask not for stone. Only for learning."
He approved the request without hesitation.
No cities were built for them. That was never their way.
Instead, schools were quietly established in hidden villages, shaded spaces where children could sit on wind-worn carpets, surrounded by the smell of leather and sun-bleached silk. There were no banners, no walls, no columns. But there were teachers.
Zhaqarin fire-mothers watched from afar as their sons and daughters learned to trace symbols with charcoal. Circle-leaders listened as teachers explained the history of winds and oceans. Spear-sisters guarded the perimeters in silence. And Path-Finders, once tasked with memorizing only the desert's breath, now helped guide the teachers from camp to camp.
A quiet revolution stirred beneath the sand. Not one of conquest, but of remembering. Of reclaiming.
The realm was changing. And Altan watched it all, knowing the sword alone had never built an empire worth keeping.
Beneath a blood-orange sky, Kassan sat atop a wind-smoothed ridge, overlooking the hollow where his Circle had settled for the season. The tents were low and narrow, shaped like dunes themselves, no flags, no firelight to give them away. But from where he sat, he could hear the sound that had never once echoed in their camps.
Laughter.
Children's laughter.
Below, beneath a weathered awning stitched from storm-hide, two dozen Zhaqarin youths gathered around a stone slab scrawled with ink. A Vrael-born teacher, skin pale and voice soft, pointed with a reed and repeated the word again. "Riv-er."
The children echoed it back, unsure, but brave.
Kassan exhaled, tasting the sand in the wind. He looked to the sky, to the shifting stars. Somewhere, Altan watched this world change. And perhaps, for the first time, Kassan believed this might not be a dream born of fire and illusion.
He leaned forward on his Dunehorn's saddle. The beast did not stir. "We were ghosts," he murmured. "But now we write names into stone."
Her name was Sahri of the Thirstless Sons. She had never held chalk before. Never sat beside boys without being separated by veil or age. Never heard the word "teacher" spoken without scorn. And yet, here she was, knees tucked beneath her, toes curled in the dust, staring at the black-marked letters drawn across the old slab.
Her tongue stumbled over each word, but the teacher waited. Always waited.
When she said the sentence right-"Water flows from the north,"-the teacher smiled and handed her a small reed book.
Sahri stared at it like it was magic.
And in a way, it was.
Because for the first time in her life, she didn't feel like a raider's daughter or a rider of forgotten sands. She felt like a student.
And when the wind blew, she held the book to her chest and whispered the desert's prayer to the Breath: "Let me remember. Let me rise."
The city grew heavier by the week. Heavier with stone. With sound. With purpose.
Daalo looked out from the unfinished bastion wall and scratched a note into his chart board. Thirty-seven buildings complete. Nine underway. Two behind schedule. Three ahead.
Not perfect. But close.
He glanced down at the workers hauling beams through mud, rune-glow lighting their path. He didn't see hope. Not exactly.
He saw progress.
And in a place like this, that might be enough.