Location: Tardide Village
Time: Day 510 | Telia: Day 1
Realm: Dimension 137 (Telia)
Tardide appeared on the horizon like something out of a history text.
Wooden walls—rough-hewn logs lashed together with rope that had seen better days—surrounded a cluster of buildings that couldn't have housed more than three hundred people. Smoke rose from chimneys in thin wisps, too thin, the kind that said firewood was rationed carefully. Fields stretched beyond the walls, tended by figures who moved with the methodical slowness of exhaustion.
Strategic assessment: Minimal defensive capability. Walls wouldn't stop Sparkforged-tier threat. Population depleted. Infrastructure degraded.
(But they're trying. Look at them—they're still trying.)
Jayde stood at the top of the hill, one hand resting on Reiko's shadowy head, and felt something twist in her chest. The village was poor. Desperately poor. The kind of poverty that ground people down until there was nothing left but survival.
