Day 1: Afternoon/Evening
While Sergeant Rylen established the geometric groundwork for the water channel and the perimeter bastions, Kael marched the larger contingent of laborers—the backbone of the remaining Core and Contingent groups—to the withered fields near the village perimeter.
The landscape was one of uniform despair. The vast, flat expanse of the barony's farmland was compacted, bleached white in patches, and yielded nothing but the fine, choking gray dust that was Ashfall's namesake. The wind was a constant reminder of ecological failure, scouring the ground clean of any hope or nutrient trace.
Kael did not ask them to begin their traditional shallow plowing. Instead, he directed the work crews toward the immense, sprawling refuse pits behind the manor—the unsightly accumulations of waste the previous Baron's men had deemed untouchable filth.
"Bring the carts! All of them!" Kael shouted over the wind. "We need the ash! Every scoop of it!"
The remaining strong men and women began the grim haul: cartloads of old, spent fire ash, heavily dried animal manure (what little livestock remained), and anything organically spent. They dumped the refuse directly onto the most barren patch of the field.
The villagers, whose entire farming tradition rested on clean fields and the idea of fallow purity, watched with mounting horror. Their faces were etched with disgust.
A stout farmer named Torvin, whose clothes hung loose on his emaciated frame, stepped forward, his eyes burning with outrage. He represented the deep-seated agricultural superstition Kael had to break.
"My lord, this is madness!" Torvin shouted, his voice cracking from hunger and emotion. "You poison the soil! This filth is for burning, not for the field of planting! The curse will deepen, and what little strength the land holds will rot!"
Kael stopped his own work—he was demonstrating the proper technique for loading the heavy, dense mixture—and leaned on the handle of a large wooden rake. His own body ached, but his focus on the man was absolute. He knew he couldn't explain nitrogen cycles or mineral enrichment; he had to translate the science into the world of agrarian faith and common sense.
"The curse is not magic, Torvin," Kael said, his voice flat and practical. "The curse is here," he pointed sharply at the dry, cracked surface of the field. "It is the lack of spirit in the soil."
He continued, using the familiar language of the land: "Your previous Barons only took the life—the spirit—from the ground by demanding the same grain harvest year after year. They never fed the spirit back. They bled the land until it was too weak to yield anything."
Kael then pointed to the foul-smelling, steaming pile of mixed ash and waste. "This is the spirit. This is the strength. This ash holds the minerals that the wind stole, and this manure holds the life that you discarded. When we turn it back into the soil, we are feeding the ground, Torvin, so the ground can feed us."
He demonstrated the revolutionary technique. He insisted that they first break up the compacted surface layer—the hardpan—before spreading a thin, even layer of the ash mixture. He forced them to dig the rows wider and the planting deeper than they were accustomed to, focusing on breaking the structure of the depleted earth.
"We are not sowing for a large harvest yet," Kael explained. "We are sowing resistance. We are planting a mixture that will fight the ash and—critically—put the strength back into the earth."
He directed the women and older children of the Dependent group to the task of sorting. Their lighter labor was to meticulously separate the precious, small seeds of legumes (clover and other nitrogen-fixing plants) from the common grain. This was the chemical key to restoring the nitrogen, the very "life spirit," that the land lacked.
The work was brutal, slow, and instantly demoralizing. The dust choked their throats, the cold wind ripped through their meager clothing, and their constantly aching stomachs served as a ruthless timekeeper. Yet, Kael was everywhere, moving through the work details with cold efficiency. He ensured the most effective use of the few available tools, corrected the farmer's inefficient postures, and rotated the laborers to prevent total collapse. He worked alongside them until the farmers, shamed by the noble who labored harder than they did, picked up their tools and returned to the ash.
Torvin, watching Kael's tireless, pragmatic labor and listening to the cold logic of "feeding the spirit," finally lowered his hoe. He was still deeply doubtful, but the logic—the measurable process of giving energy back to the depleted resource—was disturbingly close to his own superstitions, yet delivered with a clear, mathematical goal. He returned to the fields, scraping the soil where Kael had ordered.
By the time the low sun disappeared, they had covered barely an acre. The labor was punishing, the progress microscopic. They had approximately fifty more days before the total collapse of the food supply to prepare the fields for a minimum-survival harvest.
Kael walked back toward the manor, covered in the gritty ash, his body protesting every step. The fields were now patched with dark, turned earth—the first deliberate act of healing the land had seen in decades. They were not cursed. They were simply starved. And Adrian Cole knew exactly what detailed, calculated effort it took to nurse a starved environment back to health.