The village meeting was held the next day in the small, stone council hall. It was a somber affair. The elder, a frail man named Elias, laid out their options. They were few. They could pay the impossible tax, which would mean starving through the winter. They could abandon their homes and become refugees. Or they could resist.
"And how do we resist?" Thomas the farmer asked, his voice heavy. "We have pitchforks. He has swords."
"We have each other," Elara, his daughter, insisted. "There are a hundred families in this valley. We can stand together."
"And be slaughtered together," a pessimistic voice from the back muttered.
Nox and Serian just listened from the back of the hall. It was a familiar debate. The calculus of hope versus fear.
'They're missing a variable,' Nox thought. 'They don't know they have two retired demigods living in their valley.'
