The inspection took the better part of the day.
The roads were little more than tracks of mud, carved by carts and erosion. Houses leaned like drunkards, their stones uneven, mortar crumbling. Sanitation was nonexistent. The southern wall, the only defense against forest beasts or bandits was barely holding. A few guards loitered with rusted weapons and patchwork armor.
Ethan asked questions. Measured things with his stride. Knocked on walls to test their strength. He noted the lay of the land, the river to the east, the forests beyond. And the people, tired, worn, surviving.
Then, as he climbed what remained of the watchtower, he looked out and saw it all.
And something clicked.
He remembered his first architecture studio. The words of his old professor:
"Design isn't about what's beautiful. It's about what solves a problem that shouldn't exist."
Greyrest was a thousand problems stacked into one. It was, to Ethan, a challenge unlike any other.
"Milord?" Lina asked, glancing up at him.
"We start tomorrow," he said. "Call the steward. I want to speak with every mason, carpenter, and farmer before the week is out."
"About what?"
He smiled faintly. "About how we're going to rebuild this town from the foundation up."
That night, Ethan couldn't sleep. The bed was too soft in the wrong places, the walls creaked with the wind, and his mind wouldn't stop drawing.
He lit a candle and unrolled another sheet of parchment. This one wasn't for sewers or walls. It was for vision.
He drew a central square, a marketplace, wide and paved. Then roads, radiating outward like a star. Worker housing clustered in a grid, but with public gardens. A reservoir. A future rail station.
And at the center, on the highest hill, a school. A place where builders would learn, where knowledge wouldn't die with one man's breath.
The blueprint was only half the war. The other half was people.
Ethan rose the next morning with a list:
Masons: trained in foundation pouring.
Carpenters: to rebuild scaffolding and frame structures with trusses.
Smiths: to forge tools, hinges, and eventually… rails.
Farmers: to be relocated to higher ground for irrigation trials.
Miners: to begin scouting for limestone.
He handed the list to Marn. "Summon them all. Tell them we're not fixing Greyrest… we're rebuilding it."
Inspiration came slowly, not from magic or prophecy, but from memory: lectures half-forgotten, bridges studied in rain, and a professor's words echoing in his mind:
"Architecture is war. You battle gravity, chaos, and time. But when you win… you leave a city behind."
Ethan looked out the window again, not at what was there… but at what could be.
He would win. He had the blueprints. Now, it was time to prepare the army.