The civilian column arrived at dawn.
Draven heard them before he saw them—the creak of wagon wheels, the low murmur of voices, the shuffle of feet on ash. He stood at the camp's edge and watched them emerge from the morning mist like ghosts becoming solid.
Two hundred people. Maybe more. Farmers, masons, engineers, families. They'd followed the army south, trailing three days behind with their own supplies and tools. Children rode in carts beside sacks of seed grain. Old men walked with surveying chains coiled over their shoulders.
Brenn appeared beside him, arms crossed. "Didn't think they'd actually come."
"They're tired of hiding," Draven said. "Can't rebuild a country from behind walls."
At the front of the column, a broad-shouldered woman with gray-streaked hair raised her hand. The civilians stopped in perfect order—not military precision, just the practiced coordination of people who'd worked together for years.
She approached Draven and nodded once. "Commander. I'm Thea Reinhardt, master mason. Council sent us to build what you've cleared."
"The land's still hostile," Draven said. "We can't guarantee safety this far south."
"Didn't ask you to." Thea's eyes were hard but not unkind. "We'll take our chances. Better than waiting for the Dominion to come back north."
Behind her, a younger man unrolled a canvas map across a wagon bed. Joran hurried over, already reaching for his tools.
"Show me what you're thinking," Joran said.
The mason pointed to three marked locations—the camp, the buried furnace site, and a crossroads ten miles west. "Roads first. Light-veined, if you've got the materials. Then supply posts at each junction. By winter, we'll have a trade route from Stonecross to the southern ridge."
Joran whistled low. "That's ambitious."
"That's necessary," Thea replied. "You fight, we build. That was always the deal."
By mid-morning, the work had begun.
The soldiers helped the civilians unload supplies—timber, canvas, barrels of quicklime and crushed stone. The engineers spread out along the planned route with measuring chains and chalk powder, marking straight lines through the ash.
Draven walked the route with Thea, watching her team work. They moved fast—no wasted motion, every tool in the right hand at the right time.
"You've done this before," he said.
"Three times." Thea knelt and drove a stake into the ground. "Built the northern trade roads after the Gray Famine. Rebuilt Stonecross after the first Dominion raid. And now this." She stood, brushing ash from her knees. "I'm getting tired of starting over."
"Then let's make this one last."
She gave him a long look, then nodded. "That's why we're here."
The road crew reached the first junction by noon. Joran had been working ahead of them, grinding memory ore into fine dust and mixing it with the crushed stone. The resulting powder shimmered faintly—not bright, just present, like starlight caught in sand.
A young engineer named Petran spread the mixture in a test section, tamping it down with a heavy roller. When he finished, the surface looked like ordinary packed earth.
Then a Servitor walked across it.
The road lit up—not blazing, just a soft golden pulse that followed the beast's footsteps. The light faded slowly, leaving faint veins glowing in the compacted stone.
"Blessed heights," Petran breathed.
Joran crouched beside the road, touching the glowing surface. "It's responding to resonance. The memory ore remembers the Servitor's rhythm and holds it for a few seconds." He looked up at Thea. "If we line the whole route this way, the roads will glow whenever anything bonded to Bloomscript travels them."
"Living roads," Thea said softly. "My grandfather used to tell stories about the old empire. Roads that knew your destination and guided you home." She shook her head. "Thought they were just stories."
"They were," Joran said. "But maybe we can make new ones."
The work continued through the afternoon, slow and methodical. Soldiers and civilians mixed crews—two builders, one soldier, and a Servitor to test each section. The formation felt natural now, the 6:4 doctrine spreading beyond combat into labor.
Mira watched from a low rise, sketching the scene in her journal. Humans and beasts working side by side, the road glowing faintly behind them like a trail of captured sunlight.
Her falcon launched from her shoulder and circled high, calling once. She looked up, following its path.
On the eastern ridge, maybe two miles out, three figures stood watching. Too far to see clearly, but the silhouettes were wrong—tall, straight, perfectly still. League scouts, most likely. Observing but not interfering.
Brenn climbed the rise to join her. "Saw them an hour ago. They're keeping distance."
"For now." Mira lowered her journal. "Word's going to spread, Brenn. We're not just an army anymore. We're building infrastructure, claiming territory. The League won't ignore that."
"Should we send someone to talk?"
"No." Mira watched the distant figures turn and disappear over the ridge. "Let them watch. Let them see we're not raiders. If they want to talk, they'll come to us."
Brenn grunted. "You sound like Draven."
"Someone has to." She smiled slightly. "He's too busy thinking three moves ahead to explain the current one."
By evening, the first section of road was complete—a glowing line stretching from the camp to the buried furnace site. As the sun dropped, the glow brightened just enough to mark the path through the dark.
Soldiers walked it during shift changes, and each time they did, the light pulsed a little stronger. The memory ore was learning their rhythm, holding it, weaving it into the stone itself.
Thea stood at the junction with Joran, both of them staring at what they'd built.
"It's beautiful," she said quietly.
"It's functional," Joran corrected, but his voice was soft. "Beauty's just a side effect."
"Best kind." Thea clapped him on the shoulder. "Get some rest, forge master. Tomorrow we double the distance."
The civilian camp rose beside the military one—smaller, quieter, but just as organized. Families gathered around their own fires, children already asleep in wagon beds. The sounds were different here—softer voices, lullabies instead of weapon maintenance, the smell of bread baking in portable ovens.
Draven walked between both camps, watching the light from the new road reflect off canvas and armor alike.
A small girl ran past, chasing a Servitor kit that bounded playfully ahead of her. The beast was no bigger than a dog, its hide still smooth and unmarked. The girl laughed when it stopped to let her catch up, and for a moment, Draven just watched.
This. This was what they were fighting for. Not just survival—a future where children could play with beasts instead of fear them.
Brenn found him near the forge wagons. "Scouts report the League watchers pulled back. No sign of Dominion patrols either."
"They're regrouping," Draven said. "Both of them. Watching to see what we become."
"And what are we becoming?"
Draven looked back at the glowing road, the mixed camps, the civilians and soldiers working side by side. "Something new," he said. "Something they don't have a word for yet."
Far to the east, in a stone tower overlooking the borderlands, a League observer lowered her spyglass and began writing her report.
Subject: Bloomring Expansion
Observations: Military-civilian integration unprecedented. Infrastructure development suggests permanence, not temporary occupation. Road construction utilizes unknown resonance technology—possibly derived from salvaged Dominion materials. Recommend continued observation. Force assessment: inconclusive. Cultural threat level: high.
She sealed the report and sent it north with a courier falcon.
In the tower's shadow, her companion—a lean man with a scarred face—watched the distant glow of the new road.
"They're not going to stop," he said.
"No," she agreed. "They're not."
"Then we need to decide if we're going to help them or stop them."
The woman didn't answer. She just watched the golden light pulse in the distance, steady as a heartbeat, spreading slowly south.
Night deepened over the ash plains.
In the civilian camp, Thea gathered her crew leaders and distributed the next day's assignments. The mood was tired but determined—they'd proven the concept, now came the hard part. Miles of road, dozens of supply posts, all before winter.
But when she looked at the glowing path behind them, she felt something she hadn't felt in years.
Hope.
Not the fragile, desperate kind. The solid kind. The kind you could build on.
In the military camp, Draven sat with Brenn and Mira, reviewing maps by lamplight.
"Three more weeks at this pace," Brenn said, tracing the planned route. "We'll reach the southern ridge before snow."
"If nothing stops us," Mira added.
"Something will." Draven's finger tapped a blank section of the map—unexplored territory beyond the ridge. "But we keep building anyway. Roads first, then settlements. One day at a time."
Mira closed her journal and looked at both of them. "You know we're too organized for the League to sleep easy. They'll see us as a threat eventually."
"Then we'll deal with it when it comes." Draven stood, rolling up the map. "For now, we keep moving forward. The moment we stop building is the moment we start dying."
Far below, deeper than any mine shaft, the tremor came again—a slow pulse that traveled through stone and ash, felt by nothing and no one.
The memory ore in Joran's forge wagon glowed a little brighter.
And somewhere in the dark, something old stirred in its sleep, drawn by the rhythm of hammers and footsteps and the steady pulse of light being forged into stone.
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