The morning Casey arrived, Talia was halfway through breakfast and only marginally awake.
The table was crowded in the way it had become lately—elbows brushing, steam rising from bowls, quiet conversation layered with the scrape of spoons. It felt… domestic. Normal. A word she still didn't fully trust.
Casey stopped in front of her without ceremony and set a thick roll of papers on the table.
"Morning," she said. "These are done."
Talia blinked, then stared.
"Done," she echoed, suspicious.
Casey nodded once, already dragging a chair closer and unrolling the first sheet. Lines spilled across the wood—clean, precise, impossibly detailed. District layouts. Load paths. Transport arteries. Vertical access points. Notes in Casey's sharp hand filled the margins.
Three additional sheets followed. Transport designs.
Talia leaned forward slowly, like the plans might spook and vanish if she moved too fast.
"What should have taken months," she murmured, flipping a page, "you finished in just over a week."
Casey shrugged. "You gave us momentum. We ran with it."
Mum leaned over Talia's shoulder, breath catching. "It's beautiful," she said softly.
Dad squinted at the scale markers, then whistled low. "It's massive."
Theo, already scanning the structural overlays, exchanged a look with Talia. "This would take months," he said carefully. "Possibly years."
Talia's mouth twitched. She rolled the page back toward the beginning and glanced, briefly, at the evacuation bunker diagram tucked into the lower corner. Expanded. Reinforced.
No longer a desperate afterthought, but moved down a layer, a deliberate second-layer foundation beneath the citadel.
She shrugged lightly. "This'll be our home for the foreseeable future. Better to get it right the first—" she paused, smirked, "—no, second time."
Her gaze slid to the transport blueprints.
Then snapped back up to Dad.
He was grinning, not proud. Smug.
"You didn't," she said slowly.
Dad crossed his arms. "My teams are good, huh?"
She stared at the page again, at the clean looping route, the stations, the mechanics.
"I cannot believe," she said, incredulous, "that you designed a Clan Tram. Horse-powered. No human pedal powered."
Theo let out a quiet laugh. "Solved your travel problem."
Talia leaned back in her chair, something loosening in her chest. "Great," she said. "Now I can actually focus on building."
The moment lasted exactly three seconds.
"Talia," Theo said casually, "because you are prone to forgetting time and your health, we're assigning you a life assistant."
The room went still.
She slowly turned. "A what."
"She'll monitor your schedule," Theo continued smoothly, "track intake, ensure you don't collapse, and reassure the rest of us."
"No," Talia said flatly. "Absolutely not."
"That's what you meant earlier," she snapped, pointing at him. "About enjoying my freedom?"
Theo smiled. "I'll introduce you shortly."
"You— Theo!"
He was already standing.
Talia finished her meal in a daze, chewing without tasting, staring at the blueprints like they'd betrayed her personally.
Trust in humanity: fractured.
She met Maris Reyes at the bunker entrance.
Slim. Blonde. Hazel-eyed. Straight-backed in that unmistakable Reyes-family way that suggested rules existed for a reason and you were probably about to be reminded of them.
Talia instinctively straightened before catching herself.
I'm the Lord.
Theo did the introductions, then stepped away with a grin and a soft whistle that suggested this was the highlight of his week.
Maris inclined her head. "I won't restrict you," she said calmly. "I'll just make sure you don't run yourself into the ground and get forcibly grounded again."
That… helped.
Talia exhaled, then talked.
Schedules. Ideas. Half-formed plans. Notes she kept in her head because writing them down took time she never felt she had. Maris listened, asked questions and took notes without interrupting.
When Talia finally stopped, she blinked at the slate Maris held.
It was full.
"Oh," Talia said quietly. "I… might actually need this."
Maris smiled faintly.
"I do the running," she said. "You do the thinking."
Three days vanished into stone and fur and noise.
Talia returned to the Husbandry district and finished what she'd started. System-approved blueprints unfolded cleanly under her hands—reinforced shelters, smarter drainage, temperature buffers that didn't rely on guesswork.
Kass hovered like an excited ghost.
The animals noticed immediately they settled faster, slept deeper. The chaos softened into something manageable.
After that came the Central Vein.
That was the name that stuck.
The entrance shifted downward. The ramp realigned. The helix base locked into place. Stations carved out with care instead of haste.
Then the lake.
Talia dug until stone gave way to shape. The waterfall would fall here—contained, controlled, beautiful. The industrial district's final supports went in. Basement access was relocated beside the internal waterfall. Future pumping systems: set.
One week blurred into another while Maris kept her fed, paced, and supplied with information as Talia worked.
When the last support sealed and the system chimed completion, the Clan gathered without being called.
The first floor no longer felt like something dug in a hurry to survive.
It felt designed for living, a combination of nature and comfort.
Warm wooden trim ran along the edges of stone walls—not decorative for decoration's sake, but intentional. Softening corners. Breaking echo. Giving hands something smooth to brush against as people passed.
The wood was pale where it was new, darker where it had already absorbed steam and touch, grain catching the light from mossbulbs and glow-lanterns set into recessed niches. Stone and timber worked together now, neither trying to dominate the other.
At the heart of the floor rose the central ramp.
It spiralled upward in a broad, steady coil, wide enough for carts to pass without scraping stone and gentle enough that even elders could climb without stopping every dozen steps. Regular exit roads marked where future floors and districts would be built.
The ramp did not choke the space it occupied—its core was deliberately left open, a clear vertical shaft held free for the day Deepway installed lift systems and vertical transport of its own.
The inner edge of the ramp opened to the cavern below, railings carved from layered wood and reinforced stone, allowing those who climbed to look down as they moved—to watch people crossing platforms, carts being loaded, children racing along marked paths far beneath their feet.
Outside the ramp, the helix tram traced its own spiral.
The track wrapped the ramp like a second skin, circling it floor by floor in a smooth, measured curve. Stations branched outward at regular intervals on the exit roads—some little more than sturdy wooden decks for now, with benches bolted into stone and lanes clearly marked—but their foundations were deliberate, built to support growth rather than temporary survival.
Behind it all, water fell.
The lake was vast, it would take months to fill completely—but even at a fraction filled—its surface dark and glassy, fed by the internal waterfall that thundered down the far wall in a controlled, breathtaking cascade. Mist hung low in the air, cooling the space, catching light in drifting prisms. The sound of water softened everything, turning sharp edges into something calmer.
Along one edge stretched the beach.
Not sand yet—not fully—but crushed stone and fine gravel graded carefully into the shallows, with wooden piers reaching out over the water. Ramps sloped gently down, wide enough for children to race and carts to roll. Lifeguard towers stood ready, empty for now but already claimed by future arguments and watch rotations.
Greenery existed in pockets.
Small ones.
Moonshade bushes clustered in protected alcoves, their leaves pale and luminous, still young, still propagating. Other patches held hardy groundcover—plants that tolerated low light and damp stone, roots carefully monitored. They weren't lush yet. They weren't meant to be.
They were promises.
Throughout the districts, water threaded through the design like a living thing. Shallow channels ran alongside walkways, fountains bubbled softly in communal spaces, pools reflected ceiling lights and moving silhouettes, making the cavern feel taller, deeper, alive.
Wood softened stone, water gentled the silence and green hinted at the future.
The first floor wasn't finished because it was perfect.
It was finished because it was ready to grow.
And as people moved through it—touching railings, pausing at platforms, staring wide-eyed at the lake—it was already becoming theirs.
Awe rippled through them.
"Worth the wait."
"Can't believe this is just the first floor."
"There's going to be a waterfall in here?"
A child pointed. "That's the sand pit! That's the beach!"
The stone was clean, the air steady and the supports solid.
"This will hold for generations," Dad murmured.
They cornered her in the quiet stretch near the basement entrance, where the sound of the waterfall bled faintly through the stone.
Theo leaned against the wall, arms folded, gaze sharp. "Before this turns into rumours," he said, "I want it said plainly. Where is the water coming from?"
Talia hesitated a fraction of a second too long.
Mum caught it immediately. "Talia."
"It's not nothing," Talia said defensively. "And it's not dangerous." She lifted a hand, already shaping the explanation as she spoke. "I found an internal cavern above where the sixth floor will eventually sit. Narrow, mostly collapsed, but it runs close enough to the cliff face that you can hear the waterfall through it."
Brielle frowned. "Hear it… how close are we talking?"
"Close enough that the stone was damp," Talia admitted. "So I opened the last wall."
Theo closed his eyes. Briefly. "You opened the last wall."
"I didn't destabilise anything," she said quickly. "The cavern was already there. I just… gave it an exit." She gestured vaguely upward. "I placed a shaped stone scoop against the fall—angled it so it diverts some of the flow inward. Gravity does the rest."
Mum absorbed that in silence, then asked the important question. "Temporary?"
"Yes," Talia said at once. "Very. It's a stopgap. Enough to keep the tanks filled while we finish the citadel. Once the full structure's done, I'll explore properly—find a stable source, channel it cleanly, reinforce everything."
Brielle exhaled. "So we're borrowing water."
Theo opened his eyes again, studying her. "And the pressure?"
"Minimal diversion. The main waterfall's untouched, and I reinforced it," she said. "If anything shifts, the scoop breaks before the wall does."
That earned her a notch of relaxation. They moved off to return to their own fires, their own lists, their own duties.
Talia stayed a moment at the new basement entrance, hands resting against cool stone.
Behind her, Deepway moved—stone with life being breathed into it.
She took one breath.
Then stepped forward, ready to build again.