The acquisition of fifteen new laborers at Outpost Alpha was a tactical victory that immediately threatened to become a logistical catastrophe. Kael's caloric audit, updated the moment the return caravan crested the southern ridge, showed a sharp, jagged downward trend. Every "Tier 0" laborer was an engine that required fuel, and with the winter frost locking the soil of the outer fields, the barony was once again reliant on its dwindling grain stores and the steady, but limited, output of the aquaculture vats. The Great Greenhouse was no longer a symbol of future prosperity; it was the only variable that could prevent a return to emergency rationing by mid-winter.
Kael stood within the skeletal remains of the greenhouse structure, the wind whistling through the iron ribs. The framework was a marvel of Hektor's forging—interlocking arches of high-grade iron that spanned a half-acre—but it was a hollow shell. To function as a life-support system, it needed to be sealed. In a world without large-scale glass production, Kael was forced to utilize a far more traditional, and far more labor-intensive, alternative: translucent horn-plates.
The process was grueling and highlighted the "grit" of industrializing a pre-modern world. Thousands of cattle-horns, purchased through Lady Elara's trade routes, had to be boiled for hours to soften the keratin. Once pliable, they were slit, flattened under heavy iron presses, and then scraped thin with specialized rasps until they were translucent enough to pass light. These individual plates then had to be joined into large panels using a resin made from boiled fish-offal—a byproduct of the aquaculture vats.
"The transparency is the bottleneck," Hektor reported, his face reddened by the steam of the boiling vats. "If we scrape them too thin, the winter gales will shatter them. If they remain too thick, the tubers underneath won't get enough light to trigger growth. We are working within a margin of less than a millimeter."
Kael observed the labor line. He had assigned the fifteen former mercenaries to the scraping benches. It was a miserable, repetitive task that required constant focus and physical endurance. Under the watchful eyes of Rylen's guards, the men who had recently tried to sack the outpost were now the primary manufacturers of the barony's future food security. Kael monitored their output with a stopwatch. He wasn't looking for speed; he was looking for the "Ashfall Standard"—consistency.
The technical challenge extended to the heating system. To maintain a tropical environment in the sub-zero frontier, Kael had engineered a subterranean network of steam pipes. These pipes, forged from recycled iron, ran directly from the Kiln's cooling jackets into the greenhouse floor. However, the thermal expansion of the iron pipes buried in the frozen ground caused constant fractures in the stone-and-clay joints.
Kael spent his nights in the muddy trenches beneath the greenhouse floor, his hands slick with a mixture of grease and sealant. He realized that a rigid system would always break under the frost. He needed flexibility. He ordered the production of "expansion loops"—U-shaped bends in the iron piping that would allow the metal to expand and contract without shattering the primary stone seals. It was an elegant solution to a mechanical stress problem, but it required more iron and more welding, stretching Hektor's forge to its absolute breaking point.
The psychological atmosphere of the barony was one of suppressed desperation. The original citizens watched the "Tier 0" laborers with open hostility, seeing them as mouths that were eating the grain they had fought to protect. Kael managed this tension through the Caloric Transparency Protocol. He posted the greenhouse progress daily in the central square. He showed the people exactly how many horn-plates had been installed and how many degrees the internal temperature had risen.
"The mercenaries aren't eating your food," Kael told a group of grumbling miners. "They are manufacturing the heat that will grow your next meal. Every plate they scrape is ten minutes of grain added back to your stores. If they stop, the math stops."
By the third week of the project, the first "Heat Cell"—a sealed section of the greenhouse covering roughly fifty square meters—was brought online. Kael personally oversaw the planting of the first high-yield leafy greens and experimental tubers. The sight of green shoots emerging from the dark, steamed earth in the middle of a blizzard was a profound psychological anchor for the five hundred. It proved that the system was stronger than the climate.
However, the "Glass Ceiling" was not just physical. As the sun reached its winter low, the amount of natural light passing through the horn-plates was barely sufficient. Kael had to implement the Reflector Grid. He utilized the same polished iron mirrors used for the optical telegraph, mounting them on swivel-frames outside the greenhouse to catch the low-hanging sun and bounce the light into the interior. It was a complex, manual task that required constant adjustment throughout the day, a role assigned to the children and elderly of the Dependent group.
The first harvest of the "Heat Cell" was a modest yield—barely enough to provide a single fresh meal for the population—but it was the proof of concept Kael needed. The "Glass Ceiling" had been pierced. The barony was no longer just mining the past; it was growing its own future.
Kael walked through the humid, earth-scented air of the greenhouse, the sound of the blizzards outside muffled by the thick horn-plates. He looked at the former mercenaries, their hands raw from the scraping benches, as they were served a warm, fresh meal grown by their own labor. The math was holding, but the margin was still razor-thin.