The rain was light.
Not the kind that tore roofs away or turned paths to rivers.
Just steady enough to soak the soil.
Just persistent enough for the wind to probe every hidden flaw.
Lucien slept deeply for the first time in weeks.
His hut was no different from the others—wood frames, stone base, thatch roof. He had refused anything stronger. No special treatment. If it failed for them, it would fail for him.
Then the door shuddered.
Once.
Twice.
Burst inward on leather hinges.
"Lucien!"
Luna stumbled in, drenched, eyes wild. Grash'kar followed, rain streaming from his scarred hide and crude bone armor.
"The wall," the old chief rasped. "The cobblestone section. It came down. Five buried."
Lucien was already moving.
"Children?" he asked, voice flat.
Luna could only nod.
He ran.
The collapse was exactly where he had feared it would be.
Not shattered.
Shifted.
Rain had softened the earth beneath the foundation. Wind had pressed against the long, unsupported stretch. Weight redistributed. Balance broke.
Dry-stacked cobblestone did what it was always destined to do.
It fell.
Goblins clawed at the rubble with bare hands, nails splitting. Beastkin heaved stones too heavy for their frames. Kobolds tunneled frantically, claws scraping raw.
Lucien shoved through the crowd.
"Stop—support the sides first! Don't just pull—"
He saw.
And stopped.
Miko knelt in the mud, hands slick with blood, shaking over a small goblin child whose leg ended in a ruin of bone and flesh.
"I followed every step," Miko whispered when Lucien reached him. "Cleaned the wound. Boiled the cloth. Used the burning liquid. I did everything."
Lucien looked past him.
Two goblin children lay still—tiny bodies twisted at wrong angles.
A kobold pup—chest caved in, mouth open in a silent gasp that would never finish.
Two adult beastkin—one neck bent impossibly, the other pinned beneath a slab no one could lift in time.
No fever.
No invisible rot.
Just gravity.
Just failure.
Lucien's legs gave out.
He dropped to his knees in the mud.
The scream that tore from him had no words.
Only raw sound—grief, rage, guilt—ripping through the rain until his throat bled.
He cried long after the bodies were pulled free.
Long after the village fell silent around the five still forms wrapped in cloaks.
For the first time since the night his parents burned, Lucien broke completely.
Morning arrived gray and merciless.
The rain had stopped.
The wind had died.
The wall remained a scar of scattered stone.
Luna found Miko sitting alone, staring at blood-crusted hands.
"Are you all right?" she asked softly.
He didn't look up.
"I did everything right," he whispered. "Why couldn't I save them?"
No one had an answer.
Because once, death had been simple.
Monsters accepted it.
Wounded became dead.
Dead became gone.
Life went on.
But now they knew survival was possible.
And knowing made every loss a wound that would not close.
A horn sounded—deep, steady. Lucien's call.
The village gathered in the central clearing, mud sucking at feet, faces hollow.
Lucien stood before them, eyes red-rimmed, voice rough but unbroken.
"Five of us died last night," he said.
Silence.
"Three were children."
Still silence.
"They did not die to adventurers. They did not die to sickness. They died because our wall failed."
He clenched trembling fists.
"Our knowledge has saved hundreds. It showed us how to fight rot, how to clean wounds, how to keep fever from claiming the weak."
His gaze swept over them.
"But it also showed us what we still lack."
Murmurs rippled.
Lucien raised his head.
"I will not accept this again."
He pointed to the gap where the wall had stood.
"We will rebuild. Not temporary shelters. Not walls that fall when the rain whispers."
A shiver passed through the crowd.
"We will build structures that stand against storm, against time, against the gods themselves if they try to tear them down."
The words hung heavy.
"It will take effort," he continued. "It will take failure. It will take months—maybe years."
He bowed his head, rain water still dripping from his hair.
"I cannot do it alone. I ask for your help."
One by one, they stepped forward.
Goblins.
Kobolds.
Beastkin.
All of them.
Lucien returned to the kiln and the piles of ash.
Yard's memories rose again—fragments, half-remembered.
Ancient builders mixing volcanic dust with crushed stone and water.
A material that didn't weaken in rain.
One that grew harder with time.
Roman concrete.
Not magic.
Chemistry.
Lucien began to experiment.
First batch crumbled to dust in his hands.
Second cracked under light weight.
Third held—rough, gray, unyielding.
He refined it.
Mixed wood ash with certain pale stones that fizzed in weak acid.
Let small test blocks cure under wet cloth.
Watched them harden day by day.
He dug deeper foundations.
Carved drainage channels to carry water away.
Added triangular buttresses.
The village worked beside him—hauling, mixing, watching, learning.
Failures were recorded on bark.
Successes repeated.
Days became weeks.
The new wall rose—thicker, heavier, bound not by spells but by a gray slurry that set like iron.
One evening, Lucien stood before the finished section, palm pressed to cool, solid surface.
"This," he whispered, "will not fall again."
Behind him, the village watched.
Children watched.
The dead were remembered in silence.
And deep beneath layers of stone, ash, and careful understanding—
Something new began to set.
Not just a wall.
The foundation of a civilization that would no longer kneel.