Gideon stood on the balcony of his room, looking down at the small lights dangling from the tents and scattered around the open space near his house.
From a distance, they looked like stars in a dark sky. Small. Almost insignificant at first glance. But the longer he watched them, the more they felt like fragments of a future slowly taking shape.
"It's still small, but it will grow," he said with a satisfied smile.
In the end, they had bought new tents from Climber Rift using their own money. Most of their old ones had been destroyed or abandoned when they ran for their lives from the Verdant Devourer.
Gideon had offered to pay with his own cores. As the landowner, he considered them his responsibility. They refused.
They wanted to repay their life debt by working hard to build this land instead.
Still, a question lingered in his mind. Was it even possible to create a stable economy with such a small population and no trade with other territories?
