The refugees came at noon.
Kazuto was helping Doom reinforce the entrance to a new cave they'd found a mile north of the basin—a potential new living space. He felt it first: a faint, collective tremor of exhaustion and fear brushing against the edge of his awareness, like the distant rumble of a slow-moving truck.
He looked south, towards the Perimeter. From their vantage on a low hill, they could see the golden light of the Kingdom give way to the dull grey of the Scablands. And on that grey plain, a dark, ragged line was moving slowly towards the light. People.
"Mavis was right," Doom grunted, lowering his hammer. "Word travels fast."
Kazuto's mind switched modes instantly. This wasn't an attack. It was an inbound shipment. A large, fragile, living one. "Back to the basin. Now. We need to set up a receiving area."
By the time they jogged back, the news had already reached the basin via goblin scouts. A controlled chaos had erupted. Ban was frantically counting sacks of grain. Elder Leon was directing dwarves to clear the central area. Mavis was on the rim, slate in hand, estimating numbers.
Kazuto climbed up beside her. The line of people was closer now, maybe a hundred strong. They were a sorry-looking group: humans, a few dwarves, some folk with pointed ears that might be elves. Their clothes were dusty and torn. They moved slowly, many leaning on each other or on sticks. They were staring up at the Kingdom with a mixture of hope and utter disbelief.
At the very front of the group, helping support an elderly man, was a woman. She stood out. Not because she was strong—though she clearly was, easily bearing the old man's weight—but because of her demeanor. While everyone else looked lost and terrified, she looked… efficient. Her dark hair was tied back in a severe bun, though strands had escaped. Her practical clothes were dirty but neat. Her eyes, a sharp hazel, scanned the glowing basin ahead with the analytical focus of a surveyor.
"The one in front," Mavis noted. "She's not just a refugee. She's organizing them."
The group reached the Perimeter. They hesitated at the invisible line, afraid to step into the impossible golden light. The efficient-looking woman didn't hesitate. She stepped across, pulling the old man with her.
The moment she crossed, her entire body language changed. The tense, ready-for-anything rigidity melted out of her shoulders. She took a deep, shuddering breath, as if she'd been holding it for weeks. She gently helped the old man sit on the ground, then turned to face the basin, her hands held open at her sides in a gesture of peaceful intent.
Kazuto went down to meet them. Balmond and a few dwarves followed, not as guards, but as extra hands.
Up close, the refugees looked worse. Hollow eyes, cracked lips, the smell of smoke and unwashed bodies. The efficient woman stepped forward to meet Kazuto. She was tall, almost his height.
"You are the administrator of this… zone?" she asked. Her voice was crisp, with a formal accent, but hoarse from dust.
"I'm Kazuto. This is Delivery. You're safe here."
She nodded once, a sharp, professional motion. "I am Leona. Formerly a senior scribe and records-keeper for the administrative wing of the Seat of Ash." A flicker of old pain crossed her face. "I organized this group's escape when the purges began after the… incident at the mine. We have been walking for nine days. We have injured. We have no supplies."
A bureaucrat. A paperwork survivor. Kazuto could have hugged her. "Understood. Injuries first. Then food and water."
He turned to the group. "Welcome. No one will harm you here. Please, come inside the light."
Slowly, fearfully, the refugees crossed the Perimeter. As each one did, you could see the same shock Leona had shown—the physical unclenching of muscles held tight for too long. A young mother burst into silent tears as the constant, gnawing fear for her child simply evaporated.
The next few hours were a blur of triage. Kazuto used his now-ambient skill to identify the worst off. A man with a festering wound on his leg from a guard's spear. A child burning with fever. He focused on them, and the golden light around him gently intensified, washing over their ailments. The inflammation faded. The fever broke. It wasn't instant, perfect healing—it accelerated the body's natural safe recovery. The man's wound closed cleanly. The child's temperature dropped.
« NOTICE: PASSIVE HEALING PROTOCOLS ENGAGED FOR MULTIPLE ENTITIES WITHIN [KINGDOM OF ETERNAL REFUGE]. »
Leona watched this, her efficient eyes missing nothing. She didn't gawk. She immediately started organizing the now-healthy refugees. She had them sit in orderly rows. She took a charcoal stick and a piece of bark and began taking names, ages, and skills.
"We have two carpenters, a tanner, a midwife, three farmers who know arid soil, and a lot of general labor," she reported to Kazuto, her voice all business. "The rest are children, elderly, or those with no specific trade."
It was more help than they'd ever had. It was also a hundred more mouths to feed.
Ban was having a quiet panic attack by his stores. "The grain will last two days. At most."
"We'll expand foraging immediately," Kazuto said. "The goblins know the new territory. Leona, can your people help with processing? Anyone who can grind, chop, or cook?"
"Of course." She turned and issued clear, calm instructions. The refugees, given direction, moved to help.
Then, Leona saw Talene.
The Black Phoenix was hauling a bucket of water from the well to the cooking area, her face set in a scowl of concentration. Leona froze. The professional mask shattered, replaced by raw, visceral terror. She stumbled back a step.
Talene looked up, saw Leona, and flinched. Not with anger, but with what looked like shame. She set the bucket down carefully and turned away, busying herself with stacking firewood.
"She… she is here?" Leona whispered to Kazuto, her voice trembling.
"She's… under new management," Kazuto said lamely. "She can't hurt anyone. She's helping in the kitchen."
Leona stared at Talene's back, at the once-great Seat of Ash stacking logs with intense, awkward care. The terror in Leona's eyes slowly melted into a dazed, surreal disbelief. "The world has gone mad," she murmured.
"It's adjusting," Kazuto corrected. "We all are."
By nightfall, the hundred new residents were settled as best they could be. They slept in the open, under the glory of the Kingdom, wrapped in blankets traded from the goblins and old hides. They were safe, fed, and deeply confused.
Leona did not sleep. She sat by the central fire with Kazuto, Mavis, and Doom, her borrowed slate already covered in neat columns. "We need a census. A proper one. A registry of skills. A system for assigning housing as we build it. A rationing plan until food production is stable." She looked at Kazuto. "You provide the safety. Let me provide the order. It is what I was trained for."
Kazuto looked at this severe, capable woman who had walked out of hell with a hundred souls in her care. He saw the cracks in her efficiency—the slight tremor in her hands, the way her eyes sometimes went distant. She was holding herself together by sheer will and paperwork.
"Alright," he said. "You're in charge of internal administration. Mavis handles strategy, defense, and external mapping. Doom handles construction and industry. Ban is food. Leon is training and community. Balmond is… well, he's Balmond."
Leona gave another sharp nod. "Understood. My first official recommendation: we need to designate that northern cave system as Priority Housing Alpha. The basin is the administrative and production center, but we need to decentralize living quarters."
It was the most beautiful, boring, necessary thing Kazuto had heard all day. He had a secretary. A terrifyingly competent, trauma-surviving secretary.
As they finalized plans, Talene approached the edge of the firelight. She held a single, perfectly chopped onion on a wooden board. She offered it to Ban.
Ban took it, inspected the clean, uniform slices. He grunted. "Acceptable."
A tiny, almost invisible smile touched Talene's lips for a fraction of a second before she retreated back into the shadows.
Leona watched her go, the fear finally gone, replaced by weary calculation. "Her presence is a problem. The other Seats will come for her."
"I know," Kazuto said. "But for tonight, she's just the onion cutter."
He looked around the fire, at his expanded, improbable council. A strategist, a smith, a chef, a swordmaster, a berserker, and now a bureaucrat. Under a magical sky-city, protecting a former tyrant and a hundred refugees.
The manifest was filed. The goods had arrived. Now the real work of inventory began.