After getting slightly distracted by a pitchfork full of children, I went back to what I was supposed to be doing.
I picked up the pitchfork and started working on it. Creation magic turned it into a faucet head. I pulled four magic stones from the satchel and embedded them into it, one by one.
With rune magic, I encrypted elemental properties into each stone.
Water. Wind. Fire. Ice.
One element per stone.
Then I overlapped them into a single equation, a magic circle that would activate each element according to what they needed.
When it was done, I went back to where Favio and the others were cooking. Just in time. They were about to drop unwashed meat straight into the pot.
"Stop. Use this before you do anything you'll regret."
I set the faucet head on the table. They looked at it blankly.
"What's that, Leigh?"
Favio set the diced meat back down.
"I'll show you."
I called everyone over and held up the faucet.
"Turn the handle to the right. Hot water."
I demonstrated. Steaming water poured from the head in a clean, steady stream.
"Water. Hot water!"
Gringo was already moving toward it with a bucket. I shut it off before he scalded himself and fixed him with a look that stopped him where he stood.
"Stay put. Let me finish."
He went still. I continued.
"Turn the handle to the left. Cold water." I let Gringo reach out and feel it this time.
His eyes went wide. He pulled his hand back and laughed in disbelief.
"It's cold. Really cold."
"Handle back to the middle to turn it off. Always put it back into the middle. For room temperature water. Double tap the top to turn it on. One tap to turn it off."
I tossed the faucet to Gringo and walked back to the pile of stones the children had gathered while I was working.
I looked at the pile for a moment.
I don't actually needed them. I had sent the children off to collect them mostly to stop them from bothering me.
But looking at the small, careful pile they had made together, something in me went still.
Those little hands had worked on that. And if I walked past it like it meant nothing, that effort would simply disappear into the ground.
And it's heartbreaking.
Did I just say heartbreaking?
Since when did I use that word about anything.
I shook my head and gathered the stones. I used Earth magic, creation magic, and a clear image of what I needed, to be able to produce...
A stone sink.
A countertop.
Five meters of working surface extending out from it.
I made another faucet and installed it.
Clean water. A proper washing area.
I stepped back and watched.
Everyone was gathered around the faucet Gringo was holding, Favio already rinsing the meat and vegetables.
But they were hesitating.
Careful.
Like they were afraid to use too much.
"Leigh... thank you. Truly. We'll use it sparingly, so it doesn't run dry."
Elder Elka said it with both hands pressed together, grateful down to her bones.
I held up a hand to stop her.
"Use it as much as you need. It won't run out. The stones just need recharging regularly. There's also one installed at the washing area."
I pointed to the sink and countertop beside Gringo's house. The women recovered first.
"This is wonderful." Helen was already at the sink, testing the water, washing her hands slowly like she was making sure it was real. "We can wash everything here and chop right next to a water source. No more worrying about the table giving out."
This was just the start.
I left them to it and walked the perimeter of the settlement, looking at the gaps in the mountain walls that the terrain didn't cover on its own. With one hand and no chant, I pulled stones from the ground and built upward.
The earth rumbled low and steady underfoot as the walls rose and sealed themselves to the mountain rock on either side, filling every gap until the settlement was fully enclosed.
Then I turned the iron dust mixed in the ground into a gate. Imagined the weight of it, the thickness, the way it should open and close. Solid iron. Functional.
I tested it twice. Opening it, then closing it.
"Leigh's making walls!"
Someone had noticed. Everyone turned to look at the new perimeter rising around them. I didn't comment and moved on to the houses.
I knocked them all down at once without asking.
But no one stopped me.
I burned the debris clean and started building. Eight houses, one per family.
Gringo's family of four.
Favio's family of five.
Benneth alone.
Helene with her brother Harold and their niece Sia.
Elder Elka's house, the largest, with a ground floor that could seat the whole residents for meetings or meals. Kalan and his son.
The young couple, Mathilda and Nalvik.
And one for Torra and me.
Eighteen people. Add Torra and myself. Twenty.
Twenty people in all this space, losing the fight against every night that came at them. If nothing changed, the number would keep falling until there was no one left.
The stone for the walls came from the same method as the perimeter. Magic reinforced the structure against cracking. The roofs were built to activate a barrier on impact.
Inside each one, I pulled the lumber from my item box and made furnitures. Tables, chairs, beds, shelves, drawers, closets, wooden plates, spoons, forks. Whatever a house needed to function.
A fireplace in every room. Last night's cold had been pre-winter. That temperature was normal here until the season turned.
On the east side, that's where the new residential area was, and I put in a sewer system. Waste contained, dried, powderized, the smell purified before it reached anyone.
Hygiene was a quiet kind of protection. Not as visible as walls or fire magic, but it would keep them safer from illness than either.
No soap yet. But the clean water and the drainage were already a start.
I was finishing the last of the faucet installations, one in the kitchen sink and bathroom of Elder Elka's house, when Torra found me.
"Brother Leigh. It's time to eat."
He grabbed my arm with both hands and pulled.
He did not move me even slightly.
He kept trying anyway. His face went red. His cheeks puffed out from the effort, and still I didn't move, and still he kept pulling, completely committed to the task.
A chipmunk would have had more success.
I watched him for a moment. Then, before he exhausted himself entirely, I reached down and picked him up by the back of his collar.
He dangled at my side, laughing.
I carried him to where the others had gathered, the whole settlement sitting together on the ground with bowls of stew and skewers laid out between them.
"Leigh. Come eat. You've been working all morning." Celine held out a bowl as I sat down. "Eat while it's hot."
I accepted it.
Around me, they were talking, passing food between each other, laughing at something Gringo had said.
Every so often one of them would glance at the walls, or at the houses, or at the faucet still in Gringo's hand, and say it again.
Thank you.
For the walls. For the boar. For the houses. For the water. For all of it.
They saw it. They appreciated it. And they meant it.
I sat with the bowl warm in my hands and looked at what the morning had produced. Houses standing straight.
Clean water running where there had been none. Walls where there had been gaps.
A settlement that looked, for the first time, like it was meant to last.
I had been building things. Not dismantling them. Not destroying them because someone with a crown had pointed me at them.
And sitting here, eating stew on the ground with people who hadn't asked me a single question about who I was or where I'd come from, something settled in me that I didn't have a precise name for.
I had been called a Hero since I was twelve years old.
I had killed for it.
Conquered for it.
Bled for it.
And not once in eight years had it felt like anything except a function I was performing for someone else's benefit.
A hero doesn't kill because he's ordered to.
A hero doesn't destroy and call it duty.
A hero doesn't walk past people who are drowning in their own circumstances and keep moving because no one told him to stop.
I had been named a Hero the entire time I was doing none of those things.
And now that I had walked away from all of it, I was sitting in an unnamed, neglected village at the edge of a kingdom, eating a bowl of stew made with vegetables I had cleaned myself, surrounded by nineteen people who were alive because someone had chosen to stay.
The day I left being a Hero, I became one instead.
And now...
I was here to farm.
Because I choose to.