The day didn't start with a plan to work; it started with a knock on the gate.
Lif was just finishing his morning stretches in the yard, his muscles still a bit stiff from the forest climb the night before. He was focusing on the burn in his calves when Old Man Garris peered over the stone wall. Garris was a fixture of the neighborhood, a man with a deep, lifelong bond with the Gairos constellation. In his youth, he could have moved hills, but as he liked to say, the Earth Constellation gave him steady feet, not a steady back.
"Lif, lad? You got a moment?" Garris called out, gesturing vaguely toward his vegetable garden. "The spring rains shifted that boundary stone again. I tried to nudge it with a pulse, but my knees gave out before the rock did. Damned thing is stubborn as a mule."
Lif wiped his forehead and grinned. "I'll be right over, Garris."
He hopped the low wall, his boots landing softly in the tilled soil. It took twenty minutes of bracing his shoulder against the cold, mossy granite and digging his heels into the dirt, but the stone finally slotted back into place with a heavy, muffled thud. Garris stood by, nodding approvingly. He couldn't have done it without a high-level Gairos master—someone who could actually manipulate the density of the earth—and those types were far too busy building fortifications at the capital to bother with a garden fence in Velchant.
"You're a lifesaver, boy," Garris said, heading toward his cellar stairs. He returned a moment later, handing Lif a crisp, red apple. "Most of the kids around here won't touch a stone unless they can make it glow or float. You just get it done. It's a rare thing, having hands that know the earth without needing to talk to it."
"No problem, Garris. I'll see you at the market," Lif said, taking a massive bite of the apple as he headed back toward the main road.
He didn't get far before Mrs. Gable waved him down from her porch. She was a Thalora user, usually more than capable of calling a gentle stream from the morning mist to water her prized hanging baskets. But the summer heat had settled in early, and the air was too dry for her to pull enough moisture from the sky. Her well-crank had snapped the night before, and she looked genuinely distressed at her drooping flowers.
"Lif! Honey, could you help me haul a few buckets from the central well? I can't seem to get the water to 'climb' today, and my arms aren't what they used to be."
"I've got it, Mrs. Gable," Lif replied, already reaching for the heavy wooden yokes.
He spent the next hour walking back and forth from the central well. The yokes bit into his shoulders, the wooden buckets swaying and splashing cold water against his shins. While other villagers watched him—some with that lingering look of pity reserved for the Hollowborn, others with a genuine nod of appreciation—Lif just focused on the rhythm. To them, water was a command, a fluid element to be summoned; to Lif, it was a weight. But he liked the weight. It made the world feel solid, tangible, and real.
By the afternoon, the sun was at its peak, and Lif's shirt was sticking to the small of his back. He didn't head home yet. He stopped by the blacksmith's shop, not because he was looking for work, but because Master Horen had asked him the day before to help sort the heavy iron scrap.
"Over here, Lif!" the smith grunted, wiping soot from his brow with a forearm. He pointed to a pile of jagged, rusted metal. "Just stack 'em by the furnace. My apprentice is a good lad, but he's got that Ignara fever. He keeps getting too excited with his sparks and nearly took my eyebrows off trying to lift these with a heat-tether. Just melt 'em, he says. I tell him iron needs to be respected before it's burned."
Lif spent the rest of the heat of the day in the forge. The air was thick and tasted of salt and metallic dust. His muscles were humming with that familiar, dull ache that usually signaled the end of his energy. He was tossing the last of the scrap into the bins when a shadow fell across the doorway.
"Lif! Seriously? You're still here?"
Rael leaned against the doorframe, looking remarkably fresh despite the heat. A small, playful flicker of Ignara fire danced between his fingertips as he fidgeted, the orange light reflecting in his eyes. "We're all heading to the river. Sela says the silver-fins are running in the shallows. Even Ren is actually trying to fish for once, though he'll probably just fall in."
Lif looked at the pile of iron, then at his own soot-stained hands. His back felt like a bowstring drawn too tight, and his head was heavy from the constant roar of the forge-heat. He thought about the river—the way the cold water would pull the sting out of his muscles—but then he thought about his bed.
"Can't today, Rael," Lif said, wiping his hands on a greasy rag.
"Again?" Rael sighed, the spark in his hand flickering out as he pushed off the wall. "Garris said you helped him move half his garden, then I saw you at Gable's carrying enough water to fill a pond... man, you do more for this village than the actual Elders. Take a day off before you turn into a statue."
Lif laughed, the sound a bit dry. "I just want to go home, Rael. I'm beat."
"Fine, fine. But don't complain when Ren catches the biggest fish in the history of Velchant and talks about it for the next three weeks."
"I'll take my chances," Lif promised. "See you tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow," Rael said, waving a hand over his shoulder as he jogged off toward the treeline.
Lif walked home slowly. The cobblestones were still radiating heat, and his boots clicked rhythmically in the quiet afternoon air. He wasn't helping people to be a hero, and he wasn't doing it to prove he was better than the kids with Constellations. He helped because they asked, and because he knew he could do it. In a village powered by the stars, he was happy to be the one powered by his own two feet. It gave him a place. It made him belong.
As he reached his front door, the warm, savory scent of his mother's stew wafted out through the open windows. It smelled of rosemary and slow-cooked beef. He felt the exhaustion deep in his marrow, but it was a satisfied kind of tired. He reached for the handle, his mind already imagining the feeling of kicking off his boots and disappearing into the silence of his room.
He pushed the door open, a sigh already forming in his throat—
*Thwack.*
The door didn't just open; it was swung wide from the inside. Victor stood there, his massive frame blocking the light. He was already wearing his heavy leather traveling cloak, an empty firewood sling looped over his shoulder.
He looked down at his soot-covered, sweat-drenched son and beamed.
"There he is! Perfect timing, Lif," Victor boomed, his voice echoing in the small entryway.
Lif froze, his hand still hovering where the doorknob had been a second ago. He looked at his dad, then at the stew simmering on the hearth, then back at his dad.
"Dad... I just..." Lif started, his voice trailing off.
"I need to clear that fallen oak on the north ridge before the night damp sets in. It's too heavy for one man to haul back in the dark," Victor said, stepping out onto the porch and clapping a massive hand on Lif's shoulder. It felt like a mountain landing on him. "I was going to go alone, but then I thought—what kind of father would I be if I didn't spend some quality time with my boy?"
Lif let out a long, pathetic grunt of protest, his head dropping forward until his chin hit his chest. "I've been moving rocks for Garris, Dad. And iron. And the entire well for Mrs. Gable."
"Think of it as a warm-up!" Victor laughed, steering Lif back toward the garden path. "Besides, your mother says the stew needs another hour anyway. We'll be back before the lanterns are lit. It'll be fun!"
"Your definition of fun is very different from mine," Lif muttered, his boots dragging in the dirt as he was led away from his beautiful, beautiful bed.
Victor just chuckled and ruffled the boy's hair. "That's the spirit! Come on, the hill isn't even that steep."
Lif looked back at the house one last time, watching the steam curl out of the kitchen window, before sighing and trudging after his father toward the looming shadows of the north ridge.