Kael woke to stillness. Not the uneasy quiet of the forest holding its breath but the softer kind. Morning light filtered through the broken tower walls, pale and cool. For a moment, he didn’t move. He lay on his back, staring at the stone above him, aware of the unfamiliar comfort beneath him.

  The bed.Crude. Narrow. Built more for function than rest but it had held through the night. He’d built it for Elin but she hadn’t protested when he tested it first.

  He turned his head slightly. Elin slept nearby, curled on her side, her breathing slow and even. She hadn’t moved far from where she’d lain down, but her face looked less tense than it had in days. Less guarded.

  Kael sat up carefully, testing his shoulders, his back. No sharp pain. No stiffness beyond the usual.It had worked.

  When he stood, the soft scrape of wood made Elin stir. Her eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first then she blinked and pushed herself up on one elbow.

  “…Morning,” she said, voice rough with sleep.“Morning,” Kael replied.

  She glanced at the bed, then back at him. Hesitated. “Did it… hold?”Kael nodded once. “Better than the floor.”

  A faint smile touched her lips—small, fleeting, but real. “Good.” They didn’t say more. They didn’t need to. Outside, the day waited.

  The ground resisted them. Kael had known it would. Soil always did at first hard-packed, stubborn, unwilling to give up space without a fight. But bending over and breaking it by hand was slow work, and the fence only held meaning if what it protected could grow.

  “This will take too long,” Elin said quietly, straightening from where she’d been pulling at roots. She flexed her fingers, red and sore. “People didn’t plant like this. Not for more than a few seeds.”

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  Kael wiped dirt from his palms and looked at the shallow marks they’d managed to scratch into the earth. “They used tools.”“Yes,” she said. “Simple ones. Wood and stone. A blade to cut, a flat edge to turn the soil.”

  Kael’s gaze drifted toward the ruins. Broken beams. Old carts half-swallowed by weeds. Enough material if he was careful.

  “I’ll make one,” he said. Elin looked up. “You’ve done this before?” “No,” Kael replied. Then, after a pause, “But I can try.”

  He chose a length of wood from a collapsed cart frame, worn smooth by age but still strong. From the riverbank, he found a flat stone with a natural edge sharp enough to bite, wide enough to turn earth. He worked slowly, shaving the wood down, binding the stone with twisted cord and strips torn from old cloth.

  It wasn’t elegant.But it felt right in his hands.

  The first few strikes into the soil were promising. The earth cracked, broke, turned. Darker soil surfaced beneath the dry crust, rich and damp.

  Elin crouched nearby, watching closely. “That’s good,” she said. “That’s what we need.”

  Kael adjusted his grip and swung again. The stone shifted. Just slightly but enough. The edge bit wrong. Wood slipped. Pain flared sharp and sudden across his palm.

  Kael hissed and dropped the tool.Blood welled immediately, dark against the dirt.

  Elin was at his side before he could speak. “Kael don’t move.”“It’s nothing,” he said automatically, clenching his hand. The cut wasn’t deep, but it split the skin across his palm the kind that healed slowly if strained.

  “That’s not nothing,” she said, quieter now.

  She guided him to sit, tore a strip from the edge of her tunic without hesitation, and cleaned the wound carefully with water from the skin. Her hands were steady. Focused.

  “You rush when you shouldn’t,” she murmured.Kael watched her work. “Tool failed.”“No,” she corrected. “You pushed it too hard.”

  He didn’t argue. She wrapped the cloth tight, knotting it securely. When she finished, her fingers lingered for a brief moment longer than necessary then pulled away.

  “Let it rest,” she said. “We can finish later.”Kael flexed his hand carefully. It throbbed, but held. “Later, then.”

  They sat there for a moment, the half-turned soil before them, the fence behind them, the tower standing quiet at their backs.The work wasn’t done.But it had begun.And sometimes, Kael thought, that was enough for one day.