One day, morning breaks with oatmeal, river-honey, and the hiss-snap of eggs hitting an iron pan. Freyr flits about the hearth wearing a linen apron two sizes too large—Arthur’s old smithing cloth repurposed. Vesta sits cross-legged on the bench, swinging dusty feet and asking impossible riddles (“If a cloud forgot its name, would the rain still fall?”). Akio listens, half-present, turning his spoon as though stirring stars into porridge. Arthur appears freshly scrubbed, hair still damp. For a heartbeat no one speaks; then Vesta blurts that a ladybug spent the night in her pocket. Laughter breaks loose. The moment feels ordinary, perfect, and—Akio realizes—terribly fragile. He tucks the thought away beside darker ones about secrets and sword-dreams.

The bazar bustles louder than usual: a peddler from the coast displays shells that hum faint music when held to the ear. Freyr negotiates a fair price in three sentences so graceful the peddler blushes. Ekkehard lingers, arms folded—watchful or possessive, hard to tell. Akio drifts between stalls taking notes: weights of plums vs. their bruise-resistance, angles of sunlight on glass beads, dialect quirks of traveling minstrels. He notices the hooded figure again, half-reflected in a copper pot—gone the instant he turns. The pot seller blinks, swears no one stood there. Later on, back at the smithy, Arthur lets Akio quench a glowing horseshoe. Steam erupts, smelling of iron and riverweed. In the hiss, Arthur murmurs, “Steel teaches patience, lad. If you rush the heat, the blade shatters later.” The lesson feels broader than metalwork. Akio studies his father’s deep-blue eyes, wonders what private storms they’ve weathered. Arthur never speaks of his own youth, yet the way his hammer rises and falls hints at battles unseen—perhaps on those distant continents now turning restless. The horseshoe hardens; so does a resolve Akio barely names.

Afternoon shade. Akio’s experiment journals lie open when his childhood friend Liora Morrow arrives—keen-eyed, smudged with sawdust, able to coax sprouts from fence posts like her father. She challenges him to an impromptu logic duel: each must pose a puzzle the other cannot solve. Hours pass in playful sparring: riddles about mirrors that lie, about rivers that run uphill in dreams, about mana that refuses the mage. For the first time all day Akio feels nice. Liora finally stumps him with, “In what place does time fear to walk?” When he concedes, she only taps his marked arm, says, “Perhaps you’ll find the answer here.” Her words echo longer than either expect.

As the night approaches Rathvale’s cottages extinguish lamps one by one until only the watchtower beacon glows. Akio sits on the porch step, a single lantern haloing him in gold. Inside, Arthur snores, Freyr hums a lullaby to Vesta, the forge embers are dark. Akio opens The Epics of the Western Rim but doesn’t read. He recalls Timory’s words—mana has manners—and wonders whether the power seated inside him has already chosen its posture, its weapon, its destiny. Peace holds—but now the question mark curves darker, deeper, almost a hook drawing him forward.

At sunrise the Great Oak Tavern thrums with village business. Reeve Ealdwin shuffles parchments; Arthur’s quiet bulk anchors one end of the plank table. Akio, notebook in hand, waits for the agenda item on the broken foot-bridge.

When Ealdwin sighs about the cost of oak beams, Akio steps forward:

“The river’s high. A shallow-draft barge with buoyant casks could ferry grain carts in half the time, no timber required. I’ve sketches—”

Polite silence. Farmer Grett scratches his beard. “Barge? Casks?” He chuckles as though humoring a child’s riddle. Hobb mutters, “Sounds witchy.” Even the miller, who once borrowed Akio’s wedge-pulley to hoist grindstones, averts his gaze.

Arthur clears his throat. “The lad’s math is sound.”
 But Ealdwin coughs, folds the proposal under his ledger. “Let’s keep to what folk understand—wood and nails. We’ll mend the planks after harvest.”

The matter closes. Akio stares at his own neat diagrams, cheeks warming. For the first time he notices a cobweb above the tavern rafters catching dawn light—beautiful, intricate, ignored. The image stings. Van Halen barges unload at the Tarlis dock. Celania folds space with practiced murmurs; villagers applaud the spectacle yet dismiss the principle behind it. When Akio attempts to ask about her rune geometry, dockhands push past him, eager to heft crates the “proper” way. A mooring post splits. Arthur braces the rope, muscles bunching. Akio dashes to fetch a steel collar he forged for exactly this scenario—but dock foreman Rogg waves him off. “Iron’s too dear. We’ll wedge it with driftwood.” The quick fix holds—for now—but Akio smells rope fibers fraying in the sun. Liora rests a consoling hand on his arm. “Give them time.” He shakes his head, eyes on the bright pennants fluttering downstream—motion, possibility, everything the dock foreman refuses to see.

Night. Sparks paint the smithy ceiling. Arthur shapes bridge braces anyway—“whether they use them or not”—but even the ringing anvil cannot drown Akio’s simmering thoughts.

“Why won’t they listen?”.
 Arthur: “Change frightens folk who think comfort is the same as safety.”
 Akio: “I don’t want to leave this place. I do want to leave this—this slumber.”

Arthur quenches the iron, steam hissing like an unseen serpent. “Steel waits until the right hands wield it,” he says. Yet he does not promise the village will ever pick up the gift.

Three dawns later the village awoke to thunderous voices: Farmer Grett and Farmer Hobb quarreled knee-deep in an irrigation canal, each accusing the other of diverting water. Their shouting drew sleepy townsfolk in nightrobes; even the geese halted their havoc to watch. Ealdwin tried mediation; words sank like stones. That was when Akio, shivering in dawn mist, requested a quarter-hour. He fetched reed floats, weighted them with colored pebbles, and set them adrift from each disputed sluice gate. Where currents split, floats paused or surged; Akio’s notebook danced as he measured drift times, adjusting gates until both channels equalized. He presented his findings: “Three-finger breadth reduction on Grett’s side restores parity.” He cited water-table estimates, rainfall logs, and the buoyancy curve

Grett squints at the ledger. “Looks like chicken scratches to me.”
Hobb snorts. “Water’s water. We’ll open both gates come night so the boy can’t meddle.”

Ealdwin is too weary to arbitrate. Liora pipes up, citing previous seasons’ flood logs; still they grunt and stomp away. By noon they are arguing again—this time about whose ox raised more silt. Akio kicks the reed floats, anger finally spitting words: “Ignorance is a choice!” Only the river answers, carrying his models downstream like bright, unadopted futures.

One evening, from the leaning watch-tower, Akio studies fields he loves—the glinting river, barley turning gold—and the people who keep them small. I  don’t belong here Akio thinks. There will come a day when he will have to leave this place, but each day that passes, makes him wonder what is he waiting for. Nothing that really matters to Akio can be found here. Even family love is fake.

Stars bloom overhead, indifferent, patient.