Riven woke a second time that morning, though he hadn't remembered falling asleep at all. He'd meant only to sit down against the base of the new tower for a moment while the repair crews worked, and the next thing he knew Elarys was crouched beside him, one hand steady on his shoulder."You've been out for twenty minutes," she said. "I let you have them.""Twenty minutes I didn't budget for." He pushed himself upright, joints stiff in a way that had nothing to do with injury and everything to do with a night that had ended in combat instead of sleep. Around him, the field told its own story — scorched grass in wide black patches, the wall's damaged section already climbing back toward full height under a dozen busy hands, and the fountain at the center of the yard still pulsing its slow, steady gold.[Wall Integrity: 88% → 94%]"Faster than I expected," Riven said, watching stone knit itself seamless under the crew's work."Development Level thirty buys you a faster repair crew," Ela

Riven waited until the following morning before he touched the Hero Summoning Stone again. Not out of hesitation — he'd made that mistake once already with the gauntlet and wasn't interested in repeating the pattern — but because a decision this size deserved a full day's rest behind it instead of the tail end of a Dungeon clear. Day Nine started the way every day since the Grace Period had started: a status check first, everything else after.[Lord Hall (Level 3)][Development Level: 34][Population: 161][Gold: 3,730][Collapsed Forge: Repair Complete][New Building: Giant Forge (Sub-Space)]The Blacksmith unit had wasted no time. What had been rubble and cracked stone in the Ashen Vault's second chamber now stood finished, according to the notification, though Riven hadn't walked back through the archway yet to see it with his own eyes. A second production building, sitting inside claimed land, costing him nothing but a day of a single unit's labor. He made a note to inspect it prop

Morning light found Riven already standing at the edge of the Giant Forge, watching steam curl off freshly quenched metal while Brynhild worked the last details into a breastplate that hadn't existed an hour earlier. Two Blueprints sat in his inventory from the last two Dungeon clears — the Stoneplate Vanguard Armor and the Frostguard Cloak — and neither one was doing him any good sitting unused while units still fought in standard-issue Reinforced Armor."Both of them," Riven said. "Vanguard Armor goes to the front-line Giants. Frostguard Cloak goes to whichever unit's fastest — Elarys can wear it or hand it down to one of the Angel scouts, her choice.""Vanguard's already half-forged," Brynhild said, not looking up from her work. "Giant hands, Giant-scale Blueprint — this is exactly the kind of crafting I told you we'd outpace a Dwarf crew on. Give me the rest of the morning and you'll have a full set."

 The ranking board updated the same way it always did, quietly, without ceremony, a single name sitting at the top of it in four different Lord Spaces at once. None of the four Lords reading it that morning had ever met Riven Ashford. All four had opinions about him regardless. Marcus Veil read the board a second time from the shadowed interior of his own Lord Hall, dark stone lit by nothing but a handful of blood-red mana lanterns, and found the number sitting exactly where he'd left it an hour earlier. Still first. Still ahead by a margin that had only grown since the last time he'd checked. "A hundred and eighty points," he said, more to the room than to either of the two figures standing at his side. "I'm a full Level ahead of him and he's still pulling away." "Score isn't Level," said Countess Isolde Marrow, his first Hero, arms folded inside a high-collared coat

Morning found the Legendary blade finished, laid across Brynhild's workbench with a sheen that hadn't been there the night before — not just sharpened, but settled, the way a piece of equipment looked once every part of it had stopped fighting every other part.[Identification Activating...][Target: Forged Weapon][Name: Dawnbreaker's Reach][Grade: Legendary][Effect: +80% Physical Damage, Refined Core Resonance — bonus damage scales with wielder's racial strength; occasional Corrosion Strike proc (Cinder/Rime core origin)]"First Legendary weapon out of my Forge," Brynhild said, turning it once so the light caught the blade's full length. "Torren's earned it. Steadiest hand on the frontline since the day he came out of the Barracks.""Give it to him, then," Riven said. "No sense letting a weapon like that sit o