Pls vote and add my book to your collection, if you do that it will motivate me to keep writing
The Weight of a Kingdom
The days bled into one another, a relentless rhythm of toil and tension. The "Liam Episode," as Ryley privately called it, faded into the background noise of survival. The mage was functioning, his Arcane Bolts a bit sharper, his Mana Shell a little steadier. He still jumped at shadows, but didn't everyone? Ryley chalked it up to the new normal.
His focus was the Kingdom of Rust. The name had started as a bitter joke, but now it felt like a prophecy they were sweating and bleeding to fulfill. It was no longer just about a safe place to rest. It was about proving a point—to the Spire, to the despairing masses, maybe to themselves—that humanity wasn't just a flaw to be erased. They could build, even here.
The work was monumental, a thousand tiny battles against decay and dread.
Jax's Wall-Wardens had become a legitimate force. What began as one angry Barbarian moving stones had evolved into a crew of two dozen. They weren't engineers, but they were strong, stubborn, and motivated by the simple, visceral understanding that thicker walls meant more time to sleep. Using ropes braided from Corrupted beast sinew and levers made from petrified wood, they managed to clear the rubble from the collapsed eastern gatehouse and erect a crude but formidable barricade of fitted stone and rusted metal beams. It wouldn't hold against a focused Tide, but it would turn a stray pack of Corrupted into a manageable problem. The rhythmic thud of stone and the grunts of effort became the heartbeat of the eastern sector.
Maya's Mending Nook had transformed. It was no longer just a corner. She'd commandeered a small, vaulted side-chapel with a natural spring trickling down one wall—a find of incredible value. With Liam's help (his delicate control over mana proving perfect for the task), they'd carved shallow channels in the stone floor to direct the clean water into a sunken basin for washing. The space smelled of crushed medicinal moss (a less potent cousin of the blightcap, discovered by a forager), boiling water, and a fragile, hard-won cleanliness.
People came to her not just with wounds, but with the low-grade sickness of despair—coughs that wouldn't break, fevers born of exhaustion, the deep tremors that came after a near-death at the wall. She couldn't cure the soul-sickness, but her Cleansing Pulse could ease the physical toll it took, and her quiet, steadfast presence became a kind of medicine in itself. She started training two of the brighter survivors with a knack for care, showing them how to clean wounds and prepare poultices. The Nook was becoming a clinic.
Ryley's hunting and scavenging operation was the kingdom's gruesome, beating heart. He'd organized three rotating parties, mixing experienced fighters with scouts and foragers. The plains beyond the walls were a graveyard of rust and lingering death, but they were also a resource field. The hunts were dangerous, but they brought in meat, hide, sinew, and occasionally, strange, salvageable parts from the more mechanized Corrupted—springs that could be used in traps, chunks of oddly resilient metal.
He also instituted a tithe. A portion of every hunt, every salvage run, went to a central cache. This wasn't for him or his group. This was for the Wall-Wardens who were too busy building to hunt, for the people in the Nook too injured to work, for the few children who had somehow survived, silent and wide-eyed. It was a brutal social contract: you contribute to the kingdom's survival, and the kingdom ensures you don't starve while you do it. Resentment flared, of course. Gregor, the surly axeman, scoffed at "sharing with the weak." But when a chunk of masonry nearly crushed him during a construction mishap and Maya's team patched him up using supplies bought with the tithe, his complaints grew quieter.
Liana was everywhere and nowhere. Ryley noted her efficiency and her silence. She was his best scout, often returning from the plains with precise maps of Corrupted movements or locations of potential salvage. She was a deadly addition to any hunting party. But he also noticed she'd sometimes vanish for hours, returning with no explanation. He assumed she was scouting the inner ruins, looking for hidden threats or caches. He was half right. She was looking for hidden threats, but not the kind he imagined. She mapped the Sanctum's underbelly, noting which of the listless seemed to vanish at certain times, searching always for a scent that never came.
One afternoon, the fragile economy of their kingdom faced its first real crisis. The main hunting party returned battered and empty-handed. A new type of Corrupted had appeared on the plains—a swift, pack-hunting variant they called "Razorjacks." They'd lost three people and all their game.
The central cache was low. The mood in the main hall, which had been slowly warming, plunged back into a frigid, fearful silence. The old, hungry looks returned. Whispers of hoarding began. Gregor's faction grumbled openly.
Ryley stood on the steps of the old fountain, the de facto town square. He felt the weight of every hungry stare. This was the moment it could all unravel. He wasn't a charismatic leader; he was a strategist. But strategy was useless if your people turned on each other.
"We lost good people today," he began, his voice carrying flatly over the crowd. "We lost food. This isn't a setback. This is the Spire, and the world, reminding us that safety is an illusion we have to build every single day."
He pointed to Jax and the Wall-Wardens, covered in stone dust. "They are building that illusion with their hands." He pointed towards the chapel where Maya worked. "She is mending it with her will." He gestured to the hunters, bandaged and grim. "They are fighting for it with their blood."
He paused, letting the silence stretch. "The cache is low. We all feel it. So here is the new rule. For the next three days, there are no separate groups. No hunters, no builders, no menders. We are one crew. Tomorrow, everyone who can hold a tool or a weapon works on the wall. We finish the eastern battlement. The day after, everyone who can walk joins a mass forage, guarded by every fighter we have. We scour the closer ruins, the fungus patches, everything. We work, and we eat, as one. We share the risk, and we share the reward."
It was a gamble. Forcing builders to forage and healers to haul stone was inefficient. But it was fair. And in the raw calculus of survival, fairness could be more valuable than efficiency. It was a statement: your hunger is my hunger. Your labor is my wall.
Slowly, sullenly, the crowd accepted it. The next day was chaotic, messy, and strangely unifying. Maya helped pass stone. Liam used his magic to help lift a heavy beam. Even Ryley took a shift with a hunting spear on the forage, standing guard while former clerks picked through rubble for edible lichen.
They didn't find a feast. But they found enough. The wall grew higher. And for the first time, the people of the Sanctum—not Ryley's group, but the people—worked side-by-side. They shared blisters, shared complaints, shared a single, shared pot of thin, meaty stew that night.
The Kingdom of Rust wasn't a place of safety. It was a pact. A promise, whispered against the howling wind, that they would not let each other fade quietly into the rust. They would struggle, they would build, they would share their meager scraps, and they would do it together. The weight was immense, and Ryley felt it bowing his shoulders every hour. But as he watched Jax explain a stone-fitting technique to a former tailor, and saw Maya laugh tiredly with a woman whose wound she'd healed, he felt something else, too—a fragile, defiant warmth, kindled not in spite of the darkness, but because of it. They were building more than walls. They were building a reason to keep climbing.