The first reports came in at dawn, brought by a dust-covered scout who smelled of sweat and pine sap. By the time the third runner arrived before noon, Ludger already knew what it meant.

He stood at the edge of his worksite, palm pressed to the cool stone of the newest wall segment, as the captain read the latest message out loud. “…barbarian banners sighted to the north-west. Light infantry and shamans moving behind them. Estimated arrival of ten thousand within days.”

Ludger’s brow furrowed. Took them longer than I expected. He had assumed they’d come the moment the first new tower rose, a hammer swinging down before the mortar had set. Instead, they had waited and watched. Now they were finally moving.

Across the town the mood changed like the air before a storm. Merchants shuttered their stalls. Civilians hurried buckets of water into cellars. Soldiers ran in double time along the ramparts, checking quivers and oil, calling for missing gear. The clang of hammers on metal rose from the smithy. Everyone could feel the weight of something approaching.

Ludger just wiped the grit from his fingers and went back to work. Stone obeyed his hands, rising block by block as if the world outside the walls didn’t exist. He reinforced seams, sealed cracks, carved a hidden firing slit, all at the same pace as yesterday.

Around him soldiers muttered about raids and shamans, but the boy’s movements stayed steady: pull, compress, anchor, seal. If anything his focus sharpened. Let the others feed on tension; his job was to make sure the walls held.

Captain Darnell watched from a short distance, seeing the way Ludger’s shoulders didn’t tense, the way his rhythm never faltered. He knew the boy had heard the same reports as everyone else — but where the town buzzed with nerves, Ludger’s only response was a faint, annoyed frown and faster work.

They’re coming, Ludger thought, eyes on the stone seam. Good. Let’s finish the stage before they arrive.

Ludger didn’t waste time pacing around it. He stepped up to Darnell, dust flaking off his sleeves, and asked the only question that mattered in a calm voice: “How many men do we actually have inside the town? What are we defending with?”

Darnell’s jaw tightened. He gave the kind of look a man gives when counting rations in his head. “Six thousand, all told,” he said bluntly. “Solid soldiers — not conscripted rabble. Fed, rested, rotated. Plus a handful of adventurers and freelance shock units the baron hired for the punch. Men who don’t mind being used as an axe where the commanders want a bite.”

Ludger blinked once, letting the number land. Six thousand wasn’t just a crowd; it was weight and depth, wagon trains and siege gear—an army with momentum.

“The enemies aren’t planning a single strike,” Darnell went on, voice low. “Their chiefs want a long war. They figure if they smash the weak half in one push, they break us before we can finish knitting the defenses together. A war of attrition only sharpens our disadvantage; a quick knockout gives us the best odds.”

Ludger swallowed, thinking in clean, geometric terms. “So we’ll throw everything at a single seam,” he said.

“Exactly.” Darnell’s eyes were flat and hard. “That’s why we can’t trade blows for blood. We punch back at momentum. Make the approach costly. Break timing. Trap them inside their own surge.”

Ludger’s fingers flexed against the stone at his side as the plan sketched itself in his head. Six thousand meant brute force; it also meant predictable rhythms. If the barbarians didn’t expect to finish it in one go, Ludger could pick the exact moment to turn their momentum into a machine that killed itself.

“Fine,” he said quiet and even. “If we want to finish it in one sweep, we’ll make sure that sweep ends inside our traps. Tell me where your reserve lines are and where you can spare men for feints. I’ll fold the ground into the stage they choose to run through.”

Darnell gave a short, approving bark of a laugh. “You think in terms of beats now,” he said. “Good. We’ll map the lanes tonight. You put the teeth where I point, and I’ll time the hammer.”

Ludger let the smirk settle back onto his face—small, controlled. Six thousand marching close enough to be a problem; a few clever seams and the math would change. “The message I wrote to the baron,” Ludger said. “Did it get delivered?”

Darnell looked up, eyes shadowed. “Yes. Couriers made it through yesterday morning. But…” he exhaled through his nose, “we haven’t received a reply yet.”

“That’s fine,” Ludger said evenly, though his brow furrowed for a heartbeat. He turned back toward the wall he’d been shaping, but Darnell’s posture didn’t ease. The captain’s fingers drummed on the edge of the table.

“The last time we fought for this town,” Darnell said slowly, “we had Lord Torvares here in person to anchor the offense. His presence alone stiffened the lines. This time…” His mouth tightened. “You’ve heard about his health. It’s been on the decline. I don’t know if he can come to the battlefield at all.”

Ludger glanced back at him, the light catching the sharp edge of his smirk. “We’ll work with what we have. If the baron can’t stand on the wall with us, then we build one strong enough that it doesn’t matter.”

Darnell tried to smile but it came out as a grimace. “You’re still a boy, but you talk like a commander. Just remember, Torvares isn’t the only one who can get worn down.”

Ludger only shrugged, turning back to the stone. “Then we’d better make sure these walls do most of the fighting for us.”

The captain watched him for a moment longer, still tense, then bent back over his map. Outside, the sound of soldiers drilling drifted through the camp — a reminder that this time there would be no baron on the line, only stone, steel, and a boy making the earth obey.

For the rest of the day Ludger stayed on the top of the wall, sleeves rolled and palms raw with dust, working as if the stone were an extension of his own breath. Each section rose another foot, seams locking like teeth, firing slits appearing where blank faces had been. The wind up there carried the smell of pine and distant smoke, and from that height he could see past the tree line.

Every time he stopped to wipe his hands, his eyes went to the horizon. In the haze beyond the forest, new shapes had begun to grow: dark dots, then banners, then whole clusters of tents and cookfires. What had been a scattering of enemy scouts three days ago was now a swelling camp, lines of horses and wagons fanning out like veins from a heart.

They were building faster than his scouts had guessed — not fortifications, but mass. More fires each hour, more banners staked into the soil. The enemy leader wasn’t trying to grind them down; he was assembling a hammer and bringing it down before Ludger could finish tempering the steel.

Ludger pressed a palm flat to the fresh stone and fed mana into it, feeling it harden under his touch. They don’t want to give me another week, he thought. They want to smash what’s built before it becomes something they can’t touch.

He kept working anyway. Pull, compress, anchor, seal. The wall rose and the view of the enemy camp sharpened — two races to finish, one with stone, one with blood. The boy on the rampart worked like he was already answering their challenge.

By mid-afternoon Ludger stopped for a sip of water and leaned against the fresh stone, eyes fixed on the horizon. The view told a story he didn’t like. The barbarian camp wasn’t just swelling with bodies now — it was moving with rhythm. Columns forming and breaking, supply wagons rolling in at timed intervals, runners darting between tents like veins pumping blood. He’d fought their kind before with their savage rushes, chaotic charges, no discipline beyond madness.

This was different. This was order.

And that, combined with the rumors about berserker draughts, made a thought itch at the back of his mind. Someone’s holding the leash, he realized. Someone’s dosing them and drilling them.

He set his canteen down and glanced at the captain nearby, who was marking off troop positions on a slate. “Captain,” Ludger called. “Who’s leading them?”

Darnell looked up, brows knitting. “What?”

“The barbarians,” Ludger said, voice flat. “They’re not moving like raiders anymore. Who’s in charge on their side?”

For a second the captain just stared at him, then his mouth twisted into a frown. “Most people don’t ask that,” he said. “They just want to see them dead and gone. Names, faces, histories—doesn’t matter to the folks behind these walls.”

“Well,” Ludger said, eyes still on the banners fluttering in the distance, “I’d like to know what kind of mind is behind that camp before it hits us.”

Darnell sighed and set the slate down. “We’ve heard rumors,” he said at last. “A war leader called Kharnek. Old enough to have scars, smart enough to unite the clans. Keeps his shamans close and his warriors dosed with some ‘red fury’ that turns them into animals. Nobody knows who’s supplying it. And nobody’s managed to get close enough to put a blade in him yet.”

Ludger’s brow furrowed, curiosity sharpening his smirk into something colder. “A name’s a start,” he murmured. “If he’s drilling them like that, then he’s not just another raider. We’ll have to build the field for him too, not just his soldiers.”

Darnell gave a humorless grunt. “I’ll see what else my scouts can dig up. But don’t expect much—most Imperials think studying barbarians is a waste of time.”

Ludger’s eyes stayed on the horizon where the enemy camp moved like a dark tide. “It’s not a waste,” he said quietly. “It’s how you survive them.”

The camp below moved like clockwork, but Ludger barely saw it now. Darnell’s answer had struck a nerve that kept ringing in his skull long after the captain turned away.

My world’s too small, he thought again, staring across the treeline. I’ve been treating everything like a dungeon run — get stronger, get skills, survive the next fight. But that’s not how wars are won. That’s how pawns get used.

He could see it clearly: he’d been pouring all his energy into his own growth, hammering his body and mana into something lethal. Earth Manipulation, Stone Grip, Quicksand. Reinforcing walls like a master mason. But when Darnell spoke about Kharnek and the berserker draught, Ludger felt the blank space in his own mind — no intelligence on potential enemies, no insight into their motivations or alliances, no sense of the map behind the map.

I’m still thinking like a foot soldier, he realized, staring at the blade in front of me instead of the whole field. That’s not going to be enough for what I’m trying to build.

His thoughts drifted to Yvar — the old tactician he had quietly paid to mentor Viola, to teach her how to teach because Ludger hadn’t had the time. Yvar wasn’t just a swordsman. He’d studied campaigns, clans, old wars. He understood people as much as formations. Ludger had always meant to draw from that well, to call him to the border or at least exchange letters. But every week had been another labyrinth, another ambush, another plan for the guild, another wall to raise.

Too busy to call him. Too busy to write. The bitter truth sat like grit on his tongue.

The wind on top of the wall was cold, bringing with it the distant smell of horse and woodsmoke. Ludger rubbed a thumb across the stone seam he’d just sealed, but for once his mind wasn’t on the work. He imagined his guild not as a construction project, but as a living force: mages, warriors, scouts, healers — and someone who could read the shape of a war before it formed.

If I keep fighting blind, he thought, I’ll end up as just another strong arm on someone else’s battlefield. Not the builder of a future. Not the one who protects.

He drew a slow, steady breath, eyes still on the barbarian camp. Soldiers moved below him on his carefully drawn lines, but he barely noticed them. A decision had been made quietly inside him: after this battle, he’d bring Yvar in. He’d start learning the why behind campaigns, not just the how of traps. He’d widen his world, even if it meant slowing his own grind for a while.

For now, there was still stone to shape. But behind his smirk, the boy on the wall had shifted; a new, colder intent had begun to take root.

When night finally crawled over the border town, the glow of torches lit the ramparts and threw long shadows across the fresh stone. Ludger descended from the wall without a word, dust streaked across his arms, hair sticking to his forehead. The soldiers standing watch along the street shifted as he passed, eyes following him in a way that wasn’t just respect.

They’d all been warned about overwork, about pacing themselves before the clash. The captain had been especially clear: don’t burn out before the fight. But in a situation like this, with the enemy camp swelling on the horizon, everyone was pushing a little harder. And Ludger… Ludger always pushed harder than anyone. They couldn’t stop him; they couldn’t even bring themselves to scold him.

He ducked into his tent, the flap falling shut behind him. The inside smelled faintly of earth and ink, his tools stacked neatly beside the cot. For a moment he just stood there, feeling the ache in his fingers. Outside, the murmurs of guards drifted through the canvas — low, worried tones. Even Darnell’s voice carried an edge of frustration he didn’t bother to hide anymore.

They all thought he would collapse eventually, that he would keep working until his body gave out. And maybe they were right. But Ludger wasn’t planning on sleeping early tonight. He had his own project hidden beneath a plain canvas cover at the back of the tent.

While the rest of the camp dozed or sharpened blades, he’d sit at his closed tent, candlelight flickering across his smirk, sketching out the kind of weapon the walls alone couldn’t be. The soldiers thought he only worked on the ramparts. They didn’t know that when the sun went down, he kept building — not just stone, but the next step of his plan.

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