This place is falling apart.
Alucent stood in front of what Sir Vorn had generously called a "minor repair assignment" and tried not to laugh. Or cry. The Steamcottage looked like it was held together by stubbornness and prayer.
Basic task, he'd said. Good for learning the fundamentals.
Right. Because nothing says "fundamentals" like a building that's one strong wind away from collapsing.
The cottage squatted on the outskirts of Eryndral like a sick animal. Paint peeled off the walls in long strips. The windows were so grimy he couldn't see through them. And that smell... steam mixed with damp wood and something that might have been mold.
Or despair. Hard to tell the difference.
A woman opened the door before he could knock. Mid-thirties, maybe. Her tunic was rough Ironvine Fabric, undyed and patched with Leatherthread in at least six places. Her hands were calloused from work he'd never had to do.
"You the Scribe-Weaver?" she asked, looking at his borrowed robe with the kind of hope that hurt to see.
"I'm... learning," he said. "Sir Vorn sent me about the beam problem."
Her face lit up. "Oh, thank the Green Council. We've been waiting weeks. Come in, come in."
The inside was worse than the outside.
The main room sagged in the middle like a broken smile. Steam vents along the walls hissed weakly, barely managing to keep the integrated Steam Power System running. A man in similarly patched clothes sat at a rickety table, bouncing a toddler on his knee. Two older kids played with carved wooden toys that had seen better decades.
And above it all, the beam.
Jesus Christ, that thing is ready to go.
The Ironvine Wood beam stretched across the ceiling, its natural metallic veins glinting in the weak light. But those veins looked wrong. Dull. Tarnished. The wood itself sagged visibly, creaking with every gust of wind that hit the cottage.
This isn't decay. This is structural failure waiting to happen.
"Started sagging about a month ago," the man said, following his gaze. "Gets worse every day. We can't afford a proper Scribe-Weaver, but Sir Vorn said you might—"
The beam chose that moment to let out a groan that made everyone in the room freeze.
Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh—
CRACK.
The sound split the air like a gunshot. The beam sagged another foot, and suddenly the whole cottage was creaking like it was in pain. Steam hissed louder from the vents as the integrated system tried to compensate for the shifting structure.
The toddler started crying. The mother grabbed the older kids and pushed them toward the door. The father just stood there, staring at his collapsing home with the blank expression of someone who'd run out of options.
Move. Do something. Anything.
Alucent's mind raced through everything he'd learned as a data analyst. Structural problems. Load distribution. Stress points. Find the bottleneck, identify the quick fix, implement the solution.
But this wasn't a database. This was physics and magic and people's lives, and he had no idea what he was doing.
Wait. Raya. Earlier, when she was demonstrating that Runequill...
She'd mentioned repair runes. Simple ones. Something about channeling Runeforce to reinforce existing structures. Temporary fixes for emergency situations.
I don't know how to do this. I barely know what Runeforce is, let alone how to—
Another crack. The beam dropped another six inches.
The woman was crying now, clutching her children. The man looked at Alucent with desperate eyes.
"Please," he whispered. "We've got nowhere else to go."
Fuck it. Trial by fire.
Alucent closed his eyes and tried to feel... something. Anything. That energy he'd sensed back at his own cottage. The warmth that seemed to flow through everything in this world.
There. Like electricity in the air before a storm, but warmer. More alive.
Runeforce. Has to be.
He opened his eyes and looked around frantically. He needed something to carve with. Something sharp enough to cut into—
A piece of bent metal stuck out from the damaged beam. He yanked it free, ignoring the splinters, and stumbled over to the support column next to the failing beam.
What was it Raya had said? Repair runes. Basic structural reinforcement. Channel the Runeforce through simple geometric patterns...
He pressed the metal to the wood and started carving. Badly. His hands shook, and the lines came out crooked and rough, but he could feel something building. That warmth in the air was getting stronger.
Triangle for stability. Circle for containment. Lines to connect and channel...
The rune glowed.
Not much. Just a faint golden light that pulsed like a heartbeat. But the moment it started glowing, he felt the Runeforce flow into it. Through it. Into the wood and metal of the cottage itself.
The beam groaned one more time, then settled with a jarring thunk that shook the whole building. Steam vented from new stress relief points that hadn't been there seconds before. The integrated system hummed back to life, redistributing load through channels Alucent couldn't see but somehow felt.
It held.
Holy shit, it actually held.
The rush hit him like a freight train. Adrenaline from the crisis, exhaustion from channeling power he didn't understand, and something else. Something that felt like...
Ashwood Heights. Concrete floor. The smell of dust and old blood.
No no no not now—
The warehouse materialized around him. Graffiti on the walls. Those robed figures chanting in languages that sounded like they came from the bottom of hell. The knife, gleaming in the flickering light of their ritual.
The leader's face, twisted with religious ecstasy as he raised the blade.
The cold bite of metal against his throat.
The taste of his own blood.
The feeling of everything draining away...
"Sir? Sir, are you all right?"
Alucent's eyes snapped open. He was on his knees next to the damp brick wall, one hand pressed against it for support. His heart hammered against his ribs. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cold.
The woman knelt beside him, her face creased with concern. The man hovered nearby, the toddler still in his arms. The older kids peeked out from behind their mother, wide-eyed.
"I'm... I'm fine," he managed, pushing himself back to his feet. His legs felt like jelly. "Just... the rune work. Takes it out of you."
Understatement of the century.
"You saved our home," the woman said quietly. She reached into a pouch at her belt and pulled out a small handful of what looked like fabric strips. "It's not much, but..."
Copperweaves. Ten of them, each about the size of his thumb. Ironvine Fabric etched with intricate rune seals that glowed faintly in the dim light. Authentication marks that proved their value.
One dollar equivalent. Total.
In his old life, he would have laughed. A dollar wouldn't buy him a candy bar from the vending machine at work. But here, pressed into his palm by calloused hands, it felt like everything.
These people have nothing. And they're giving me what they can.
"Thank you," he said, and meant it. The weight of the Copperweaves in his pocket was more than just money. It was proof. Evidence that he could actually do this. That his improvised rune work had real value.
That maybe, just maybe, he could survive in this world.
"No, sir," the man said, bouncing his toddler gently. "Thank you. We'll be able to sleep tonight without worrying about the roof coming down."
Alucent nodded and headed for the door, his borrowed robe dragging behind him. Outside, the afternoon sun was already starting to fade. The walk back to his own cottage stretched ahead of him, and he felt every step in his bones.
But the Copperweaves clinked softly in his pocket with each movement. His first real earnings in Senele. Proof that he could turn this nightmare into something survivable.
The flashback was already fading, pushed back by exhaustion and the simple satisfaction of work completed. Of problems solved and people helped.
He'd always been good at finding easy solutions to complex problems. Turns out that skill translated pretty well to magical construction work.
Even if the magic part nearly killed him.
The cottage behind him creaked once more, then settled into its new configuration. Steam vented steadily from the relief points, and the integrated system hummed with renewed stability.
Fixed. For now.
One dollar earned. Approximately infinity to go.
But it was a start. And in a world where he'd started with nothing but confusion and borrowed clothes, every start mattered.
The ring on his finger pulsed once, warm against his skin, as if approving of his first real accomplishment as Alucent Luci.
Tomorrow would bring new problems. Sir Vorn's assignments. Questions about his "unique qualifications." The growing certainty that his arrival in this world wasn't as random as it seemed.
Today, though, he had a dollar in his pocket and the knowledge that his hands could fix things as well as they could break them.
In this new life, that might just be enough.