Location: Armathane, Midgard Ducal Palace – West Wing Time: Day 90 After Arrival
The office they gave him was too ornate. It looked more a study actually or "was".
High ceilings, silver-framed windows, deep-wood paneling polished to reflect candlelight. It smelled faintly of wax and ink and the kind of wealth that didn't need to justify itself. Someone important must have used it.
Alec had it stripped by noon.
The tapestries came down first — history woven in thread, but outdated and irrelevant. He replaced them with charts. Regional grain flow diagrams. River tributary maps. Population density charts by district. Half of them hand-marked by his own scouts.
The long table in the center of the room was cleared of ornamental inkpots and family crests and replaced with three slate boards, a stack of survey tablets, and two separate ledgers — one official, one private.
It stopped being an office by the second day.
It became a command center.
—
On the third day, the survey teams were chosen.
Alec stood in the lower courtyard, clipboard in hand, as the final names were read out. Twenty-three men and women. Most under thirty. Half from artisan guilds, the rest from provincial colleges or field apprenticeships. None were nobles. Two couldn't even read — yet.
That would change.
He addressed them plainly.
"You're not soldiers. You're not engineers. You're observers. Your job is to see what others ignore. Roads. River levels. Silo rot. Grain storage practices. Quarry reports. You bring me facts, not guesses."
They nodded, some more confidently than others.
"If you falsify a report, I'll know. If you guess where you should measure, I'll see it. If you try to impress me with exaggeration, you're out."
Silence.
Then one of them — a wiry girl with close-cut hair and ink-stained fingers — raised her hand.
"And if we find something no one wants you to know?"
Alec looked at her evenly. "Then you bring it to me directly."
No more was said.
They were deployed by evening.
—
The guild meetings were less orderly.
Alec met with the stonemason heads first — five men, two women, all older, all skeptical. He laid out the plan: new infrastructure ledgers to track bridge integrity, foundation wear, material flow, and labor efficiency. Standardized reports. Shared formats.
"No guesswork," he said. "No oral logs. I want numbers, weight loads, and rot curves."
Guildmaster Bren, the thickest of the stonecasters, snorted. "And who's going to pay us for all this precision?"
"I will," Alec replied.
That caught their attention.
He produced the scrolls — pre-signed, already budgeted. Guild commissions, scaled by accuracy and completion time. Extra bonuses for the first set of baseline measurements submitted.
"Why?" Bren asked.
"Because knowing where things are breaking is how you stop collapse before it begins."
They didn't like him.
But they respected results.
They signed.
—
By the end of the week, Alec had created:
A working registry of bridge and road maintenance by barony
Three rotating survey teams feeding weekly terrain data
Two mapping crews working directly with scribes to chart rivers and viable expansion roads
A recruitment call to all district colleges for scribal apprentices
A work-study rotation for promising young builders
He refused to accept any noble family's heir into the program.
It wasn't personal.
It was structural.
He wanted people with something to prove — not something to inherit.
—
Serina stopped by the his office on three day's later.
She stood quietly in the doorway as Alec directed a courier team. Three scribes hovered over a half-rolled map of Bulcrest. Markers dotted areas of concern — rockslide zones, waterlogged farmland, obsolete mill foundations.
"You're building a system," she said once the room was empty.
"I'm building a replacement."
She raised an eyebrow.
He tapped the corner of the map.
"This is what power looks like before it's weaponized."
Serina stepped inside. "You think this makes you immune?"
"No. But it makes me necessary."
She walked to the table, brushing her fingers across the fresh ink.
"They're already calling this your 'soft conquest.'"
"I don't need to conquer anyone. I just need them to wake up in a world I built."
She looked at him. "And when they do?"
"They'll thank me. Or they won't matter."
There was no arrogance in his voice. Just calculation.
Serina said nothing for a moment.
Then: "Do you want me involved in this phase?"
"Yes," he said. "I want you to oversee the education track. The scribes. The training logic. You understand how minds adapt. Just like me."
She looked at him long.
"Is this how you show trust?"
"It's how I show respect."
She smiled faintly.
"Mother had a talk with me two days ago" she paused waiting for him to say something. When he didn't, she continued "Said You wanted to give me a role in your future projects".
"Administrative. She called it."
Alec leaned back on his seat and gazed at her." Do you want it?" he asked.
"Only if I get paid ".
He blinked.
Hw wasn't expecting that.
"Sure"
"Then I'll do it." she smiled and strolled out of the room with a buoyant step.
—
Not all responses were supportive.
On Day 92, a formal complaint reached the ducal office — unsigned, but clearly penned by a baronial councilor.
Lord Alec's system promotes non-noble mobility at the expense of tradition. Elevating tradesmen into civil authority risks destabilizing hierarchical clarity. Recommendations: Reassessment. Oversight. Correction.
Vaelora sent the scroll to Alec's desk without comment.
Alec read it once. Then burned it.
He didn't ask for her opinion.
He didn't need it.
—
The following day, Alec issued an internal directive:
All road and bridge commissions will require verification from third-party surveyors and material inspectors. All scribal reports are to be duplicated. One copy to be sent to local councils. One to be archived under the Chief Architects Office. Unverified projects will not be authorized for ducal funding.
It was signed, sealed, and disseminated by dusk.
Three baronies refused to comply.
By morning, Alec had redirected their funding to cooperative neighbors.
By the next week, two of the three had returned to the fold — quietly.
—
He worked late that night.
When the scribes left, and the light from the corridor faded, Alec remained at his desk, marking the map with small, deliberate strokes.
Each one meant something now — a farm he could fix. A bridge he could rebuild. A road he could reroute to bypass a lord who slowed progress out of pride.
He didn't look up when Serina entered.
She didn't speak.
Just walked over, studied the map, and said:
"This looks less like a duchy every day."
He didn't stop writing.
"It's not a duchy," he said. "It's the start of something else."
She sat beside him.
"Does my mother know that?"
"She suspects."
"And me?"
Alec finally looked up.
"You already know."