Titus, former corporal of the Third Legion, now Legate of the Wastes Confederacy, looked upon the town of Fairmeadow and felt a ghost of his past life shiver through him. The town was a portrait of decay. The wooden palisade was crumbling, the fields beyond were fallow and choked with weeds, and the faces of the people who peeked from behind shuttered windows were gaunt with the familiar trinity of fear, hunger, and despair. This was what the King's order always became in the end: a hollow shell, abandoned to the wolves.
His Legate team—an engineer named Lise, a young agronomist named Perrin, and twenty Iron Guard soldiers—halted their wagons a respectful distance from the town gate. The townsfolk, seeing the disciplined soldiers and the gleam of their steel, reacted as expected. Doors were barred. The silence was one of terrified anticipation.
Finally, the town gate creaked open and a small delegation emerged, led by a hard-faced, elderly woman with suspicion carved into every line on her face. She introduced herself as Marta, the town elder.
"We have nothing for you," she said, her voice brittle. "The King's men took the last of our grain months ago. The bandits took the rest. If you've come for taxes, you've come to a graveyard."
Titus dismounted, instructing his guards to remain with the wagons. He met the old woman's gaze, not with the arrogance of a conqueror, but with the quiet weariness of a man who understood her plight all too well.
"We are not from the King, Elder Marta," Titus said calmly. "We are from the Wastes Confederacy. We have not come to take. We have come to offer."
The words meant nothing to her. They were just the lies of a new warlord.
Titus gestured to one of the wagons. At his signal, the Iron Guard pulled back the canvas cover. It was not filled with weapons of war, but with dozens of heavy burlap sacks. Titus took one, cut it open with his knife, and let a stream of golden wheat kernels run through his fingers. "This is Oakhaven grain. It grows where nothing else will. We offer it to you, to feed your people and to be the first seed of your new harvest."
Marta stared at the grain as if it were a magical substance.
The engineer, Lise, unrolled a hide, not a tax ledger, but a detailed blueprint. "Your well is failing," she said, her tone practical, not condescending. "The water is brackish. We can help you dig a new one, deeper and cleaner. And we can help you build a proper granary, one that will keep the rats and the damp out."
The elder looked from the grain to the blueprint, her hard expression softening into one of utter confusion. "Why?" she finally asked, her voice a whisper. "No one gives without taking."
This was Titus's moment. This was the reason the Lord Protector had chosen him.
"Because I was once you," he said, and his voice held the absolute authority of lived experience. "I was a soldier of the King. I fought in the Valley of the Anvil. I saw a legion of ten thousand men broken by a handful of 'savages'. I was captured, and I expected to die."
He looked around at the desperate, hungry faces. "But the Lord of Oakhaven did not give us a sword. He gave us a choice. He gave us work. He gave us law. He showed us that a nation is not built on the strength of its king, but on the strength of its people. The King sent you taxmen. The Confederacy sends you farmers and engineers. That is the difference."
He knelt, scooping up a handful of the grain and offering it to Marta. "This is not a gift. It is an investment. We offer you a partnership. We will help you stand on your own feet. All we ask in return is that you one day stand with us, as a friend and an ally, as citizens of a new world."
Marta looked at the grain in his hand, then at the earnest, steady eyes of the man who was once her enemy. For the first time in a generation, a flicker of something dangerously close to hope ignited in the desolate landscape of Fairmeadow. She reached out a trembling hand and took the grain.
The work had begun.