During the inspection of the building beneath me, a rotted beam couldn’t hold up—and I died. Everything’s fair, no hard feelings. But up there, they decided that a capital architect with forty-five years of experience could still be useful. Instead of a peaceful old age, I got an exhausted body of a drunkard, a deaf medieval village, and a strange system: it hands out points for every properly processed beam and, at the same time, suggests that I won’t have long to live.
No chosen ones. Growth through craft. Survival through engineering calculations. And knowledge that even death won’t take away.