Chương 4: Frameworks

Wherever James looked, people were moving with purpose. They crossed the clearing in small knots, carrying tools and bundles; they spoke in low, focused voices instead of anxious whispers; they tugged at old beams to test their strength and clustered beneath the hovering roof blueprint James had set above the bathhouse. The structure cast a soft blue glow over the work site, a dome of gentle light that clung to the warped walls like a promise.

It reminded James of moonlight on wet pavement, only here the light had chosen one particular hut and decided to love it a little more than anything else. He stood near the center of the clearing and rolled his shoulders, his arms still heavy and oddly sore. It was the strange, weightless soreness that came after too much time at a desk trying to hold bad deadlines together, only this time it hummed under his skin in a way he recognized as mana trying to decide if it forgave him yet.

"You are experiencing early-stage mana exertion," Lumen said at his shoulder, his glow calm and buoyant.

"Very normal for first-time sustained use."

"Normal?" James muttered, flexing his fingers.

"It feels like I fought a photocopier."

"Did you fight many photocopiers on Earth?" Lumen asked, genuinely curious.

"One," James said.

"And I lost." Lumen hesitated.

"That is… concerning," he said gently. He puffed out a breath, the corner of his mouth twitching despite himself.

"Welcome to my life." The villagers looked at it the way people looked at fires on cold nights or altars on holy days. They were reverent, frightened of touching it and desperate not to lose sight of it. Maybe it was sacred to them. It wasn't just his magic; it was the first visible hint that the world could be re-shaped into something better than "don't stand under that." He still wasn't used to the fact that he was the reason it existed.

"James!" A voice carried across the clearing before he saw the speaker. Alder came running a moment later, weaving past a stack of firewood and nearly tripping over a stone. He dropped the bundle with an exhausted huff, then straightened and tried to stand like someone who wasn't winded at all.

"We found more straight ones," Alder announced proudly.

"Well. Straighter. Straighter-ish." James eyed the pile. About half the branches bowed or twisted like they'd spent their lives trying not to be part of a roof.

"Good," he said.

"We'll need a lot of them. More than you think." Alder nodded vigorously.

"I think we need a lot."

"More than that," James said. Alder stared at him like he'd just said the word "infinity" out loud.

"…More than a lot?" he asked, half in awe.

"Yes," James said, serious.

"Buildings are greedy. You always need more material than you think." Alder inhaled slowly, as if absorbing some profound mystical truth.

"I'll get more," he whispered, and then he darted off toward the trees again with the wild, reckless energy of someone who had not yet discovered back pain. Lumen drifted in his wake for a moment, then floated back to James.

"He likes you," he observed.

"I noticed," James said, watching Alder vanish between trunks.

"He also treats every sentence I say like a riddle from the heavens."

"Children often do that to new mentors," Lumen replied.

"I'm not a mentor," James started, then paused. The last few hours paraded through his mind: adjusting Alder's grip on the carving knife, explaining load paths in terms of unhappy wood, watching the kid's eyes light up when something clicked.

"Am I mentoring him?"

"You are explaining," Lumen said.

"And he is learning. That qualifies." James considered arguing, then decided that being called a mentor in a world that had sacrificed a goat for him was not the worst label he could have earned. People were still trickling in from the edge of the woods, each with an offering for the project. Short logs balanced on shoulders. Bundles of dried reeds hugged to chests. Coils of rope slung across backs. Panels of woven branches that had once been fences or walls. Stones gathered for wedges and bracing.

A few planks that bore suspicious notches, as if they had been quietly removed from something that used to be a piece of furniture. Every time someone approached the growing pile of materials, they glanced at him. Some asked directly where to put things; others pretended to be placing their contribution randomly until he nudged them into what was, in fact, the correct spot.

"Place everything to the left of the bathhouse," he said, pointing.

"Not too close to the walls, leave enough room for people to move around. There. Yes. That's good." A woman with an athletic body and a heavy dark braid approached with an armful of oddly shaped stakes. Her forearms were corded with muscle; and her eyes held a calmness that made you want to confide in her.

"Is this right?" she asked, holding up one of the stakes. He blinked, surprised; it was the first time she had spoken directly to him instead of to someone near him.

"Yes," he said.

"Those will be useful. We'll use them to pin the support posts so they don't shift." She gave a small, curt nod, efficient and satisfied.

"Irla," she added.

"Thank you, Irla," James said.

"We'll need plenty of those too." She seemed to file that acknowledgment away as a useful fact, then turned and walked back toward the forest without another word. Bit by bit, the clearing filled with motion. People carried. People stacked. People argued cheerfully over whose log was straighter. The first problem slipped in at the same time as enthusiasm. James spotted it just as the man stepped under the floating blueprint.

The villager was tall and thick through the shoulders, competitive energy written in every line of his body. He grabbed one of the heavier beams, braced it awkwardly against his shoulder, and marched it under the shimmering outline of its future place.

"Wait," James said, starting forward. The man thrust the beam upward as if he could muscle it into alignment by sheer force. The physical wood smacked into the projected outline at an angle and bounced back sharply. The impact knocked it out of his hands. It tumbled down, clipped the pile of branches, and sent the whole stack into a cascading mess. The villager went down with a yelp, disappearing under a rain of smaller logs. The entire clearing froze. James hurried over, heart in his throat.

"Are you okay?" There was a muffled cough, then the man sat up, spluttering and batting away a loose branch.

"Fine," he said, cheeks reddening. A few people snickered nervously at the edges of the scene.

"Don't force it," James said, relieved there were no broken bones.

"You have to line it up first." He bent and grabbed the end of the beam. The weight dragged at his arms immediately; whatever workouts he had gotten from office life had not prepared him for this kind of reality. Muscles burned down his shoulders and into his lower back. He grit his teeth and lifted.

"Okay, this is heavier than I expected," he said through his teeth.

"Help would be great." Two other villagers rushed forward, taking some of the load. Together they maneuvered the beam into position under the hovering line.

"Watch the glowing part," James said, breathing hard.

"Move it so it matches exactly. See? The ends should line up with those corners." They inched the beam back and forth, adjusting, until it aligned with its projected counterpart. The moment it matched, a faint buzz ran through the wood and up into James's hands. The mana blueprint flared brighter along that segment, wrapping itself around the beam like a ghost of a brace. Pressure eased from his grip, not fully, but enough that the three of them could hold it steady without feeling like their arms would fall off.

The villagers around them gasped. Alder, who had sprinted back mid-commotion with another bundle of branches, stopped short and stared.

"It hugged the wood," he whispered, eyes huge.

"Not exactly," James said, stepping back now that the post was braced.

"But… close enough." The next mistake came from the opposite direction: too careful, not careless enough. Alder carved the first joint himself. He'd been stubborn about it, volunteering before James could ask anyone else. He gripped the knife like it might bite him, tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth in concentration as he shaved curls of wood away.

When he hammered the tenon into its mortise and tried to fit the piece under the blueprint, the gap was obvious, a narrow, mocking little space where the wood should have nestled snug against its partner. Alder stared at it as if the joint had insulted his ancestors.

"I... I thought I held it steady," he said, voice tiny.

"I checked it three times."

"It's okay," James said immediately.

"But I ruined it," Alder insisted, shoulders hunching.

"Hey," James said, softer now.

"Making mistakes is how you learn. If we only let people who never get anything wrong touch the tools, nothing would ever get built." He crouched beside Alder and shifted the boy's grip on the knife.

"You're holding it like you're apologizing to the wood. You don't need to be cruel to it, but you do need to commit. Here. Steady pressure from your whole arm, not just your wrist. Let the blade do the work." Alder swallowed and nodded. He set his jaw, exhaled carefully, and tried again. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. This time the strokes were smoother. The shave was clean.

When they slotted the joint together, it still had a little wobble, but no mocking gap.

"That's better," James said.

"Not perfect. But better is how we get to strong." The praise hit Alder like a physical force. He straightened a little, an uncertain pride squaring his shoulders. As the day wore on, the quiet warning tugs in James's chest became harder to ignore. Each time the blueprint accepted a beam and flared brighter; each time he guided someone's hands or smoothed a misaligned post into place, something inside him stretched and thinned. The buzz behind his eyes intensified. His hands shook a little when he lowered them.

A faint warmth sat in his skull, not painful, but growing, like a migraine that hadn't decided whether to commit. He held off acknowledging it for as long as he could. He'd gotten good at ignoring exhaustion on Earth. That skill, unfortunately, still worked here. By late morning, he found himself leaning against the bathhouse wall more often between instructions, the solid press of mudbrick cool against his back.

"You are fatigued," Lumen said quietly, bobbing level with his face.

"Yeah," he rasped.

"No kidding."

"Your mana reserves are not used to such sustained external use," the familiar said.

"If you continue without rest, you risk collapsing." He grimaced. The worst part was that his body agreed; the tremor in his fingers wasn't fading, and the buzzing behind his eyes now had an uneven edge. He inhaled slowly, watching two villagers try to steady a crossbeam without his guidance, and forced himself to admit that staying upright through stubbornness alone was not a sustainable strategy.

"Fine," he said at last.

"Five minutes. Just to sit down."

"Ten," Lumen said.

"I said five."

"You say many things that are incorrect," Lumen replied. He snorted quietly and slid down the wall until he was sitting in the grass. The world tilted, then settled. He closed his eyes for a few breaths, listening to the sounds of the village at work: the thump of wood, the rasp of rope, the murmur of voices. Sweat cooled against his skin. His hands still twitched faintly. Footsteps approached, steady and sure.

"Here." He opened his eyes to find Marla standing over him, a wooden bowl in one hand and a short-handled spoon in the other. Pebble was tied to her chest, small arms folded on the cloth, staring at James with the unblinking focus of a hawk considering whether a mouse was worth the effort. Marla thrust the bowl into his hands, no ceremony, no hesitation.

"You look like you're about to fall over," she said.

"Eat." He looked down. The bowl held a thin stew, brownish beneath a film of fat, with chunks of root vegetables and a few unidentifiable bits that might once have belonged to something with legs. Steam drifted up in a weak but determined column.

"I didn't realize we'd stopped for lunch," he said.

"We didn't," Marla replied.

"You did. If you pass out on top of the bathhouse, I will be annoyed. Eat."

"That's… surprisingly considerate," James said. She snorted.

"It's practical. Building you back up is easier than building you again from the beginning." Pebble made a small noise that somehow conveyed agreement. He tried a spoonful. The stew hit his tongue thick and hot, flavored with smoke, wild herbs, and something pleasantly sharp beneath it. He wouldn't call it fancy, but it was good. It filled a hollow he hadn't had the energy to notice yet.

"This is really good," James said, surprised by how much he meant it.

"Honestly. Back home I mostly ate instant noodles and whatever takeout was least likely to give me food poisoning." Marla's mouth twisted in disgust.

"Your world sounds like a terrible place to eat," she said. He chuckled, the sound rough but genuine.

"You're not entirely wrong."

"Finish it," she ordered.

"You're no use to anyone if you fall apart halfway through the day." She turned and strode away without waiting for an answer, Pebble bouncing lightly against her chest. The baby twisted to keep staring at him for as long as possible, tiny brows furrowed as if judging his stew technique. James watched them go, spoon paused halfway to his mouth, then glanced sidelong at Lumen.

"I think she likes me," he whispered.

"No," Lumen said.

"But she has accepted that your presence may enhance her children's odds of not dying. It is the beginning of tolerance."

"I'll take it," James said. He took another spoonful. Somehow the stew tasted even better now, warmth spreading from his mouth down into his chest and out to the tips of his fingers. Alder appeared a moment later and dropped cross-legged into the grass beside him.

"Are you hurt?" the boy asked, earnest worry in his eyes.

"Just tired," James said.

"Too much magic at once." Alder's gaze flicked to the hovering roof and back.

"Magic makes you tired?" he asked. The idea seemed to unsettle him; magic, in his mind, was probably an endless well that belonged to old stories and people with antlers.

"Back home, magic made me tired emotionally," James said, leaning his head back against the wall.

"Different kind of magic."

"What kind of magic did your people have?" Alder's voice had gone soft with fascination.

"Oh, you know," James said, letting his eyes drift closed for a moment.

"The kind where you stare at glowing rectangles all day and fight with numbers that never quite do what you want." Alder gasped.

"Your people fought numbers?"

"It was a losing war," James said.

"They always multiplied." Alder's brow wrinkled, trying to imagine a battle against invisible, multiplying enemies. He looked vaguely horrified and impressed at once. Lumen hovered just above James's shoulder, his glow dimming a little, as if giving him shade while he rested.

"Ten minutes," he reminded him silently every time he twitched as if to get up too soon. He hung on the stew bowl longer than he meant to, spoon scraping the bottom. By the time it was empty, his arms had stopped trembling and the buzzing in his head had eased from "angry hornet nest" down to "annoyed pantry moth." When he finally pushed himself upright again, his legs felt like they belonged to him. He handed the bowl to a passing child with instructions to return it to Marla and went back to work.

The blueprint above the bathhouse pulsed once as he approached, a faint, welcoming thrum in the air, as if it could sense his mana stirring again.

"All right," he said under his breath.

"Let's finish this thing." The work settled into a rhythm. The pile of materials shrank as beams and braces and wedges found their place under the shimmering guide. The roof frame rose piece by piece, the bathhouse slowly discovering a new spine. Villagers moved around him more confidently now; they no longer waited for him to tell them where every stick should go, but checked the lines, watched the way the mana flowed, and adjusted their work accordingly. Even mistakes changed flavor.

Early errors had been clumsy, overeager shoves, wrong angles, wrong sizes. Now, when someone misjudged a cut, the correction came quicker. Irla spotted her own misaligned peg and yanked it out with a grunt before James could say a word, muttering something unflattering about her knife skills. A teenager caught himself about to brace a post on unstable ground, backed up, and stomped the earth flat first. Alder's improvement was the most visible. His knife strokes grew smoother.

He began to feel where the wood wanted to bend, where it would fight him, where it would crack. He asked more precise questions.

"Why this angle?"

"Why not thicker here?"

"What happens if the wind pushes from the other side?" James found himself explaining more and more, slipping into familiar patterns of teaching without meaning to. And Alder absorbed it all with the desperation of someone starved for knowledge. When Alder misaligned a beam slightly, he caught the error before James said anything.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, adjusting the piece until the blueprint outline accepted it.

"The shape felt… wrong." James blinked.

"That's good," he said softly.

"Really good." Alder beamed. By the time the sun touched the tops of the trees, the frame of the roof was complete. A clean grid of beams and braces arched above the bathhouse, traced and held in place by the soft blue lines of the mana blueprint. The villagers stood around it, dirty, sweaty, and beaming in ways he hadn't seen before. The bathhouse still needed proper roofing, planks, thatch, something to keep the rain out, but its bones were solid now. James could look at it without flinching.

He could say with confidence that the next storm would not send it caving in on anyone trying to get clean. Irla wiped her brow with the back of her wrist and gave him a firm nod. A wiry man leaned against a nearby tree and let his shoulders rest for the first time since morning. Children peered from behind posts, pointing up at the glowing lines as if tracking constellations. Wicksnap had, at some point, fallen asleep against his staff with his mouth open, snoring in small, wheezing bursts.

It was the most useful he had been all day. James stepped back farther, gauging the structure from a distance. The bathhouse with its new frame stood out against the ragged ring of huts like a statement: this is what the village could be. Someone moved to his side with the quiet certainty of someone who did not ask permission to exist anywhere. Marla. Pebble was strapped to her back now, tiny fists gripping the fabric just above her shoulders.

The baby's gaze flicked from the roof to James and back again, expression as solemn as ever.

"You work fast," Marla said.

"I have help," he replied, nodding toward the villagers.

"And a very opinionated glowing ruler." He tilted his head slightly toward Lumen. Marla's mouth quirked a little at the corner, just briefly.

"You do," she said. She watched the roof for a long moment, then added, "They listen to you."

"They listen because the roof doesn't fall down when they do what I ask," James said.

"That's not the only reason," she said.

"We've had people tell us what to do before. You explain. That is different." He rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed and oddly warmed.

"I'm used to… teams," he said.

"On my world. I forget how to not explain."

"You've led people before," Marla said, not as a question.

"In offices," James answered. He watched Rogan roll his shoulders out, the big man letting out a satisfied grunt.

"Not… like this. If my team messed up back home, someone lost money. Here, if we mess up, someone's roof falls on their head." Marla considered him with that same assessing gaze she'd had the first day, weighing him like she would a sack of grain, deciding if the contents matched the label.

"You are doing well," she said finally. He blinked.

"I... thank you."

"I don't say that often," she added.

"If ever."

"That sounds... right," he said, before he could stop himself. A ghost of a smile touched her mouth and was gone.

"You made them hopeful," she said, watching Alder enthusiastically explaining a join to another boy.

"That matters more than any one roof." He followed her gaze. The villagers moved with a different energy now, talking over each other as they pointed at the blueprint, arguing about who would take which task tomorrow. Plans were already forming.

"I just did what I know how to do," he said quietly.

"Exactly," Marla replied. She shifted Pebble higher on her back. The baby peeked over her shoulder at James, eyes serious. He met the gaze for a moment. Pebble did not blink. He did. Pebble won. As the sun slid completely behind the trees, the clearing slipped into twilight. The air cooled, brushing sweat from skin. The leylines overhead became more visible as true darkness gathered, pale threads of light etched across the sky, humming faintly in a way that tugged at the edges of his awareness.

Villagers drifted away in clusters, some still throwing backward glances at the glowing roof as if they were afraid it would vanish when they looked away. Alder lingered near the bathhouse, leaning against a stump with his arms draped over his knees, the loose, satisfied slump of someone who had spent everything he had in the best possible way. Rogan rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. Irla gathered the leftover stakes into a neat bundle and tucked them out of the way for tomorrow.

Wicksnap woke with a snort, mumbled something about "destined rafters," and hobbled off, still half-asleep. James stayed where he was for a long moment, watching it all. We built something today, he thought. It still needed work. There were gaps, rough edges, things that would have to be redone. But it stood on its own. You could see it, touch it, feel where it would grow from here. A beginning. A soft chime sounded at his side, gentle but unmistakable.

A new pane of translucent blue unfolded in the air in front of him. Lumen brightened a fraction.

"Congratulations," he said.

"For… what?" James asked, already suspecting, heart thumping a little faster. The notification text slotted into place. Level Up! You have reached Level 11. Growth through guidance, construction, and communal cooperation has strengthened your class. +5 Attribute Points Earned New Blueprints Available James stared at the words. The villagers' laughter and footsteps faded into a distant backdrop.

For a heartbeat or two, it was just him, the notification, and the solid shape of the roof frame against the deepening sky.

"Oh," he said, softer than before.

"I… leveled up."

"Yes," Lumen said.

"Your actions strengthened the tribe. The system recognized creation and leadership both." James stared at the notification, then at the half-completed roof, then at the villagers heading home. He felt… not proud exactly, but anchored. Grounded in a way he hadn't been for years.

"So this is what it feels like," he murmured, "to actually matter." Lumen floated closer.

"You mattered before," he said softly.

"But here, people can show it." James looked again at the glowing roof frame, the first true structure Vaelrin had asked him to create.

"Let's keep going," he whispered. And the blueprint above him shimmered faintly, as if it agreed.