Mud squelched beneath Leanna’s boots, the stench of rotting fish and open sewers filling her throat. She dragged the reluctant priest by his silk sleeve, ignoring his soft, pampered grunts of protest.
"Hurry, Father Elias," she muttered, her fingers tightening around his gold-trimmed cuff. "His fever has broken, but the flesh is turning black. You promised the grace of Solas."
Elias pulled his arm away with a sharp tug, dabbing his nose with a lavender-scented handkerchief. His eyes sneered at the dilapidated shanties lining the narrow alleyway of the lower wards.
"A true servant of the light does not rush into the gutter, girl," he drawled, his voice dripping with condescension. "Besides, your offering was barely enough to cover the holy oils."
Leanna bit her inner cheek until she tasted copper. Rage burned in her chest, hot and suffocating, but she forced her head down in a mock gesture of submission.
"My family gave everything we had left," she whispered, her voice tight. "Every copper. Please."
Rain began to fall, a cold, greasy drizzle that did nothing to wash away the filth of the Kingdom of Umbra. Every step toward her family's hovel felt like climbing a mountain of lead.
Reaching the rotting wooden door, she felt a sudden, icy dread seize her lungs. It hung precariously from a single leather hinge, swaying gently in the damp wind.
Silence greeted them, heavy and suffocating.
Only her mother’s low, rhythmic whimpering broke the quiet from the dim corner of the room.
Leanna rushed past the priest, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. On the straw mattress lay her father, his face pale as ash, his jaw slack.
His chest did not rise. His hand, which had once held hers with such warmth, was cold and stiff.
"No," she breathed, her knees hitting the dirt floor. She grabbed his cooling fingers, pressing them to her cheek. "No, Father. Wake up. I brought him. I brought the priest."
Elias stood in the doorway, refusing to step fully inside the cramped, damp space. He glanced at the dead man, then at Leanna’s weeping mother, his lip curling in disgust.
"A waste of my valuable time," the priest scoffed, turning on his heel. "He is already gone. Clearly, his soul was too stained to receive the light of Solas."
His dismissive sneer echoed in Leanna's ears, louder and more painful than her mother's desperate, broken sobs. It felt like a physical blow, shattering something fragile inside her.
"Stained?" Leanna whispered, her voice dropping to a dangerous, icy quiet. She stood up, her jaw clenched so tightly her teeth ached. "He worked himself to death in your tanneries. His wound rotted because your guards threw him into the canal for protesting the wage cuts."
"Blasphemy will not bring him back, child," Elias muttered, his hand already on the doorframe. "Accept his fate. Solas has judged him."
He walked out, leaving the rotting door swinging on its rusted hinges.
---
Grief did not make Leanna cry. Instead, a profound, terrifying helplessness settled over her, transforming instantly into a chilling clarity.
She looked at her mother, Mara, who was clutching her younger, sickly sister, Lyra, in the dark corner. Lyra was coughing, her tiny body shivering under a threadbare blanket.
Both would be next. This realization struck Leanna with the force of an iron rod.
"I will not let you die," she whispered to the empty room.
Suddenly, a sharp, blinding pain pierced her temples. She gasped, clutching her head as her vision blurred into a swirling vortex of white light.
Darkness swallowed her whole as she collapsed onto the dirt floor beside her father's body.
---
Cold air revived her.
Leanna blinked, her eyelids heavy. She groaned, pushing herself up on her elbows.
A strange, soft blue glow illuminated the dark hovel. It didn't come from a candle or the weak moonlight filtering through the cracks in the ceiling.
Hovering directly in front of her eyes was a translucent, glowing screen.
"What is this?" she whispered, reaching out a trembling hand. Her fingers passed straight through the light, causing a ripple across the glowing surface.
Words began to form on the screen, sharp and legible.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZED: EMPIRE CREATION PROTOCOL v1.0]
[USER: LEANNA PHEGGOS]
[CURRENT LOCATION: KINGDOM OF UMBRA - LOWER DISTRICT]
[SOCIETAL HEALTH INDEX: 0.8% (CRITICAL SQUALOR)]
She stared, her breath catching in her throat. Her pragmatic mind tried to dismiss it as a hallucination, a byproduct of her grief and exhaustion.
Yet, the text remained perfectly steady, shifting as she blinked.
[IMMEDIATE THREAT DETECTED: WATERBORNE PATHOGENS & INFECTION VECTOR]
[OPTIMAL SOLUTION: WATER PURIFICATION METHOD (TIER 0)]
[Ingredients: Charcoal, fine sand, coarse sand, gravel, clean cloth, boiled clay pot.]
[Instruction: Layer materials in a funnel shape. Pour contaminated water through. Boil filtered water for 10 minutes to eliminate microbial life.]
[APPLICATION: Clean wounds to prevent bacterial sepsis. Reduce mortality rate by 84% in immediate vicinity.]
"To clean wounds..." Leanna read the words aloud, her voice cracking.
If she had known this yesterday, her father would still be breathing. If she had known how to stop the black rot in his leg, he wouldn't be lying cold on the straw.
A hard, unyielding resolve crystallized in her chest. This was magic, but not the destructive, flashy magic of the high nobility or the fake miracles of the Church.
This was knowledge. This was power.
She scrambled to her feet, ignoring the lingering weakness in her limbs. Her mother was asleep, exhausted from crying, curled up next to Lyra.
Quietly, Leanna gathered the materials listed on the screen. She found a cracked clay pot, some coarse sand from the dry alley, and pieces of charcoal from their cold hearth.
Following the precise diagrams floating before her eyes, she layered the materials inside a makeshift wooden funnel.
She scooped murky, foul-smelling water from the bucket in the corner—the same water the entire district drank from.
Slowly, she poured it through her filtration device.
Clear, pristine water began to drip into the clean pot below. It looked entirely different from the brownish sludge they usually consumed.
She boiled it over the tiny, flickering fire she managed to coax from the remaining embers.
"Amazing," she murmured, dipping a clean rag into the warm, purified water.
She approached her sleeping sister. Gently, she began to wipe the grime and sweat from Lyra’s feverish forehead.
Lyra stirred, sighing softly as the cool, clean cloth touched her skin. Her breathing seemed to ease slightly.
[QUEST UPDATE: FIRST STEP TO SALVATION]
[Water purified successfully. Local health index increased by 0.01%.]
[Next Objective: Establish a scalable filtration system for the Lower District.]
Leanna stared at the update, her mind racing. A scalable system could save thousands. It could render the Church’s expensive "holy healing waters" entirely useless.
If the commoners didn't need the Church to survive, the nobility would lose their grip on the populace.
This screen was not just a tool; it was a weapon to dismantle the old world.
A sudden rustling outside her door made her freeze.
Shadows elongated across the dirt floor as a tall figure stepped into the doorway, blocking the weak moonlight.
Leanna turned, her heart hammering, but her face remained a mask of cold defiance.
As the screen flickers, a shadow falls over her, a resonant voice murmuring, "What magic is this, commoner?"