Chapter 217: SERUNI SCHOOL
While the west wing of the castle was still swaddled in the cries of a newborn, at the other end of Iron Hearth, a different symphony was being composed—the rhythmic thud of hammers, the rasp of saws, and the murmur of dreams beginning to take shape.
The construction site of Seruni School had been a hive of activity since dawn. Workers moved to and fro, their shoulders bearing the weight of bricks and sturdy timber. Dust swirled in the air, clinging to sweat and mingling with the sharp scent of damp earth and the metallic tang of freshly cut iron. In the distance, the rumble of a passing train vibrated periodically, creating a constant backbeat—the heartbeat of a city that refused to rest.
Rianor Sudrath stood firm in the middle of the bustle. The biting morning wind swept across his face, carrying thin flakes of snow that vanished into droplets of water the moment they touched his skin. He did not flinch. His focus was locked onto the crystal tablet in his hand—the building’s blueprint, which he had already memorized from the smallest curve to the most precise angle. Yet, he checked it again. And again. His eyes moved nimbly, dissecting the reality before him with the digital schematics in his hand.
Rianor’s footsteps stopped. His eyes narrowed, sharp.
The foundation on the east side. Tilted. Perhaps by only a single degree, or even less. But to Rianor, that imperfection screamed as loudly as an eagle spotting its prey.
"This is off." His voice was flat, but each word fell with the same weight as a hammer striking an anvil. "Tear it down. Start over."
Orin, the middle-aged worker leading the crew in that area, tensed immediately. His sun-bronzed face turned pale. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of a calloused hand. "Please, My Lord... it’s only a hair off. Once it’s covered in cement, no one will—"
"Start over."
Orin swallowed hard. He glanced at his colleague, Tam, whose shoulders were already trembling as he held his hammer, exhausted from working since before the sun dared to show its face. They knew there was no room for negotiation once Rianor Sudrath used that tone.
"Yes, My Lord. Understood," Orin muttered in resignation. He signaled to Tam, and with heavy movements filled with weary sighs, they began to dismantle the work they had struggled so hard to complete.
Creak... creak...
The sound of a wheelchair rolling over uneven ground broke the tension. Elara appeared at Rianor’s side, her fingers busy tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear. She watched the workers tearing down the foundation with a look of pity.
"You know," her voice was soft, nearly drowned out by the sound of saws, "they’ve been working themselves to death."
"And?" Rianor replied curtly.
"They’re going to end up hating you."
"Hmph. Let them."
Elara looked at her husband’s face, searching for a crack in that rigid expression. "Rianor, listen. This is a school, not a war machine."
Rianor finally turned. The surrounding noise seemed to fall silent as he met Elara’s gaze. "Hah... what’s the difference?"
"If a machine loses its precision, it breaks. It either works or it’s scrap," Elara pointed to Orin, who was swinging his hammer with slumped shoulders. "But humans aren’t like that. If you force them to achieve an impossible perfection, they’ll snap. And if this school is too... perfect," she paused, looking up at the rising wooden frame, "the children won’t feel like it belongs to them. They’ll feel like strangers in it."
Rianor fell silent. In his mind, the logic of numbers was dueling with Elara’s words, which always had a way of hitting the bullseye. He looked back at Orin and Tam, seeing their clothes soaked through with sweat despite the freezing air. He glanced at the numbers on his tablet. The numbers were right. But Elara wasn’t wrong either.
"Hmm... so, what should the tolerance be, then?" Rianor asked finally. His tone had softened slightly.
Elara offered a faint smile—the kind that only touched the corners of her lips when she knew her husband was starting to yield. "Enough for them to feel respected, but not so much that the roof collapses during a storm."
Rianor let out a long breath, a puff of mist escaping his lips. He stepped toward Orin. His boots crunched heavily on the dusty ground. "Wait. Stop."
Orin looked up, his face a mix of confusion and fear. "Y-yes, My Lord?"
"Leave it. Just continue. No need to tear it down."
Orin blinked, hardly believing what he had just heard. "But... you just said—"
"Just continue." Rianor turned back before Orin could ask anything else.
Behind him, he could hear a very long sigh of relief coming from Tam. Rianor returned to Elara’s side. "Satisfied?" he whispered.
Elara only replied with a playful glint in her eyes. It was more than enough.
In the afternoon, sunlight filtered through the gaps in the wooden walls of a temporary structure nearby. Inside the room, which still smelled of fresh wood shavings, Elara sat in a circle with five aspiring teachers.
"Let’s draft the curriculum," Elara opened without preamble.
Mael, a young man with thick glasses that kept sliding down his nose, immediately raised his hand with the reflex of a star pupil. "Um, My Lady... what will the core subjects be?"
"Basic Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry. Those are mandatory. Then reading, writing, and history—the Northreach version, mind you. Not the Aethelgard version filled with fairy tales of royal glory," Elara tapped the wooden table. "One more thing. Magic."
Sera, a woman with the elegant bearing of a former noble, furrowed her brow until her thin eyebrows almost met. "Magic? I thought this was a public school?"
"Magic through the lens of science," Elara leaned forward, her eyes sparkling with ambition. "We don’t want students who just mutter incantations to spark a fire without knowing why it burns. We want them to understand the calculations. We want them to predict the results."
Lidia, a former nurse sitting in the corner, nodded enthusiastically. "Wow... that sounds incredible."
Old Man Torin, a veteran engineer, cleared his throat heavily. His voice was as raspy as stones grinding together. "Ahem... and what if they get too smart? What if they start questioning us? Questioning their teachers?"
Elara smiled, and this time it reached her eyes. "Good. That means they’re actually learning."
A brief silence filled the room. Sera nodded slowly, as if she had just found a new perspective. Mael scribbled furiously in his notebook. Meanwhile, Yara, a young girl from the village, watched Elara with undisguised admiration.
Torin chuckled softly, tapping his cane against the dirt floor. "Hahaha... you’re going to be a troublesome headmistress, Lady Sudrath."
From a distance outside the windowless frame, Rianor stood watching. He didn’t enter, merely leaning against a wooden pillar as he listened to Elara’s calm yet firm voice. The cold wind nipped at his back, but for the first time since this project began, he felt... perhaps everything would be alright.
Raphael arrived just as his training session ended.
Sweat soaked his shirt, causing the fabric to cling to his chest, which rose and fell with his uneven breath. His hair was damp and messy. However, his eyes were bright.
"Brother, is there anything I can do to help?"
Rianor looked his younger brother up and down. He remembered when Raphael was a boy who loved to complain and always had a thousand excuses to avoid manual labor. Now, the boy stood before him, offering help unasked.
"There," Rianor pointed to a pile of bricks that had just been unloaded from a cart. "Move them over there."
Raphael nodded readily. He walked toward the pile, spat on his palms to ensure a good grip, and began to work. Tak. Tek.
The sound of bricks clacking together. He lifted them one by one, walked twenty meters, and set them down carefully. He kept doing it. No complaints. No questions. Rianor watched him in silence. He saw how Raphael regulated his breathing—inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. He saw his brother adjusting his hand placement so his energy wouldn’t drain too quickly.
Once the last pile was moved, Raphael straightened his aching back and wiped the sweat away with his sleeve. He took a water bottle, popped it open with a click, and drank greedily. Gulp... gulp... gulp... Ahhh.
"Anything else?" he asked briefly.
Rianor shook his head slowly. "That’s enough. Go rest."
Raphael sat on the pile of bricks he had just moved, staring at the building frame that was beginning to tower under the evening sky. He remained silent, but the peace on his face spoke volumes. You’ve changed so much, little brother, Rianor thought, though he would never say it out loud.
By evening, the orange light began to slip through the gaps of the structure, casting long shadows on the ground. Rianor pushed Elara’s wheelchair around the school grounds.
"I want a garden here," Elara said suddenly, pointing to a patch of empty land overgrown with wild grass.
Rianor nodded. "I can do that. In front of the gates?"
"In front of the gates, and another one in the center of the building," Elara turned to her husband. "I want Seruni flowers. The white-and-blue ones. The ones that can still grow even when the air is freezing."
Rianor stopped pushing. He looked at the hard, unfriendly soil. "Seruni, huh?"
"So the children will know," Elara continued, her voice softening, almost like a whisper of the wind. "That they can grow anywhere, no matter how harsh the place. Just like those flowers."
Rianor didn’t answer immediately. He imagined those beautiful flowers blooming in the middle of Northreach’s eternal snow. Something soft in a hard land. "Yeah... of course. I’ll make it happen."
At night, the construction site was silent. There was only the hiss of the wind and the faint sound of a train from afar.
Only one room remained lit—Rianor’s temporary office. Under the bluish glow of a crystal lamp, Rianor stood before a large chalkboard. His hand, which usually only drew rigid machine schematics, was now tracing chalk to form a garden.
He drew a winding, asymmetrical path. He placed dots for flowers in irregular spots. The lines... were different. Still firm, but there was a suppleness creeping in.
Beside the desk, Elara had fallen asleep in her wheelchair. Her head was tilted slightly, with her red hair covering half her face. Rianor stopped drawing, watching his wife for a moment with an unreadable expression.
"Hmph, I told you not to sleep here," he muttered softly.
He took a somewhat coarse grey wool blanket and covered Elara with extremely careful movements so as not to wake her. Rianor returned to the chalkboard. He looked at the sketch of his garden, then slowly began to draw again. This time, his lines became looser. More alive. More human.
Outside, the snow began to fall gently, covering the empty land with a white layer. But on that chalkboard, the Seruni flowers had already begun to bloom in Rianor’s imagination.
And in Iron Hearth that night, something new truly began to grow.