Chapter 40

Third Person’s POV

The temporary administrative hall of Tungsten still smelled faintly of damp wood and fresh cement.

Though partially restored, the building carried visible scars—cracked beams reinforced with iron brackets, mismatched planks lining the walls, windows patched with newly fitted glass that gleamed too clean against the ruin beyond.

“Ollie, how are you? Have you been well?” Miu’s voice carried warmth as she stepped inside, brushing the dust of the road from her sleeves.

Ollie, who had been hunched over a cluttered desk near the far wall, nearly dropped the stack of documents in his hands.

“Y-Yes, my lady!” he answered quickly, straightening so abruptly his chair scraped against the floor.

Miu approached him with an easy smile.

“You were a great help when repairing the banks. Things would’ve gotten out of hand if you hadn’t reported it so soon.” She clasped her hands lightly before her. “I would like to thank you on behalf of the Queen.”

Ollie’s face flushed a deep red. “I—I’m honored, my lady!” His voice trembled as he bowed so fast it seemed he might lose his balance.

She let out a quiet breath that almost resembled a laugh and reached out, tapping his shoulder gently. “Raise your head, Ollie. Did you bring the plans as I requested?”

“Oh—yes, my lady.” He fumbled briefly with his stuff before retrieving several rolled parchments, edges slightly bent from frequent handling.

He hurried to the center table and spread them out one by one, smoothing the corners with nervous hands.

“Here they are,” he said, regaining a measure of composure as he pointed. “The blue lines indicate the waterway, and the yellow ones are for the electrical lines.”

The parchment bore careful markings—precise, deliberate strokes drawn by someone who understood both the city’s fragility and its potential.

“Oh, no need to explain.” Miu rested her hand lightly atop the unfurled plans, her fingers flattening a curling edge. “I can read the plans.”

Ollie blinked.

For a moment, he simply stared at her, words caught somewhere between his throat and his pride. “V-Very well, my lady.”

He bowed stiffly and stepped aside, giving her space at the long wooden table. The hall settled into a cautious quiet, broken only by the distant hammering from outside.

From behind her, Ollie found himself watching.

She leaned slightly over the parchment, eyes moving steadily. Not aimless. Not confused.

Her gaze followed intersections, paused at junctions, traced the margins where notes had been scribbled in shorthand.

Even if she was a noble, he had never known a noblewoman who pursued architectural knowledge. Most left such matters to advisors, offering approval with little understanding of the labor beneath it.

Does she truly know what she was looking at?

“Ollie…”

Her voice broke through his spiraling thoughts. He straightened immediately. “Pardon?”

“How much more time will you need to complete the estimations?”

He blinked again. “Estimations, my lady?”

“Yes.” She finally turned to him, her expression no longer warm but composed—measured. “Please estimate the total amount of materials necessary for all the rebuilding. It will be vital in deciding the total cost.”

“Also,” she added, tapping the parchment lightly, “I’ve reviewed the plans.”

“They’re nice and simple,” she continued evenly, “but there is a lack of consideration for hygiene.”

She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and lowered her gaze back to the drawings, studying them with quiet intensity.

“Housing is important, of course. But public spaces, proper water supply facilities, as well as sewage and drainage systems are far more crucial.”

Each word landed with deliberate weight.

She continued, her tone calm but unyielding. “If we prioritize walls over sanitation, disease and calamities will undo our efforts before winter ends.”

“Please prepare from the ground up carefully,” Miu concluded, finally turning to face him fully. “So we don’t have to dig everything up again later.”

Ollie’s mouth fell open before he could stop it. The surprise was written plainly across his face.

“Y-yes! Of course, my lady!”

Ollie’s voice cracked with uncontained excitement, and this time he didn’t bother hiding it.

He straightened the scattered parchments with renewed energy, his earlier doubts dissolving into something dangerously close to admiration.

It was true. She could read them—properly read them. Not merely recognizing symbols, but understanding intention, structure, consequence.

And she noticed the hygiene issue immediately.

No approved city plan under the previous Dukes had ever accounted for sewage rerouting or drainage expansion.

They built tall facades and grand avenues, but when the rains came, the lower districts flooded first. When illness spread, it spread fastest there too.

Ollie knew that better than anyone.

He had combed through the archives himself while drafting these revisions—dusty shelves of yellowed parchment detailing decades of oversight.

Not once had sanitation been prioritized. Not once had it been more than an afterthought scribbled into margins.

But she saw it at a glance.

His heart skipped.

After so long, something inside him finally loosened—a knot he hadn’t realized he had been carrying. Change. Real change. Not the hollow kind announced in speeches, but the kind that began in foundations.

With Lady Miu and the palace.

The bountiful Tungsten of the past would return.

No—perhaps it would become something better.

Across the table, Miu remained unaware of the storm of hope she had just stirred. She bent slightly over the plans again, discussing an intersection of the waterway and residential grid, her finger hovering as if mapping future streets only she could already see.

The afternoon light slanted through the patched windowpanes, catching in her hair.

Unbeknownst to them both, another pair of eyes watched from the far side of the hall.

Earn stood partially concealed near a support beam, arms loosely folded. Her gaze lingered not on the plans—but on Miu.

—

Another day passed with Miu tending to every necessity the rehabilitation of Tungsten demanded.

By the time she stepped out of the administrative building, the sun had begun its slow descent.

The rays struck her full in the face.

Miu winced slightly and lifted a hand to shield her eyes, fingers splayed against the brilliance. For a moment, all she could see was white.

Then warmth.

It touched her skin—not harsh, not demanding, but gentle.

And something stirred.

As she tilted her head upward, that familiar sensation unfurled quietly within her. The warmth, the brightness—so similar.

A memory surfaced.

When she was younger, she had once visited a cathedral with her mother. She could not recall the name of it now, nor the reason for the visit. But she remembered the window.

The stained glass.

Sunlight had poured through it in radiant fragments—crimson, sapphire, emerald, gold. The colors had spilled across the stone floor and climbed the pillars like living things. And she had stood there, small and silent, as those fractured lights wrapped around her.

It had felt as though she could reach out and gather them in her bare hands.

As though the world had shifted.

For the first time in her life, she had felt unbound by expectation, by title, by the invisible weight she had always carried. Surrounded by color, she had felt… free.

As if she had stepped into a version of herself she had not yet been allowed to become.

The memory lingered, vivid and untarnished by time.

Miu lowered her hand slowly.

Her gaze drifted across the recovering city—and settled on the barely standing church in the distance. Its roof sagged. One wall had collapsed inward. The steeple leaned at an uncertain angle, as if exhausted.

A thought took root.

Even a church can be beautiful and magnificent, right?

In her mind’s eye, the ruin straightened.

She imagined a tall white steeple piercing the sky. Elaborate statues carved with care, not extravagance but reverence. Arched windows lined with stained glass that caught the morning sun and scattered it into a thousand colors across the stone floor.

A place where light did not merely enter—but transformed.

It would not simply be a place of worship.

It would be a symbol.

Of renewal. Of resilience. Of Tungsten rising not as it once was, but as something greater.

“Yes… that’s a nice idea. I should suggest it to Ollie next time,” she muttered to herself.

Across from her, Earn gave her a subtle side eye—silent, sharp, and unmistakably curious.