Riley reached the tower after hours of walking and thinking. When the clearing finally came into view, she felt relief. The tower rose ahead of her, familiar and solid against the fading light.

  A sudden movement snapped her focus forward.

  A familiar shape burst from behind the tower, bounding into the clearing with reckless enthusiasm. Thorne came at her full speed, barking loudly, his joy impossible to mistake. Riley laughed, her exhaustion giving way to warmth as she lifted her head and called out to him. But as he closed the last few feet, she remembered just how large and powerful he was. If he jumped on her now, in her current state, she would be in a lot of pain. She lifted her palms in a stopping motion.

  Thorne skidded to a stop just short of her, paws digging into the dirt. He barked again, tail whipping back and forth, then darted forward to nip gently at her fingers before licking her hands with enthusiasm.

  “I missed you too,” she said rustling the fur on his head.

  The reunion was needed, but brief.

  “Thorne, we have work to do. Come on boy.”

  Inside, Riley shimmied off her pack as she tried to avoid using any more muscles than she needed to. She tore open her remaining rations and ate quickly, barely tasting the food as she scrolled through her HUD menus. Numbers, icons, and options floated before her eyes while she made mental notes.

  It became obvious what her next priority had to be.

  She needed to multiply her efforts.

  Riley opened the Build Menu and scanned the list of structures available to her.

  ? Build Menu

  ? Castle Upgrade Level 2

  ? Forge

  ? Barracks

  ? Castle Walls

  ? Hospital

  ? Sub Menu: Resource Structures

  ? More…

  Her eyes moved quickly as she filtered out everything that could wait. Her focus narrowed in.

  Barracks.

  She needed barracks if she was going to have troops. And she needed troops if she wanted exponential growth. The prioritization was easy.

  If she could multiply her resource gathering, everything else would follow. Troops could gather resources. They could train more troops. They could defend and attack. They could construct more buildings. Resource buildings would be especially nice at this stage since they produced passively around the clock.

  The barracks required full resources across the board and eight hours of build time.

  Riley leaned back and exhaled. The ore she had brought back would cover that category easily. That meant she only needed food, wood, and stone. Since her gathering spots replenished over time, she had the supply available to collect over the next day. It would be close call, but possible.

  She staged her gathering tools by the door. Then she picked up the ore rock with both hands and carried it across the room. Steps away from the obelisk, her foot caught on the edge of the rug.

  She stumbled and dropped the ore.

  “Crap!”

  The rock struck the stone floor and split cleanly in two.

  Riley froze, then crouched and picked up one of the pieces. She deposited it into the system and checked the HUD.

  ? Ore 100%

  Her breath caught. That meant the second half might also register as full.

  She set the remaining piece aside with care and headed out with Thorne to gather the rest of what she needed.

  Why didn’t she think of this sooner? If she was so worried about things that go bump in the night, why hadn’t she started pumping resources into leveling up the tower sooner?

  That was almost a rhetorical question for her. She knew why. She had been operating in defense mode, reacting to immediate threats, running on exhaustion, fear, and the shock of being thrown into this world. And she had been focused on what she had left behind in her old world that she wasn’t thinking clearly about what she had in this one. Now her mind had shifted. She was thinking the way she did when playing at home. Units. Scaling. Efficiency.

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  Production.

  Riley was manifesting momentum.

  As the hours passed, her injuries became more noticeable. She pushed through the pain by focusing on the larger picture. Thorne stayed close, occasionally wandering ahead but always circling back. His presence was comforting, especially knowing he would give warning if something dangerous wandered too close.

  “Once I build the barracks, then come the troops,” Riley muttered, mostly to herself. “Then more resources. Then more troops. Then buildings. Walls.”

  Thorne flicked an ear but remained focused on a scent in the brush.

  “The key,” she continued, unfazed, “is how they will need to be managed.”

  Her thoughts shifted again, from strategy to tactics. How long could troops work before resting? Did they need to rest at all? Did they eat? If they did, how much? Every answer affected resource allocation.

  Planning was one thing. Reality was another.

  This world did not behave exactly like the game so she wasn’t sure what to expect. That meant opportunities and it meant problems. Riley welcomed both.

  She and Thorne returned to the tower just before sunset, arms heavy with the final load for the night. In the morning, she woke early and spent the entire day gathering again. By the time darkness settled, she and Thorne shared a quick dinner before she hauled the last of her bundles inside.

  “For dessert,” Riley mused, “resources.” She glanced down at Thorne. “Come on, buddy. Let’s see what’s on the menu.”

  Riley deposited everything carefully, stopping each time the meter reached full.

  ? Food 100%

  ? Stone 100%

  ? Wood 100%

  ? Ore 100%

  Satisfaction washed over her.

  She opened the Build Menu and selected Barracks.

  The map expanded, showing the clearing around the tower. A square shadow appeared, movable and semi transparent. Riley positioned it beside the tower, close enough to be practical but far enough not to interfere.

  She selected Build and ran outside to see what would happen. This would be surreal. Was she going to see little hammers and pickaxes moving around in a plume of dust? Would there be a soundtrack with mining noises?

  The ground beside the tower had begun to subtly shift. She felt the soil tremble slightly beneath her boots. The dirt pulsed in a tight rectangular shape, then sank, flattening itself with clean, deliberate precision. It was carving out a foundation.

  Above it hovered a blur.

  It marked the space where the barracks would eventually stand, a tall, wavering distortion in the air, like heat rising off asphalt but thicker, denser, almost liquid. The shape wasn’t fixed. It pulsed and shifted, its edges rippling as though something massive moved behind a frosted pane of glass.

  Thorne’s ears were pricked, angled toward the haze as if he could hear a frequency meant only for dogs. Every so often, Riley caught a muted thud from within the blur, but nothing revealed itself. The distortion swallowed every detail, refusing to show her even a hint of what was happening inside.

  Light bent strangely around it. Colors warped. Then the air began to hum, a faint, steady resonance that lifted the hairs on her arms.

  Riley stared eagerly, as if waiting for Santa to come down the chimney. It was just as magical. Just as mysterious.

  And she loved every second of it.

  She picked up a small stone and tossed it toward the disturbance. The rock struck an unseen surface and bounced away.

  She wanted to see the magic but the tower wasn’t ready to show her.

  She stayed back.

  Thorne padded up beside her, barked once, then sat and looked up at her calmly. He did not seem alarmed at all. She had seen him react more to a grasshopper.

  After a moment, Riley turned toward the tower door.

  “Come on, Thorne. Santa won’t come if we are not in bed.”

  They went inside for dinner. After she had cleaned her bowl, she scratched behind her furry friend’s ear and let him out to roam before nightfall. She returned to her nightly routine, reviewing HUD menus and planning tomorrow’s goals.

  Sleep came slowly. Her thoughts kept circling back to the barracks. What would it look like? How would troop production work?

  Every now and again, she couldn’t help but check the HUD and admire every tick on the progress bar.

  Eventually, exhaustion won. She fell asleep beside the warmth of the fire.

  ***

  Riley woke at dawn with the sharp excitement of a child on Christmas morning. She opened the HUD immediately.

  ? Barracks Complete

  She was on her feet and outside in seconds.

  There it stood near the tower’s base, quiet in its humble grandeur. While the tower was tall and commanding, the barracks were low and modest, a single-story structure that was a foundation for what would come later.

  Its stone walls were newly set, mortar still clean, edges sharp where weather had not yet worn them down. Thick wooden beams framed the corners, clean and unscarred. A pitched roof of red clay tiles rested neatly above, uniform and untouched by soot or smoke.

  A solid wooden door sat at the front, iron banded and pristine.

  The ground around the structure was uneven, packed earth and loose stone marking where construction had recently ended. No paths had formed yet. Between the barracks and the tower lay an open space, empty and waiting.

  No smoke rose from the chimney.

  Inside, the air smelled of fresh wood and stone. Bunks stood empty and unused. Pegs lined the walls with nothing hanging from them. A single table rested at the center of the room, untouched.

  No sound filled the air. No shifting armour or muffled voices. Just the hollow echo of her own footsteps tapping across the new floorboards.

  It was a shell right now, a place with potential but no pulse.

  She imagined what it would become: boots thudding in unison during early drills, the low rumble of conversation, the sharp bark of orders. Heat from bodies. The smell of sweat and steel. Life.

  One day, this room would be loud. Crowded. Alive.

  But for now, it was just her.

  Riley clapped her hands together and smiled. Real, tangible progress at last.

  And still, it was only a hint of what she intended to do next.