Hollen pointed to the painting of the wagons.
"Before there was an Asterra, there were people who needed a place where they can stop running."
Sung-Il lowered his pie.
In the painting, three wagons stood on a muddy road. One had lost a wheel. A woman held a blanket above two children while people carried sacks toward a patch of higher ground.
Behind the wagons, the artist had painted something enormous between the trees. Only a leg and part of its head were visible.
"What is that?"
Brina followed his gaze.
"A meadow roamer. They don’t all stay in the meadows."
He decided the artist had shown enough of it.
"The roads were becoming dangerous," Hollen continued. "Some towns had burned. Others had run out of food. Families traveled together because a lone wagon rarely reached the next settlement."
"An Age of Chaos"
An assistant lifted the second painting into its stand.
The same wagons now stood around a camp. There was a well, a muddy ditch, and the beginning of a stone wall.
"The travelers stopped here because they found water beneath the ground and stone close enough to quarry. They had Gift bearers who could fight. What they didn’t have was enough food or shelter for everybody."
"An Age of Darkness"
Owen stepped forward inside his cardboard wall.
"I’m Tovan Marr!"
He spread his arms and nearly struck the child beside him.
"I joined the stones!"
At the demonstration table, a worker pressed two stone blocks together. Light crossed the join. When she lifted the upper block, the lower one came with it.
Owen nodded as though he had supervised the work personally.
"Tovan couldn’t raise a wall with one wave of his hand," Hollen said. "People still had to cut the stone, move it, and put it in place. His Gift kept & joined the blocks together once they were there."
"Finally," Sung-Il murmured. "A founder with an appreciation for people carrying things."
"You would have complained," Brina said.
"While carrying. I’d have been essential."
Hadrik Fen’s representative raised a wooden hammer. A carpenter at the next table marked three uneven boards, touched each one, and cut them to the same length.
"Hadrik helped build the first houses and storehouses. Before those were finished, the settlers slept under their wagons."
The child playing Ilyan Rook guarded a small cart while two older pupils in cloth monster masks crept toward it.
He swung his wooden sword. One monster collapsed immediately. The other waited until Mara waved, then fell across its friend.
The crowd laughed.
"Ilyan protected the caravans," Hollen said. "The settlement needed trade. There were things they couldn’t grow or make here."
Sela Orin came next with her painted jug. At the table, a woman touched a bowl of muddy water. The dirt gathered slowly at the bottom.
"Sela made the well water safe to drink. Our volunteer has a similar Gift, but hers only separates dirt. Clear water and safe water are not always the same thing."
Sung-Il looked at his pie and decided not to ask any questions about its ingredients.
Lani stepped forward last.
She held her sack tightly against her chest.
"I’m Mera Dain. I kept the grain and beans from spoiling."
"And why did that matter?" Hollen asked.
Lani glanced toward Sung-Il.
"Because you can’t eat lightning in winter."
Brina laughed. Mara looked directly at him.
He took a careful bite of pie. It was difficult to deny an accusation while enjoying the evidence.
"Quite right," Hollen said. "A lesson for the fighting applicants."
Lani bowed. The applause made her smile so widely that Sung-Il almost forgot the creature in the first painting.
The children moved back beside Mara. Assistants carried a broad painted sheet onto the platform and fixed it between two posts.
Names covered it from top to bottom.
"The First Thousand," Hollen said. "Not a thousand kings. Not a thousand warriors. A thousand Gift bearers who signed an agreement to stay here and share the work."
He pointed to five names picked out in red.
"You’ve met five of them today. Their families settled with them. Others joined later. The city grew around the place where they made that agreement."
Sung-Il looked at the small names surrounding the five large ones.
"They remembered all of them?"
"The original list is kept in the city archive," Lyra said. "That’s a copy."
"Even the ones whose Gifts weren’t impressive?"
"Especially those," she said. "Otherwise people would remember the swords and forget who kept everybody fed."
He looked toward Lani. She was trying to stop Six-Ears from investigating her wooden beans.
"Good."
Hollen turned to the final painting.
"The first town stood on the ground," he said. "The raised districts came later, as the city grew and learned to build above it. The Apron remains where Asterra began."
Sung-Il looked up. Beyond the court roofs, he could see the pale underside of the higher district.
He imagined sleeping beneath a wagon while something with that leg walked through the trees.
The farm suddenly seemed very comfortable.
"Each district holds its own trials," Hollen continued. "A thousand entrants in each. Eight from each district advance to the final exhibition. We test fighting, but also control, useful work, and cooperation. The founders needed all of those."
"And first place still gets a hundred gold crowns?" Sung-Il asked.
"In each district."
"Excellent history. Very relevant."
Brina shook her head, smiling.
Hollen waited for the laughter to settle.
"Before the demonstrations, there is one more part of the founding story."
Two assistants unrolled a dark cloth across the platform. A large white circle had been painted on it. Six wooden holders stood around its edge.
Sung-Il stopped smiling.
One assistant placed a black candle in each holder.
Six.
He counted them before he could stop himself.
"On the night before they signed, the settlers gathered to make their promises," Hollen said. "Many had different gods. Some worshipped none. They couldn’t agree which god should witness their promises."
A young man in a plain brown cloak stepped into the circle. An older woman followed him carrying a book.
"The account says they called for a witness who belonged to no temple."
Sung-Il put his pie down.
The older woman opened the book. The young man knelt while an assistant lit the candles around him.
"Some families call this a prayer," Hollen said. "Others call it a bargain. What we’re showing you is the old account, with wooden offerings. Don’t give the performers your money."
Someone behind Sung-Il laughed.
He couldn’t.
The young man rose. The older woman began reading.
"I call upon the one who exists beyond the heavens."
Sung-Il’s fingers tightened against the crate.
His room. The circle he had stepped on and redrawn. The book he had bought beneath a railway bridge.
He knew those words.
"You all right?" Brina asked.
He didn’t answer.
The performer lifted a little wooden box.
"I offer wealth."
He put it inside the circle.
Sung-Il remembered an envelope holding the last of his money.
A second offering followed: a carved hammer.
"I offer what these hands can make."
Not his laptop. Not the same object.
But the order was close enough that his stomach turned.
The performer lifted a small painted board. On it was the face of a woman.
"I offer my memories."
Sung-Il stood.
Pain struck his shoulder. Brina caught his arm before he could step forward.
"Sit down."
"Where did they get that?"
Lyra looked toward the stage.
"The account? I can ask Hollen—"
"The words."
His voice came out too loudly. A man on the next bench glanced over.
On the platform, the young man spread his empty hands.
"My future. My lifespan. My soul."
Sung-Il felt the blood leave his face.
A purple window opened.
[WARNING]
He stopped trying to pull away from Brina.
The warning vanished beneath another.
He looked around the court. The man on the bench had already turned back. Most people were watching the performance.
"By who?" he whispered.
[NOT THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU.]
The older woman turned a page.
"Then a voice answered them."
A second performer spoke from behind the painted cloth.
"What do you desire?"
The window flickered.
[MORE WATCHERS HAVE ARRIVED.]
"What do you offer?"
[YOU HAVE AN AUDIENCE NOW.]
Sung-Il stared through the words at the six flames.
He could still hear the thing in his room asking those questions. He remembered its face changing. The smile after he had opened his stupid mouth.
Nobody else in the court looked frightened.
Brina guided him back onto the crate. This time he let her.
"Tell me what’s happening."
"The system."
That was all he managed before another window opened.
[A WATCHER HAS SENT YOU A TASK.]
[WIN ASTERRA’S TOURNAMENT.]
He read it once.
Another appeared over it.
[NEW TASK: STAND UPON YOUR CRATE AND ANNOUNCE THAT YOU ARE A GENIUS.]
"What?"
[NEW TASK: DEFEAT SERAPHINE VALE IN SINGLE COMBAT.]
[NEW TASK: CONVINCE THE SIX-EARED CREATURE THAT YOU ARE ITS SERVANT.]
Six-Ears sat on his boot, chewing stolen pie crust.
That one was already going quite well.
[NEW TASK: BECOME KING BEFORE SUNSET.]
[NEW TASK: PUT AN ENTIRE FLOATING ISLAND IN YOUR POCKET.]
"Stop."
[NEW TASK: NEVER KNEEL AGAIN.]
[NEW TASK: KNEEL IMMEDIATELY.]
"Those are opposite tasks!"
"Sung-Il." Brina crouched in front of him. "Look at me."
He tried.
A window opened across her face.
[NEW TASK: MAKE THE WOMAN IN FRONT OF YOU LAUGH.]
Then another.
[NEW TASK: KILL A GOD.]
His mouth went dry.
More lines climbed over the first ones. He tried dismissing them as he had dismissed his readings beneath the gate.
They returned faster than he could close them.
[TASKS RECEIVED: 17]
[TASKS RECEIVED: 46]
"I haven’t agreed to anything."
[TASKS RECEIVED: 109]
The numbers kept rising. He could no longer see the platform. He closed his eyes.
The windows stayed.
[TOO MANY REQUESTS.]
For one breath, every task vanished. He saw Brina again, her hands holding his, and Lyra kneeling beside them with her notebook forgotten on the ground.
From the platform, the young performer answered the voice.
"A home for our families. A place where our children can live."
The audience listened quietly.
Sung-Il heard his own breathing, fast and uneven.
One final window opened. Its purple edges shook.
[WARNING]
[THE ONE WHO ANSWERED YOUR RITUAL HAS JOINED THE AUDIENCE.]