The heart of Axiomra did not beat with blood;
it beat with water and wood.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
The massive oak gears of the Water Mill turned with relentless, terrifying efficiency.
Inside the grinding room, the air was thick with a sweet, powdery fog.
Pure, blindingly white flour poured from the crushing stones into massive canvas sacks.
Bilal stood in the gallery above the mill floor, looking down at his creation.
He was forty-four years old.
The warmth of his youth had hardened into the cold, calculating stillness of a Sovereign.
He held a piece of rag paper and a charcoal pencil.
He wasn't looking at the flour; he was looking at the math.
"If we scale this," Bilal thought, his dark eyes scanning the ledgers, "we don't just control the food. We control the land."
He walked back to his heated office in the Citadel, his boots echoing sharply on the stone floors.
He summoned the Council.
When Astrid, Leif, and the Foremen gathered around the heavy oak table, Bilal unrolled a map of the surrounding valleys.
"The Jarls raid because they are hungry," Bilal stated, his voice flat, devoid of its usual warmth.
He was in pure CEO mode.
"If we wait for them to attack, we lose time. We must conquer them before they draw swords. We conquer them with debt."
He pointed to the farmlands outside their borders.
"We institute the 'Seed and Silver' law," Bilal explained coldly.
"We approach the starving farmers. We offer them high-quality iron plows and our superior barley seeds. In exchange, they sign a paper marking their land under the protection of Axiomra. They pay us a small fee—one silver piece a month, or a tenth of their harvest—forever."
Leif frowned, looking at the map.
"Jarl, if they fail a harvest, they cannot pay."
"If they fail," Bilal replied without blinking, "we seize a portion of their land. But they will not fail, because we will teach them crop rotation. It is fair. We give them life, they give us loyalty. Ten silver over thirty years builds an empire. Three gold pieces in a raid builds nothing."
It was a brilliant, flawless economic trap.
Bilal was inventing Venture Capitalism and Feudal Mortgages.
He thought he was saving the peasantry from their cruel Viking masters.
He had no idea that his "perfection" had already killed them.
Twenty miles outside the walls of Axiomra, the Norwegian winter was unforgiving.
Runa, wrapped in a heavy white wolf-fur cloak, was leading a patrol of ten elite crossbowmen through the deep snow.
She was twenty-five, a mother, and the Iron Queen of the vanguard.
She was scouting the buffer zone, ensuring no spies from King Olaf were camping near their borders.
She saw a thin trail of grey smoke rising from a dilapidated wooden hut nestled against a frozen hillside.
Runa signaled her men to halt.
She and Leif dismounted their horses, drawing their short-swords, and approached the hut on foot.
The door was hanging off its leather hinges, banging softly in the freezing wind.
"Hello the house!" Runa called out in Norse.
There was no answer.
Only the smell of decay.
Runa stepped inside, covering her nose with her heavy leather glove.
The inside of the hut was a tomb.
Huddled together by the ashes of a dead fire were four frozen bodies.
A man, a woman, and two small children.
Their skin was pulled tight over their bones.
They had starved to death weeks ago.
Leif stepped in behind her, his face grim.
He knelt by the father's body.
Next to the man's frozen, skeletal hand was a pair of heavy, smooth stones.
Quern-stones.
The tools of a traditional hand-miller.
"I know this man," Leif whispered, his breath visible in the freezing air.
"It is Torvald. He used to grind the grain for the three villages in this valley. He was a proud man."
Runa looked around.
The house was empty of food, but in the corner, piled up to the ceiling, were dozens of sacks of gritty, brown, stone-ground flour.
"Why didn't he eat his own flour?" a young soldier asked from the doorway.
Runa's sharp, calculating mind pieced the tragedy together instantly.
Her blood ran cold.
"Because he couldn't afford salt, or meat, or firewood," Runa said, her voice hollow.
She walked over to the sacks of brown flour.
"He tried to sell it to buy what his family needed to survive the winter. But nobody bought it."
Leif looked up at her, realizing the horrific truth.
"Because of Axiomra."
"Yes," Runa whispered, closing her eyes.
Bilal's Water Mill produced pure white flour, hundreds of times faster, and sold it cheaper than any human being could ever match.
The local peasants and merchants had flocked to Axiomra to buy the Giant's perfect flour.
Torvald, the hand-miller, couldn't compete.
His business evaporated overnight.
His life's work became worthless dirt in the shadow of Bilal's machine.
The Giant hadn't raised an axe against this family, but he had slaughtered them just the same with the ruthless, invisible blade of industry.
"We must tell the Jarl," Leif said heavily.
"He will want to send silver to their surviving kin. He will want to make amends."
Runa spun around, her blue eyes flashing with a terrifying, protective ferocity.
"No."
Leif blinked, taken aback.
"Runa, the Giant's law says—"
"I said NO, Leif!" Runa hissed, grabbing her husband by the tunic.
"Do you remember the night of the Swedish ambush? Do you remember the look on his face when Elin died? My Father's heart is too soft for the crown he wears. If he sees this... if he knows that his beautiful machine starved two children to death in the snow... the guilt will break his mind."
Runa looked down at the frozen children.
Her chest ached, but she forced the iron back into her spine.
"He is building the future," Runa commanded, her voice turning to ice.
"The future requires blood. If he cannot bear to look at the blood, then I will hide it from him. He must remain the pure, perfect Giant."
She turned to her soldiers.
"Burn the hut. Burn the bodies. And if any of you speak a word of this to my Father, I will put a steel bolt through your throat myself."
Three days later, Runa sat in the warm, brightly lit office of the Citadel.
Bilal was standing by the window, looking out over the expanding, perfectly paved streets of Axiomra.
He looked powerful, brilliant, and completely untroubled.
"The farm contracts are being signed, Runa," Bilal said, a rare, genuine smile breaking through his cold exterior.
"We secured fifty new farms this week. We are lifting them out of the mud. We are saving them from the Dark Ages."
Runa looked at his broad back.
She thought of the frozen family in the burning hut.
She swallowed the bile in her throat.
She was eating his sins so he could sleep at night.
"Yes, Father," Runa said softly, forcing a perfect, loyal smile onto her face.
"You are saving them all."
Bilal turned back to his ledgers, completely unaware of the darkness his light was casting, while his daughter silently bore the true, horrifying weight of his Utopia.