Weeks passed.
By then, the village no longer looked quite the same.
The changes were not dramatic enough to make it unrecognizable. The same houses stood along the same paths. Smoke still rose from familiar chimneys in the morning. Children still ran between sheds while adults shouted at them to stay away from carts, tools, and anything sharp.
The difference was in the details.
The gate closed more smoothly.
The wall held stronger fittings.
The wagons no longer groaned as badly over uneven ground.
Tools lasted longer.
Even the old pulley near the grain store moved with less resistance.
Most of those improvements had begun with the mineral basin.
Ore came back in carefully controlled amounts.
They never brought enough to make the village look like a mining settlement. One wagon would return with broken stone and samples from several deposits. A few days might pass before another trip.
Lucien insisted on restraint.
They still had no formal claim over the basin.
