The silo creaked like it was allergic to magic.
Benedict crouched on the wind-blasted metal roof, carefully aligning the relay node's stabilization prongs. Below him stretched the Rinalt Farmlands—dry as philosophy, with ley-touched grain fields shimmering faintly under the faded pulse of a broken weather grid. In the distance, irrigation towers leaned like drunken skeletons, half-dead and full of promise.
"Would've preferred a cleaner ley spine," Benedict muttered, wrenching a converter coil into place. "But beggars don't pay in credits."
Eline clambered up beside him, breath puffing from exertion. "The local grain baron says your node has 'devil spark.' He thinks you're here to summon crop plagues."
"Good," Benedict said, tapping the copper ring around the beacon's pulse crystal. "Maybe that'll keep him from touching it."
She raised an eyebrow. "He's offering five crates of dried mana-corn if the node 'doesn't make anything explode.'"
Benedict didn't look up. "Tell him I'll do it for six. And I want the crates stacked, not scattered."
"Charming as always."
Below them, Arden Vel was trying—and failing—to be diplomatic. The grain baron, a bearded man whose coat was more patch than fabric, kept glancing at the pulse node like it might grow legs and kick someone.
"You sure this thing isn't cursed?" he asked for the third time.
Arden forced a smile. "Cursed things don't usually repair thaumic channels."
The baron scowled. "Neither do shiny birdhouses."
Nim Tealeaf, leaning against a crate nearby, giggled and scribbled something crude in chalk. It resembled the silo. And a chicken.
On the roof, Benedict twisted the final calibration glyph into place. The node hummed—low, even, precise.
Then, without fanfare, it blinked.
Amber light spread outward like a slow exhale. The grain fields shimmered with responding glyphs—old, cracked sigils reawakening like sleepy bones.
The first Interlink Beacon had activated.
Not in a city.
Not on a tower.
But on a forgotten silo in the middle of nowhere.
Benedict tapped his bracer, watching the sync logs populate. "Rinalt prime pulsepath bridged. Vehrmath node echo returned. No lag. Good enough."
The grain baron stared. "...It worked?"
Benedict nodded. "Obviously."
The baron hesitated. Then barked orders at nearby laborers. Within minutes, six crates were stacked at Arden's feet. Inside: dried grain, patchwire rolls, and three half-rusted tools.
Benedict climbed down the ladder, muttering, "Finally. Actual profit."
Eline crossed her arms. "You realize they think you just saved their harvest."
"I did," Benedict said. "Now they can pay me."
He made no speech. No dramatic gestures. He simply opened a crate, checked the contents, and added the total to his credit slate.
"Did they name it already?" he asked without looking up.
"'The Amber Bell,'" Nim chirped. "A child said it sounded like hope."
Benedict winced. "Terrible branding."
Later, a local priest brought him a polished crystal etched with ancestral glyphs.
"A token of thanks," the man said. "Passed down three generations."
Benedict turned it over in his palm, held it to the light, then asked, "Is it pure quartz?"
The priest blinked. "It's sacred."
"Sacred's great. I can stabilize the next node with this." He walked off before the priest could object.
At sunset, the relay hummed like a satisfied throat clearing. Messages passed. Tools synced. One woman, previously walking three hours to fetch spellwater, now received requests through her kitchen charm.
"Miracle," someone said in the background.
Benedict, carving new node brackets with a blunt tool, snorted. "It's called engineering."
That evening, in a dusty storage shack converted into a field HQ, Eline reviewed the credit sheet. "We've got a tally. One hundred and sixteen community credits, exchangeable for services, goods, or materials."
Arden leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "They want to hold a naming ceremony."
"For what?" Benedict asked.
"The beacon."
Benedict rolled his eyes. "It's a relay node. Not a deity."
Nim held up a chalkboard. On it: a sketch of Benedict wearing a cape and holding a glowing relay.
Benedict didn't even blink. "Make the schematic accurate or don't bother."
Shael signed from across the room.
They think you're a builder of hope.
Benedict adjusted a capacitor and didn't look up. "I'm just fixing broken things. Hope wasn't in the blueprint."
Outside, the node blinked again—soft, amber, steady.
The first pulse had crossed the land.
And Benedict, oddball, capitalist, and anomaly, didn't see a revolution.
He saw a market.
The next morning brought a field of visitors.
Dozens of farmers, field-hands, and curious children trailed toward the old silo like it was suddenly a temple. Benedict had barely finished bolting the beacon into a wind-shelter before the first group arrived—carrying a bushel of scorched wheat and a dying weather charm.
"Our ward lines reset overnight," said a sun-wrinkled woman with soil-stained hands. "The rain danced right over the fields. First time in years."
Benedict glanced at her. Then at the charm. "This glyph's off-center."
He popped it open, scraped the runes with a piece of chalked glass, and handed it back. "It's not the pulse. It's your calibration."
The woman clutched the charm like it was reborn. "You fixed it."
"No," Benedict replied, already turning away. "I corrected a mistake."
"Bless you," she whispered.
Benedict froze, then muttered, "Don't do that."
By noon, more 'offerings' arrived. Honey-wrapped bread, aged saltstones, a carved wooden pendant in the shape of a relay node. Arden raised an eyebrow as two boys tried to present Benedict with a weathered harmonica engraved with glyphs.
"They think you're some kind of arc-saint," he muttered.
Benedict accepted the harmonica, gave it a bored blow—it wheezed out a warped trill—and dropped it into his pouch. "Good salvage alloy."
"You've got a gift for ruining reverence," Arden said dryly.
"Only when it gets in the way of useful materials."
Eline was less amused.
"These people don't have much," she said later, sitting on a crate beside the humming relay. "They're offering you things they care about."
"I care about the pulse staying stable," Benedict said. "That's why I need copper. And ink powder. And working insulation."
She rubbed her forehead. "You know you could fake it, right? Smile once. Pretend you like the harmonica."
"I'd rather chew spellcord," he replied.
Shael, perched nearby, signed: He doesn't chew spellcord. He eats misunderstanding.
A small crowd gathered around the beacon again that evening. This time, it wasn't just adults. A group of teenagers dragged over what could charitably be called a stage: two crates and an overturned barrel. A young girl climbed up and cleared her throat.
"This poem," she announced, "is about the Amber Bell. It goes:"
"Pulse of light in farmland's breath,
Spark of talk, of hands and step.
Where silence grew, now messages tread—
The silo speaks, the old is fed."
The crowd clapped politely. A few cried.
Benedict, who had just finished recalibrating the echo limiter, barely looked up.
"Did she say 'the silo speaks'?" he asked Nim.
Nim nodded enthusiastically. "It rhymed!"
"It's a node, not a bard," he muttered. "And the silo doesn't speak. The relay does."
The poet looked crushed when someone whispered his reaction to her. Eline shot Benedict a glare sharp enough to flay copper.
"Try not to stomp every good moment flat."
He sighed. "I didn't ask for a poem. I asked for a reliable circuit board."
Still, something in his expression flickered—annoyance not at the child, but at the expectation.
That night, a relay pulse triggered an unexpected response: the weather shifted.
A drifting cloud burst over the far fields—rain, steady and true, soaking the drought-hardened soil.
Cheers erupted across the Rinalt market sector. Families danced barefoot in the puddles. Someone started shouting that the sky had remembered their names.
Benedict, standing in the shelter with a diagnostic crystal, stared at the readings. "Mana wind alignment drifted. Probably re-anchored when the node pulsed. I didn't plan for that."
Nim skipped past him, hair soaked, grinning like a fox. "Yeah, but you made it happen!"
"No," he muttered, half to himself. "I just… aimed the pulse."
That night, a trader from the Red Shell Orbit arrived, soaked and out of breath, and offered Benedict a mechanical seed-sequencer in exchange for beacon specs.
Benedict paused.
He examined the device. Recognized the base design.
Then offered a trade.
"You want the node specs? Fine. You give me two things: your sequencer, and a signed conduit log of where you've been for the last six months. Every channel. Every route. In duplicate."
The trader blinked. "Why?"
"I'm not here for fame," Benedict said. "I'm here for routes."
By sunrise, he had both. And a new idea.