They didn't even bother to name it.
Arion learned that one quiet morning as he sat on the edge of a dried-up well, staring at the horizon while pretending to tie a bundle of brittle sticks. The older boys joked about it—the "nameless place," the "dust hole," the "God-forgotten corner."
No records. No banners. No history carved into stone.
Just a smudge of huts on the farthest edge of the Western Plains.
And it made sense.
No sects claimed it. No kingdoms taxed it. No maps marked it. If not for the copper-toothed traders who passed through twice a year, the world might not even know it existed.
A village with no name.
A place so unwanted that even bandits rarely bothered with it—too poor to plunder, too far to matter.
But Arion knew better. From his perch, he watched everything: the loose routines of daily survival, the way crops were planted with no rotation, how water was fetched from the same polluted stream with every season, how injuries were treated with superstition and ash.
He saw the waste.
Children carried stones in slings to chase birds from the fields.
Men carved tools from bone because they didn't know how to smelt copper properly.
Women scraped mold from old grain sacks, not knowing they were spreading sickness.
It was a graveyard of forgotten knowledge.
And Arion was sick of it.
He didn't say it out loud—not yet—but the rage burned in his belly.
He knew how to build better.
In his past life, he'd revolutionized resource allocation algorithms in post-disaster zones.
He'd designed modular cities and clean-water systems for third-world nations.
But here? He couldn't even get clean bandages for a scraped knee.
Still, even a spark could start a fire.
He began by learning names. Real names. Mapping families in his mind.
There was Mara, the girl who watched him like a hawk when she wasn't tending goats.
There was Derran, the one-armed man who drank too much but could carve with terrifying precision.
There was old Liri, who muttered to herself and drew circles in the dirt near the firepit—strange symbols Arion couldn't yet decipher.
Patterns emerged.
Three families held the food.
Two elders made all the decisions, though none were ever explained.
One "healer" ruled through fear, curing fevers with leeches and calling it spirit work.
There was no central leadership. No village head. Just habit passed as law.
And then there were the disappearances.
Arion had counted nineteen children under ten.
By the end of the year, four were gone.
No one said why.
No one ever said why.
He kept silent. Watched. Calculated.
He learned to mimic normalcy, to smile dumbly, to fail at tasks intentionally, while inside, the old fire of boardrooms and battlefields boiled.
This village was a system. Broken. Inefficient. Blind.
But that also meant it could be rebuilt.
One evening, a small group of men returned from the hills dragging a beast corpse behind them—a horned pig-like creature the size of a dog. It reeked of blood and spirit rot, but the villagers cheered.
A feast was declared.
Arion refused to eat.
The beast's eyes were too cloudy. The meat too dark.
Something was wrong.
He watched. Listened. Counted how many took second helpings.
That night, three villagers fell sick.
By morning, one was dead.
Still, no one connected the dots.
Not the healer. Not the elders. Not even the families of the dead.
But he did.
And he remembered.
It wasn't much. Not yet.
He had no allies. No influence. No means.
Just a child's body… and a mind that had once managed entire nations.
For now, the village remained nameless.
But one day, it would have a name.
One that burned..