The Vacant Bench

The first true test of this new generation came with the passing of Valerius.

His tools, his workshop, his half-finished projects—these were his legacy.

In a previous age, they might have been divided by a will, or preserved in a museum.

But the first generation saw them differently.

The air in the Workshop, usually thick with the scent of sawdust and the hum of creation, was still.

Valerius, the master craftsman, was gone.

His tools, each one a story of a thousand perfect cuts and a million careful measurements, lay silent on the benches, a testament to a life spent in pursuit of the ideal.

But his legacy was not in the objects he left behind, but in the question that now hung in the quiet air: who would inherit the Workshop?

It was a question that touched every member of the young society, for the Workshop was more than a place of creation; it was the heart of their new world, the physical manifestation of the principles they had so carefully built.

To inherit the Workshop was to inherit the Standard, the very definition of their shared reality.

And for the first time, that reality felt fragile.

The First Inheritance was not a gift to be given, but a responsibility to be earned.