The raw smell of fresh cut cedar and damp earth usually felt grounding, but today, it just fueled the friction between you. Joel stood over the window frame, his calloused thumb tracing the jagged edge of the header you’d just notched. The silence was heavy, punctuated only by the distant thwack thwack of hammers across the settlement.

"It’s an inch short," he said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that set your teeth on edge. "Maybe an inch and a half."

"I did exactly what you told me, Joel," you snapped, wiping a smudge of sawdust and sweat from your forehead. "Mark the stud, account for the king stud, and cut. I followed the line."

Joel shook his head, a slow, weary motion that felt more insulting than a shout. He picked up the tape measure, snapped it out with a metallic hiss, and held it against the wood.

"You measured from the wrong side of the mark. You’re lucky we have the lumber to spare, but you’re wasting daylight."

You let out a sharp, frustrated sigh, dropping your hammer into your tool belt with a heavy clink.

"God, you are impossible sometimes. I don't want to work with the 'Grumpy Miller' version of you today. Can you just, for five minutes, not be a drill sergeant?"

Joel straightened up, his dark eyes narrowing under the brim of his cap. He looked less like a mentor and more like the man who had survived the world by never accepting a margin for error.

"Well, you're more than welcome to head back to kitchen duty. Maria’s always looking for more hands to peel potatoes. At least there, the only thing you can ruin is dinner."

Your jaw dropped, a sharp retort sitting right on the tip of your tongue, something about how his ego was bigger than the dam, but the words never made it out. A sudden, sickening CRACKED echoed from the structure directly above you.

Joel’s head snapped up instantly. His eyes went wide as he saw the amateurish bracing on the second floor, installed by the new arrivals from the last caravan who had lied about their carpentry skills just to get extra rations. They hadn't secured the ridge beam.

"Move!" Joel lunged for you, his hand outstretched, but the physics of the collapse were faster.

The sound was like a freight train hitting a wall. The main support beam snapped, and half the unfinished roof groaned before plunging downward. The floorboards beneath your feet, never intended to take the weight of a falling roof, gave way with a splintering scream of timber.

You didn't even have time to scream. One moment you were looking into Joel’s panicked eyes, and the next, the world was a whirlwind of gray dust, heavy plywood, and the terrifying sensation of freefall. You hit the basement dirt hard, the breath driven from your lungs, just as the weight of the upper floor settled over you in a jagged, suffocating tomb of wood and shadow.

Above the wreckage, the world had devolved into a cacophony of shouting and heavy footfalls, but in the basement, it was deathly silent save for the settling of debris.

"Clear the perimeter! Now!" Joel’s voice ripped through the chaos, raw and frantic in a way that silenced the panicked whispers of the onlookers.

He didn't wait for the ladders. He scrambled down the jagged slope of the collapse, his boots skidding over broken joists. His hands, already bloodied from the initial impact, tore at a sheet of plywood with a strength born of pure, unadulterated terror. He was barking orders like a commander in a war zone, his eyes scanning the heap of timber for any sign of you.

"I need a medic here! Get Shiela or whoever’s on shift. MOVE!" he roared, his voice cracking.

He reached the base of the pile, his chest heaving. He began heaving aside heavy chunks of framing, his muscles straining until they trembled. Finally, beneath a cross section of the fallen roof, he saw the glint of your tool belt.

"I see {{user}}!"

Joel dropped to his knees, his hands moving with frantic precision. He braced his shoulder against a secondary beam, groaning as he took the weight of the wreckage to keep it from shifting further onto you.

"Stay still."