Sebastian Batista had ninety days to save his family's vineyard, and not one worker would follow him into the field. He stood at the edge of the ruined rows, boots sinking in dead soil. The vines his grandfather planted hung black and split. Frost had cracked them last winter, and rot had finished the job. He wanted to make this land the finest estate in Heartblood. Alone, he could not clear even one acre before the planting season closed. He had spent the morning knocking on doors. Every skilled hand in the region had said no. The old pruners remembered the failed harvests. The young ones had left for steadier work in the city. "That ground is finished," one man told him. "So is your name." Sebastian drove home with an empty passenger seat and a folder of unpaid bills. That evening he climbed to a rooftop bar above the neighborhood. The green awning sagged. The wooden stools wobbled. He ordered nothing he could afford and studied his grandfather's soil maps by the light of a hanging lamp. The maps showed which rows drained well and which held frost. Knowledge, but no hands to use it. A woman two stools down leaned over and read the maps upside down. She was tall, in a plain dress, and she tapped the northern slope with one finger. "You've marked that block wrong," she said. "That soil drains fast. Plant it and you'll lose the roots by August." Sebastian looked up. "You know vines." "I ran a crew for six years," the woman said. "Grafting, pruning, replanting dead stock. I'm Abnerys." She turned the map toward him and traced a new line. "Your grandfather planted for a wetter valley. The climate changed. He didn't." Her certainty stung, but every word matched what he had feared. "I can't pay a crew," Sebastian said. "I can barely pay for this drink." Abnerys studied his face, then the maps, then his cracked hands. "I don't want wages," she said. "I want a share. Half the labor, half the estate. If we save it, we save it together." Sebastian's chest tightened. He had spent his life believing the vineyard was his alone to rebuild. Handing away half felt like handing away his grandfather. But half a saved vineyard beat all of a dead one. Ninety days left him no room to be proud. "You'd bring workers?" he asked. "I know six who'll follow me," she said. "They won't follow you. They'll follow me." He held out his hand. Abnerys shook it hard, like they'd sealed a contract, not a favor. The deal solved his one impossible problem and created a sharper one. He no longer owned his own dream, and the crew coming to the field answered to a woman he'd met an hour ago. "We start at dawn," Abnerys said. "Bring the maps. And a shovel that isn't broken."